The Nazi Persecution of the Gypsies

This is the first book from Mr. Lewy that I have read but will not be the last one. The plight of the Gypsies during the Nazi rule is presented to the readers in a dignified and scholarly fashion. This is a highly readable book, well argued, and it covers its intended subject with ease, respect and, in a concise manner. I will not attempt a synopsis here; it suffices to say that the author captures the soul of the ordeal endured by the Gypsies under the Nazi murder machine. Although the author does not consider that the Gypsies were specifically targeted for what was later to become known as genocide (except the mass sterilizations), he recognizes the grievous harm done to that community due to so called racial considerations and also due to the predominant life style of the Gypsies. This book deserves five stars.

Some 50,000 Gypsy's were gassed to death in the war and many more died. This book is a clinical account of the brutalization of the Gypsy people but it is mostly a legal account of how the Nazis slowly de-humanized and categorized the Gypsy 'nomads' in Germany. There is not enough discussion of Gypsy history or the anti-Gypsy campaign, if there was one, in Russia and other occupied countries like Rumania where Gypsy's numbered as much as 5-10% of the population. THere is also little discussion of the difference between Sinti and Gypsy's or Gypsy culture and religion and social habits. There is much light shed upon the workings of the Nazi regime and its 'logic' of persecution. Nazi policy was overwhelmingly legalistic, despite the breakdown of actual laws protecting people's right to life, the regime cared reeply about classification and legalism. This is an interesting account of how the Nazis 'discovered' the 'gypsy problem' and set about 'solving' it in their typical fashion. Not enough literature exists on non-Jewish communities targeted for destruction, such as the descendants of Senegalese in the Rhineland, the Serbs or the Cretans. This is a major addition to Holocaust literature, but it needs an update and more information. A superb beggining. Seth J. Frantzman

Long ignored by most historians is the plight of the Gypsies at the hands of the nazis. Subjected to every indignity and persecution as the Jews of Europe yet often ignored by most historians except brief. Often subjected to grizly medical experiments by men such as Mengele. Many of the photos of his victims are in fact of Gypsy children. This book gives a good scope of what the nazis did to them. But like most, it does not give a solid number on how many were murdered by the nazis. Nobody knows. Few Censusus covered them. Few records were kept. More often than not, they were shoved into the same trains as the Jews and gassed with them. There are many gaps but this book does at least do some justice.

This is an absorbing, well-written and quite readable text book by a noted 20th century historian, Guenter Lewy, and it constitutes a disturbing, graphic and poignant overview of the Nazi campaign against the gypsy population of central Europe. The German national socialist regime, always in search for helpless, infirm and unwell sectors of the population to scapegoat and persecute, found in the gypsies an ideal target by way of a collection of powerless, rootless, and socio-politically unsavory groups of individuals to prey upon. Yet this persecution has not been widely publized or recognized until now largely because of the nature of the gypsy population, i.e. due to their own lack of social and political visibility, no one has paid a lot of attention to their plight or to the multitude of ways in which they were persecuted, along with Jews and other political groups by the Nazis. This book remedies that egregious oversight, painting a vivid, quite compassionate picture of the gypsies' dilemma, and at the same time marshaling a damning indictment of the general campaign of mistreatment, disenfranchisement, torture, and murder conducted by the Third Reich against all subjugated peoples both in greater Germany and also in the countries conquered as they pushed both east and west during the prosecution of the war. According to the author, the policy seemed to evolve as the Nazis encountered such groups in their conquests, and whatever policies as emerged did so more in relation to the local officials' negative views of the gypsies as being thieves, trouble-makers and undesirables than due to any overall pre-planned approach. Of course, this sort of insight shouldn't come as a total surprise to students of Third Reich social policies. Even Himmler's well-documented plan for the "Final Solution" is now considered by a number of noted historians to owe more to the requirements of exigent circumstance that evolved as the Wehrmacht rolled through Poland during Operation Barbarossa than from any long-term plan to systematically exterminate all European Jews. The Nazis realized they could not feed or shelter the Jews and maintain their schedule for populating the hinterlands, and the extermination program was conceived of as a way out of that dilemma. It should also be noted that the Nazi bureaucracy was rife with duplications and redundancies, and that this led to disorganization and confusion. As a result, it was exceedingly ineffective and inefficient. The history associated with the conduct of the army and its special branches toward extermination also reflects this disorganization and amateurish, rigid and unfocused leadership and direction. In spite of this lack of leadership or any clear and unambiguous policy, the local officials often improvised, with gruesome effect. As history shows, they were a deadly, murderous crew. The campaign as described in this well-documented and painstakingly researched book ref