1938–1945: Persecution of Romani People by the Nazi Regime

Nazi violence and the long road to recognition

From the beginning the Nazis also incited hatred against “Zigeuner” (“Gypsies”). This pejorative label was given predominantly to those people who described themselves as Roma in their own language. Persecution began immediately after the so-called “Anschluss” (“annexation”) in March 1938. In the referendum on the "Anschluss" that followed shortly after, Romani people were already excluded from voting.

This population group was especially large in the Eastern Austrian region of Burgenland, where Romani children were forbidden to attend school in the fall of 1938. In 1939/40, this school ban was enforced in the whole area of former Austria, and only in 1941 was it extended to the whole German Reich. Like many other examples, this shows how Austrian Nazis developed methods of persecution that were then adopted by Berlin as well. The same applies to internment in forced labour camps, which was introduced in 1938. Nazi authorities cynically justified such persecution by claiming that “Gypsies” are inherently “work-shy” and “criminal”, yet the policy of internment also affected Romani people who had permanent work. In 1939 the first deportations to concentration camps were already taking place, and affected Romani women as well. Unlike in the German “old Reich”, the persecution of Romani people in former Austria could be organised so quickly because files of those people regarded as “Gypsies” had already been created during the time of the democratic First Republic. These were used to create the deportation lists.

The second phase of persecution began in October 1939 when the SS ordered that all groups travelling with horses or other wagons had to stay where they were at the time. This was to make it easier for the Nazi terror apparatus to seize them. In some “Gypsy camps”, men, women and children were confined in inhumane conditions, forced to work and, finally, as of 1941, were deported onward – mostly to extermination camps. Such “Gypsy camps” were numerous in Austria; the largest was in Lackenbach (Burgenland), and there were also camps in Weyer-St. Pantaleon (Upper Austria), Salzburg-Maxglan, as well as in Fürstenfeld, Murau-Triebendorf, Leoben, Knittelfeld, Kobenz and St. Lambrecht (all in Styria). Romani people complained to local and higher Nazi authorities, tried in vain to free their relatives or themselves from internment with written petitions, or protested against the persecution in other ways.

The third phase began in 1943 when SS officers deported all remaining Romani people to Auschwitz-Birkenau. In August 1944 all prisoners of the “Gypsy Family Camp” Auschwitz-Birkenau were murdered in the gas chambers except for a few of the younger prisoners who were needed for forced labour.

From the estimated 11,000 Romani people who were Austrian citizens in 1938, only about 1500-2000 survived the genocide. The local gendarmerie stations were still complaining in 1945 that the “Gypsy plague” had not yet been resolved. For a long time, Romani people were not regarded as “real” concentration camp victims and parts of society secretly continued to approve of the Nazi extermination policies. That societies across Europe have eventually had to confront the perspective of the victims is due to the activism of Austrian survivors, above all Ceija Stojka, who from the 1980s tirelessly disseminated her story as a persecuted Romani person through books, visual art, film, and in school classes.