the quest for racial purity - United States Holocaust Memorial Museum

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Roma were made to wear either the black triangle, the symbol for antisocial prisoners, or the green triangle, which designated them as habitual criminals.
German physicians also used Roma concentration camp prisoners in medical experiments. For example, in 1944, the German air force sponsored an experiment on the potability of sea water. The SS selected 44 Roma, previously in good health, who had just been transferred to Buchenwald from Auschwitz and brought them to Dachau. The prisoners were forced to drink sea water and soon exhibited signs of starvation and severe thirst. As they became incoherent, they were physically restrained. When they were approaching death, SS doctors injected them with an experimental substance that was thought to counteract the effects of drinking sea water. Only the fact that other prisoners smuggled food and water to them enabled the Romani test subjects to survive. In January 1944, SS doctors transferred 100 Romani prisoners from Auschwitz to the Natzweiler-Struthof camp in eastern France for use in typhus experiments. The Roma were infected with typhus bacillus and, naturally, developed high fevers, although none of them died. Later, some of those same Romani prisoners were used in gas experiments at the University of Strasbourg, in which they were injected with a so-called protective element and then subjected to various concentrations of phosgene gas. Four of the Romani prisoners died as a result of the experiments. In Ravensbrück, SS Dr. Carl Clauberg used Romani women and girls, some of them as young as eight, in sterilization experiments. As late as February 1945, approximately 140 Romani women were sterilized there. Some of the operations were performed without anesthesia, and at least ten of the women died. After Germany incorporated Austria into the Reich in March 1938, the police established two internment camps for Roma there. One opened in Salzburg in October 1939, housing 80 to 400 Roma; the second opened in Lackenback, southeast of Vienna, in November 1940 and held 4,000 prisoners. Conditions at the Lackenback camp were particularly bad, which led to a high death rate at that camp through the end of the war. The actions against Roma between 1935 and 1938, particularly their registration and incarceration in municipal camps and then in concentration camps, were a prelude to further actions envisioned by the Nazi leadership. Indeed, on the basis of Ritter’s “race-biological” research, SS and police chief Heinrich Himmler recommended the full-scale segregation of Roma in his decree of December 8, 1938, on “Combating the Gypsy Plague.” He ordered the registration of all Roma above the age of six years and their classification into three racial groupings: Gypsy, Gypsy mixed race, and those leading a nomadic and Gypsylike lifestyle. Himmler stated that the aim of this measure was to “defend the homogeneity of the German nation” and the “physical separation of Gypsydom from the German nation.” The information that Ritter and his associates gathered was essential to the police actions against Roma in Germany. In short, they provided the information necessary for the police to identify and locate Roma, and then to deport and ultimately kill them. 104 | nazi ideology and the holocaust
Page 1 and 2: the quest for racial purity: German
Page 3 and 4: ideology into practice. The persecu
Page 5 and 6: conditions were by definition “he
Page 7 and 8: granted exemptions to people who we
Page 9 and 10: a distracted population from what t
Page 11 and 12: Doctors marked each name with a red
Page 13 and 14: in white coats and rode along in th
Page 15 and 16: and leadership had moved to other p
Page 17 and 18: scientists, physicians, nurses, aca
Page 20 and 21: and other racial minorities. The la
Page 22 and 23: popular prejudices (in Germany and
Page 24: Many insisted that who did not meri
Page 27 and 28: with “feeblemindedness” and oth
Page 29: In the camps, Roma were made to wea
Page 33 and 34: arracks. The SS refrained from carr
Page 35 and 36: end with Germany’s acknowledgment
Page 37 and 38: he nazis reserved their most viciou
Page 40 and 41: In 1933, the approximately 530,000
Page 43 and 44: marked the beginning of a pattern t
Page 45 and 46: this a “racial” definition for
Page 47 and 48: the army; and, in early 1934, forba
Page 49 and 50: Most German Jews who managed to emi
Page 51 and 52: - Close relatives of the prospectiv
Page 53: instigated and carried out by Nazi
Page 56 and 57: Night of Broken Glass,” German Je
Page 59 and 60: context of the do-or-die struggle b
Page 61 and 62: The ghettos were conceived ... as a
Page 63 and 64: The Nazis, and many other Germans u
Page 65: police officials and, in particular
Page 68 and 69: The tactics used by the German auth
Page 70 and 71: forced the inhabitants into certain
Page 72 and 73: the war, the Germans had deported a
Page 75 and 76: Unlike the Operation Reinhard camps
Page 77 and 78: their efforts could not save Jewish
Page 79 and 80: Auschwitz-Birkenau until November 1
Page 81 and 82:
Despite Nazi efforts to hide their
Page 83 and 84:
epilogue | the aftermath of the hol
Page 85 and 86:
The Nuremberg Trial brought major N
Page 87 and 88:
viduals—from all religious backgr
Page 89 and 90:
polish and soviet civilians, and so
Page 91 and 92:
Morse, Arthur. While Six Million Di
Page 93 and 94:
Dalliare, Roméo, 161-62 Darfur, Su
Page 95 and 96:
Jewish resistance, 150-52 Jewish st
Page 97 and 98:
Polish civilians, 54, 55 children,
Page 99:
design Studio A, Alexandria, Va. ww
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