Traces of a genocide

Marking the European Holocaust Memorial Day for Sinti and Roma

When Karl Weiss sends a letter to his family from the Dachau concentration camp, he is trying to find out one thing above all else: where are his wife Genoveva and their nine children? How are they? The 60-year-old family man and shopkeeper from Fulda was arrested by the criminal investigations police in June 1942 and deported to Dachau shortly afterwards. The Nazis had registered him as a “Gypsy” and classified him as “work-shy” and “asocial”. After his arrest, he was unable to keep in touch with his family.

Stigmatisation as “asocial”

Both in the Dachau concentration camp book of arrivals and on the “registry office card” created for him, Karl was listed under the prisoner category “A.Z.R.”, which designated forced labour prisoners delivered by national authorities. It applied to people who were stigmatised by the Nazis as “asocial” and were arrested as a result. As well as Sinti and Roma, this group also included, for example, sex workers and homeless people. It was not until 2020 that the German Bundestag officially recognised people categorised by the Nazis as “asocial” as a victim group.

“Returned as undeliverable”

Karl’s letter to his family’s home address is returned to him: “Undeliverable”. So he checks with the authorities. Perhaps someone there knows where his wife and children are. He receives the reply via concentration camp administration in Dachau. His wife had been taken to Ravensbrück concentration camp. The children were in Auschwitz. That is all he finds out for the time being.

Today, the documents from this correspondence form part of the Arolsen Archives’ extensive collection on the fates of the victims of National Socialism. They document one man’s desperate search for his family – whilst at the same time illustrating one of the many tragic paths that led tens of thousands of Sinti and Roma to Auschwitz under the Nazi persecution system.

Only a few survived the “Gypsy camp”

Auschwitz-Birkenau was the main site of the Nazi genocide against Europe’s Sinti and Roma. More than 20,000 men, women and children were deported to the so-called “Gypsy family camp” there. Very few of them survived. People died of malnutrition or disease, were murdered in the gas chambers, or fell victim to the medical experiments carried out by SS doctor Josef Mengele. He had set up a special experimental laboratory in this part of the camp, where he abused Sinti and Roma for his perfidious research purposes.

Degrading and deadly human experiments

In his experiments on the Sinti and Roma at Auschwitz, SS doctor Josef Mengele sought, amongst other things, to prove their alleged racial “inferiority”. However, he also exploited people for deadly pseudoscientific experiments. Most of the victims on whom Mengele carried out experiments were children. 

Karl Weiss lost his wife and seven of his nine children

During the night of 2 to 3 August 1944, the SS dismantled the “Gypsy camp” for good. The last 4,300 or so prisoners remaining there – mainly elderly people, women and children – were murdered in the gas chambers. It is unclear whether the Weiss family were also murdered on that very night. The documents in the Arolsen Archives show that all nine of Karl and Genoveva Weiss’s children had been imprisoned in Auschwitz since March 1943. Following her deportation via the Ravensbrück and Buchenwald concentration camps, Genoveva Weiss was also taken to Auschwitz in October 1944. Karl Weiss survived the persecution. In a letter addressed to the Special Registry Office at Bad Arolsen, Karl Weiss writes that only two of his nine children returned.

The struggle for certainty and recognition

After the liberation, a new struggle began for Karl Weiss, as it did for many surviving Sinti and Roma. The man from Fulda spent years searching for answers. In the 1950s, he asked the International Tracing Service (ITS), the predecessor organisation of the Arolsen Archives, to issue a death certificate for his wife. He needed this to apply for compensation. The ITS replied that they were unable to comply with his request because there was no proof of Genoveva’s death. Yet the UN authorities had already made it clear at the time that a death certificate could be issued for victims of the Nazis even without proof of death – a fact that the ITS simply ignored.

This incident is typical of the situation faced by many Sinti and Roma after 1945. The persecution had ended, but the prejudices remained. Public authorities, courts and police stations often adopted ways of thinking and stereotypes from the Nazi era. In many cases, court rulings or claims for compensation were decided by individuals who had previously been responsible for the persecution of the Sinti and Roma. Claims for compensation were rejected or delayed, and the racist motives behind the persecution were called into question. The crimes of National Socialism increasingly found their way into the public consciousness. However, the persecution of Sinti and Roma by the Nazi regime went largely unnoticed for a long time – and the stigmatisation continued at a societal level in Germany.

Late recollection

The fact that 2 August is now observed across Europe as Holocaust Memorial Day for Sinti and Roma is, above all, the result of decades of civil rights campaigning by survivors and their families. It was not until 1982 that the German government officially recognised the genocide against the Sinti and Roma. And it was not until 2015 that the European Parliament designated 2 August as European Holocaust Memorial Day for Sinti and Roma.

Documentation and Cultural Centre of German Sinti and Roma

The Documentation and Cultural Centre of German Sinti and Roma in Heidelberg is the first memorial site in Europe to house a permanent exhibition on the Nazi genocide (Porajmos) of this group. It is run by the Central Council of German Sinti and Roma and serves as an archive, an educational forum and a cultural meeting place.

Further information