Hitler's annihilation of the Romanis (the Gypsies of Europe)

“I as a German prefer much more to see India under British Government than under any other...I must not connect the fate of the German people with these so-called ‘oppressed nations’ who are clearly of racial inferiority” Adolf Hitler, Mein Kampf, German ed. p. 747)

NB:  I placed these comments on a Facebook site called Lets Speak India, where a photo of Subhas Chandra Bose shaking hands with Adolf Hitler has been shared over 1500 times, and 'liked' over 580 times. Many comments are full of admiration for Hitler. One person is moved to say this is a picture of the 'Tiger' meeting the 'Lion'. I had provided the link, but find that its been deleted. For many of our youth, the deaths of millions in wars and genocide are a mere throw of the dice. The disdain for history and the mania for glory are bad enough, but the normalisation of mass killing is the most disturbing. I've discussed this in my article A Hard Rain Falling and The law of killing - a brief history of Indian fascism

Find below material related to the Nazi's genocide of the Romani (aka Gypsies) who were of Indian origin, and whose fate is seldom talked about. They remain the prime targets of racial hatred in Europe today.  The many Indian admirers of Hitler could spare a thought for these people, who were slaughtered with the same merciless barbarity as were Europes' Jews. They could also reflect on Golwalkar's (the successor to RSS founder, Hegdewar) views on Nazism: "To keep up the purity of the race and its culture, Germany shocked the world by her purging the country of the semitic races - the Jews. Race pride at its highest has been manifested here...a good lesson for us in Hindusthan to learn and profit by" (We, or Our Nationhood Defined, 1938). Incidentally, Allama Iqbal and Inayatullah Khan al-Mashriqi were also fervent admirers f Hitler..


The Gypsies of Europe (also known as Romanis, of Indian origin) were registered, sterilized, ghettoized, and then deported to concentration and death camps by the Nazis. Approximately 250,000 to 500,000 Gypsies were murdered during the Holocaust - an event they call the Porajmos (the "Devouring"). Together with Jews, the Romanis were the only ethnic/racial population selected for total annihilation according to the genocidal policy of the Final Solution: http://history1900s.about.com/od/holocaust/a/gypsies.htm
Image result for Netaji Subhas Chandra Bose and Adolf Hitler - Germany 29 May 1942

On July 14th, 1933 Hitler’s cabinet passed the law against “lives not deserving of life” called The Law for the Prevention of Hereditarily Diseased Offspring.” It ordered sterilization for “Gypsies and most of the Germans of black color”. It also affected Jews, the disabled, and others seen as “asocial” (i.e. social misfits). The Law for Revocation of German Citizenship was implemented against Romanies unable to show proof of German birth, as well as against the “Eastern Jews,” who constituted nearly 20% of all Jews in Germany in 1933. In the week of September 18th-25th, the Reichsminister for the Interior called for the arrest of Romanies, under the terms of the “Law Against Habitual Criminals.” Many were sent to concentration camps and made to undertake penal labor. From January 1934 onwards, Romanies were being selected for transfer to camps for processing, which included sterilization by injection or castration. Over the next three years, such centers were established at Dachau, Dieselstrasse, Sachsenhausen, Marzahn and Vennhausen..

The Romani people in Europe are today the most vilified and discriminated against of all ethnic or national populations, and the most victimized by racist violence and discriminatory governmental policies. “One exhibit [at the Holocaust Museum at Buchenwald] quotes SS chief Heinrich Himmler on December 8th, 1938, as calling for the ‘final solution of the Gypsy question,’ and cites his order of December 16th, 1942, to have all Gypsies remaining in Europe deported to Auschwitz.”

At the beginning of 1940, the first mass genocidal action of the Holocaust took place when 250 Romani children from Czechoslovakia were murdered during tests with the new Zyklon-B gas in the camp at Buchenwald..On December 16th, 1942, Himmler issued the order to have all Romanies remaining in Germany deported to Auschwitz-Birkenau for extermination, and so the end began for the second “major group which National Socialists proposed to exterminate in its entirety: the Gypsies” .. The final number of the dead Sinti and Roma may never be determined. We do not know how many were brought into the concentration camps; not every camp produced statistical material. Sinti and Roma often. . . do not appear in the statistics. Also, as the Auschwitz Memorial Book points out, Romanies were murdered unrecorded, sometimes by the hundreds, outside the camps, in the most numbers in the eastern territories, for which only scant records exist. As research continues, the figures rise higher. In order to estimate the percentage of total losses, we would have to know, in addition to the number of dead, the number of Romanies throughout Europe before 1933, and this we will never be able to determine accurately, although both Colliers Encyclopedia and the Encyclopedia Americana list the pre-war European Romani population as 700,000...

That there are Indians who are hailing the mass murderer of Romanis is indeed ironic.

Also see:
THE ROOTS OF ANTIGYPSYISM: TO THE HOLOCAUST AND AFTER
Hitler's Assault on the Golden Rule : by Claudia Koontz 
Gypsies' fate haunts Leni Riefenstahl, Hitler's favourite film-maker
As she approaches her 100th birthday this week (2002) Leni Riefenstahl, Hitler's favourite film-maker, remains the pariah of the German cinema. Her first new movie for almost 50 years has been coolly received, and she faces renewed accusations that she failed to prevent more than 100 Gypsies being sent to die in concentration camps. Riefenstahl, whose centenary is on Thursday, faces a legal challenge by Gypsies who claim she has lied for decades by insisting that the Gypsy extras she used in her rustic melodrama, Tiefland (Lowlands), all survived the Holocaust. The production was filmed during the Second World War when she was director of Nazi propaganda films

The law of killing - a brief history of Indian fascism



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