The Gypsy family camp (german: Zigeunerfamilienlager) was Section B-IIe of the Auschwitz II-Birkenau concentration camp, where

Romani Romani may refer to: Ethnicities * Romani people, an ethnic group of Northern Indian origin, living dispersed in Europe, the Americas and Asia ** Romani genocide, under Nazi rule * Romani language, any of several Indo-Aryan languages of the Roma ...

families deported to the camp were held together, instead of being separated as was typical at Auschwitz.

History

On 10 December 1942,

Heinrich Himmler Heinrich Luitpold Himmler (; 7 October 1900 – 23 May 1945) was of the (Protection Squadron; SS), and a leading member of the Nazi Party of Germany. Himmler was one of the most powerful men in Nazi Germany and a main architect of th ...

issued an order to send all Romani (german: Zigeuner, "Gypsies") to concentration camps, including Auschwitz. A separate camp was set up at Auschwitz II-Birkenau, classed as Section B-IIe and known as the ("Gypsy family camp"). The first transport of German Roma arrived on 26 February 1943, and was housed in Section B-IIe. Approximately 23,000 Roma had been brought to Auschwitz by 1944, of whom 20,000 died there. One transport of 1,700 Polish Sinti and Roma were killed in the gas chambers upon arrival, as they were suspected to be ill with

spotted fever A spotted fever is a type of tick-borne disease which presents on the skin. They are all caused by bacteria of the genus '' Rickettsia''. Typhus is a group of similar diseases also caused by ''Rickettsia'' bacteria, but spotted fevers and typhus ...

. Roma and

Sinti The Sinti (also ''Sinta'' or ''Sinte''; masc. sing. ''Sinto''; fem. sing. ''Sintesa'') are a subgroup of Romani people mostly found in Germany and Central Europe that number around 200,000 people. They were traditionally itinerant, but today o ...

prisoners were used primarily for construction work. Thousands died of typhus and

noma Noma, NoMa, or NOMA may refer to: Places * NoMa, the area North of Massachusetts Avenue in Washington, D.C., US ** NoMa–Gallaudet U station, on Washington Metro * Noma, Florida, US * NOMA, Manchester, a redevelopment in England * Noma Distr ...

due to overcrowding, poor sanitary conditions, and malnutrition. Anywhere from 1,400 to 3,000 prisoners were transferred to other concentration camps before the murder of the remaining population. On 2 August 1944, the SS cleared the Gypsy camp. A witness in another part of the camp later told of the inmates unsuccessfully battling the SS with improvised weapons before being loaded into trucks. The surviving population (estimated at 2,897 to 5,600) was then killed en masse in the gas chambers. The murder of the Romani people by the Nazis during World War II is known in the

Romani language Romani (; also Romany, Romanes , Roma; rom, rromani ćhib, links=no) is an Indo-Aryan macrolanguage of the Romani communities. According to '' Ethnologue'', seven varieties of Romani are divergent enough to be considered languages of their ...

as the

Porajmos The Romani Holocaust or the Romani genocide—also known as the ''Porajmos'' ( Romani pronunciation: , meaning "the Devouring"), the ''Pharrajimos'' meaning the hard times ("Cutting up", "Fragmentation", "Destruction"), and the ''Samudaripen'' ( ...

(devouring). One of the few survivors was Margarethe Kraus, who was subjected to medical experimentation and whose parents were murdered. She was subsequently moved to Ravensbruck.

References

;Notes ;Citations ;Bibliography * * * * * * {{refend Auschwitz concentration camp Romani genocide