Gypsies in Birkenau?

Kaan Caglar · Post by **Kaan Caglar** » 18 Apr 2004 20:20

Were gypsies sent to Birkenau? If the answer is yes, how many were murdered? From where were they sent to Birkenau?
Thanks
Kaan

Orok · Post by **Orok** » 18 Apr 2004 21:09

Hi KaaN,

The first large transport of Gypsies arrived at Birkenau II e on February 26, 1943. By the end of the year, the total number of Gypsies incarcerated there for various length of time is about 23,000.

The first mass murder of Gypsies took place on March 23, 1943 when 1,700 from Bialystok were gassed.

The Gypsie Camp at Birkenau was liquidated in May 1944. By then about 6,600 were gassed, 14,000 died of disease, medical experiments, maltreatment or random killing by guards. The remaining 3,500 were transferred to other camps.

Source: Günter Lewy, The Nazi Persecution of the Gypsies, Oxford 2000, pp152-66.

Best Regards!

Kaan Caglar · Post by **Kaan Caglar** » 18 Apr 2004 21:44

Orok,
Thank you very much! Can you or someone confirm that these are the Gypsies at Birkenau??

Regards
Kaan

Piet Duits · Post by **Piet Duits** » 18 Apr 2004 22:13

At least 2 great-uncles of mine were gassed. Don't know exactly where.
The oldest of the 2 protected his little brother, who was to be deported. They died together, according to the stories that are still being told.

There was a Roma-family in my country who were traitors. They told the other Roma, and also the Sinti people, to go with the trains. These trains would take them to more prosperious area's where they would be safe for proscecution, and from silly people still believing the gipsies stole their children.
The people who believed this family were sent directly to the KZ's.

When my late grandmother heard something about this family, many years after the war, she would turn into a dragon. The woman from the Excorcist would be a child compared with her.
This particular family was protected by the germans, because of their activities.

Kaan Caglar · Post by **Kaan Caglar** » 18 Apr 2004 22:19

Piet Duits,
I'm sorry to hear that. Thanks for sharing. Maybe we can find the name of the family?
Regards
Kaan

Piet Duits · Post by **Piet Duits** » 18 Apr 2004 22:21

Kaan,

No need to do that, I already know that name. Also, most -if not all- of that family who were there are dead already.

Kaan Caglar · Post by **Kaan Caglar** » 18 Apr 2004 22:27

Thanks again Pier.
Does anyone have a map showing the sub-camps in Birkenau(Auschwitz II)?
Regards
Kaan

Earldor · Post by **Earldor** » 18 Apr 2004 22:45

_KaaN_ wrote: Can you or someone confirm that these are the Gypsies at Birkenau??

No, the picture was taken in Belzec:
http://www.deathcamps.org/belzec/roma.html

And I don't want to sound like an ass, but honestly
KaaN, it took me about five minutes to do a websearch on Auschwitz-Birkenau's subcamps and find these links and many more:

http://www.cympm.com/auschwitz.html
http://www.us-israel.org/jsource/Holoca ... onmap.html

Of course these are only the largest of the subcamps.

Here's a list of many more subcamps: http://www.auschwitz-muzeum.oswiecim.pl ... tz_ok.html

If you're truely interested get Yisrael Gutman et al's (eds): "Anatomy of Auschwitz Death Camp".

xcalibur · Post by **xcalibur** » 18 Apr 2004 23:11

_KaaN_ wrote:Thanks again Pier.
Does anyone have a map showing the sub-camps in Birkenau(Auschwitz II)?
Regards
Kaan

Here's a map of the Birkenau camp:

Kaan Caglar · Post by **Kaan Caglar** » 19 Apr 2004 09:20

Earldor, I know many links about these maps but I wanted to see if anyone had any refence about the map. I mean from a book,or somewhere more dependable and more detailed. Anyway thanks for clearing my doubts about the photo and for the recommendation of the book. Also the list of subcamps, worked well.
Xcalibur thank you.
Kaan

michael mills · Post by **michael mills** » 19 Apr 2004 13:22

The Gypsies sent to Auschwitz from the beginning of 1943 onward came mainly from the Reich, including its annexed territories, and Bohemia-Moravia.

The Bialystok District had been annexed de facto, being joined administratively to East Prussia. That is why Gypsies from there were sent to Auschwitz.

The deportation was pursuant to an order issued by Himmler at the end of 1942, under which most Gypsies living in the Reich were to be sent to concentration camps as anti-socials (which is why they wore the black triangle). Himmler's order did not specify Auschwitz, but that is where the Gypsies ended up being sent.

As the posted map shows, one whole section of Birkenau was reserved for Gypsy prisoners, being known colloquially as the Gypsy camp. The liquidation of the Gypsy camp on the night of 1-2 August 1944 (not May as stated by Orok) was undertaken because the space was needed for the Hungarian Jews who were flooding the camp.

The post-war statement by Hoeß headed "My Meetings with Himmler", written at the instruction of the Polish judge Sehn, includes a description of Himmler's visit to Auschwitz-Birkenau in July 1942, during which he is represented as inspecting the Gypsy camp and seeing the catastrophic conditions there. Hoeß claims that at the conclusion of the visit, Himmler gave him the order to liquidate the Gypsies and the non-working Jews in order to relieve the overcrowding in the camp.

The account by Hoeß is anachronistic, since in July 1942, the date of Himmler's visit, there was no Gypsy camp at Auschwitz; the first Gypsies did not arrive until January 1943.

Hoeß must be confusing Himmler's visit of 1942 with a meeting with him at some later date, at a time when the Gypsy camp was in existence. Given that the Gypsy camp was liquidated in August 1944, it is likely that the order to kill the Gypsies and the non-working Jews was given not long prior to that, some time after the start of the deportation of Hungarian Jews to Auschwitz, which rapidly caused massive overcrowding.

michael mills · Post by **michael mills** » 19 Apr 2004 13:28

By the way, the Gypsies sent to Belzec in 1940 were not sent there for extermination.

They were held in the transit camp which had been in existence there since December 1939 and later turned into a labour camp.

Earldor's brief statement "sent to Belzec" might be misunderstood.

Potsdamerplatz · Post by **Potsdamerplatz** » 21 Aug 2007 22:49

The murder of the Gypsy camp at Auschwitz in 1944 is one of the most appalling events of the Holocaust.

The Gypsies lived in a special family camp in Birkenau (as seen in the map above) and were kept in some of the worst conditions in Auschwitz.

On 2nd August 1944, the entire camp was liquidated in one night.

Wladyslaw Szmyt, a Polish prisoner at Auschwitz, describes what happened:

Everybody defended themselves, defended themselves to the last. They bit, they scratched. The Germans had driven in trucks. They threw the children in them, and if one of them jumped out, they would hit him on the leg or the arm with a wooden club, break it and throw him back in, so that he couldn’t jump out again, couldn’t get out because his limb was just hanging there.

When I saw this, I started yelling. And people grabbed me as they were afraid that the Germans would come and throw a hand grenade in or something.

They rolled me in a blanket to keep me quiet and sat with me.

Source: Auschwitz: The Nazis And The Final Solution (BBC series)

Most of the Gypsies were taken to crematoria four and five and killed within their network of gas chambers.

Altogether the Nazis would eventually kill about 300,000 of an estimated one million Gypsies in Europe.

Kind regards.