The German Nazi regime used the death camp of Auschwitz as a key location for its systematic killing of European Jews. However, the regime also sought to exterminate other minority groups at the site, as reflected by Heinrich Himmler's "Auschwitz decree" on the Roma.

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On Saturday, Germany marks 75 years since Himmler ordered that "all gypsy mixed-bloods, Roma Gypsies and non-German-blooded members of gypsy clans with Balkan origins" should be brought to the Auschwitz concentration camp. The move was to be completed "within a few weeks" and "in accordance with established legal guidelines," according to a police order referring to Himmler's decree. The original text, issued by Himmler on December 16, 1942, has been lost.

World commemorates International Holocaust Remembrance Day The world remembers the victims of the Holocaust On January 27, 1945, the Soviet Red Army liberated the Nazi concentration camp at Auschwitz. In 1996, then German President Roman Herzog marked it as a day to commemorate the victims of the Nazi Holocaust. In 2005, the United Nations named it a day of international day of remembrance. Since then, people gather across the world to remember those who lost their lives.

World commemorates International Holocaust Remembrance Day Oswiecim, Poland Dozens of Auschwitz survivors commemorated International Holocaust Remembrance Day and paid homage to the Holocaust's victims by returning to the camp 72 years after it was liberated. Survivors placed wreaths in front of the camp's infamous shooting wall. Around 1.1 million people were murdered or died at Auschwitz between 1940 and 1945, 90 percent of them were Jewish.

World commemorates International Holocaust Remembrance Day Berlin, Germany Germany's Bundestag commemorated International Holocaust Remembrance Day with a series of speeches. Chancellor Angela Merkel and President Joachim Gauck joined parliamentarians in listening to Felix Klieser, who was born without arms, play Norbert von Hannenheim's "Todeserfahrung." Hannenheim, who suffered acute psychological problems, was admitted to a Nazi "euthanasia" hospital.

World commemorates International Holocaust Remembrance Day Berlin, Germany The Vice-President of Germany's parliament, Claudia Roth, laid a wreath commemorating the Sinti and Roma people murdered by Nazi regime. Next to the Jewish communities, the Sinti and Roma were also widely persecuted and then deported to concentration camps. Still, today they continue to make up one of Germany's largest ethnic groups.

World commemorates International Holocaust Remembrance Day Jerusalem, Israel Israel Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu wore a kippa as he entered the synagogue at the Yad Vashem Holocaust Memorial Museum in Jerusalem a day prior to International Holocaust Memorial Day on January 26. In his speech, Netanyahu addressed the threat posed by Iran and pointed to new US President Donald Trump as a strong ally of Israel's.

World commemorates International Holocaust Remembrance Day Moscow, Russia The Chief Rabbi of Russia, Berel Lazar, attended a candle lighting ceremony at the Jewish Museum and Tolerance Center in Moscow. Although the Soviet Union suffered a number of anti-Semitic controversies, Moscow openly received tens of thousands of Soviet Jews from the Pale of Settlement into its newly industrialized cities.

World commemorates International Holocaust Remembrance Day York, United Kingdom At York Minister in England, Canon Chancellor Christopher Collingwood lit 600 candles in the shape of the Star of David. In 1942, the Archbishop of York was one of the first people to condemn the Nazi Holocaust. Long before the Holocaust, the city witnessed the worst Jewish massacre in British history when, in 1190, some 150 Jews were targeted and killed in a series of anti-Semitic riots.

World commemorates International Holocaust Remembrance Day Rome, Italy Italian Holocaust survivors Sami Modiano, right, and Piero Terracina embraced each other during a commemoration ceremony in Rome's Capitoline Hill. Dozens of guests, including Rome mayor Virginia Raggi, attended the ceremony.

World commemorates International Holocaust Remembrance Day Zagreb, Croatia A wreath from Croatia's president, prime minister and the parliament speaker was laid at the monument for Jewish WWII victims in Zagreb's "Mirogoj" cemetery. However, Croatia's Jewish community boycotted Friday's remembrance ceremony, accusing the conservative government of not doing enough to curb pro-Nazi sentiment in the EU's newest member state.

World commemorates International Holocaust Remembrance Day Vilnius, Lithuania Holocaust survivor Edmund Zeligman lit a candle during a commemoration ceremony in the synagogue in Vilnius, Lithuania. Around 95 percent of Lithuanian Jews were massacred during the country's three-year occupation by the Nazis. No country saw a larger share of its Jewish community executed in the Holocaust.

World commemorates International Holocaust Remembrance Day Navahrudak, Belarus A number of Belarusian students marked International Holocaust Remembrance Day by attending the Belarusian Jewish Resistance Museum in the city of Navahrudak. In 1941, under Nazi occupation, German soldiers established a Jewish a ghetto at the site where the museum now stands.



German officials honored the Roma and Sinti victims of the Nazi regime on Friday. Michael Müller, the chairman of Germany's Bundesrat, said the anniversary of the Auschwitz decree should serve as a reminder to "push more strongly against anti-democratic tendencies" in present-day Germany.

Müller warned against ignoring and dismissing xenophobia. While referring to the rise of populist parties and nationalistically charged rhetoric in the West, the politician also said that learning from the past helped protect democracy.

"Where, if not here in Germany, can this link be more obvious?" he asked at the session of Bundesrat, which serves as the upper house of the German parliament.

Nazis label Roma 'inferior'

The 1942 Auschwitz decree marked a key point in the Nazi plan to exterminate the Roma and Sinti, a Romani group living in Germany and across central Europe. However, Romani people faced discrimination in Germany long before Nazis took power, with the local population stereotyping them as vagabonds and thieves. During the German Empire and the later Weimar Republic, authorities passed numerous laws targeting the Roma and maintained a special police service "in relation to the gypsies." Weimar authorities also asked for all members of the Romani community to be registered.

A monument in Berlin commemorates the Roma and Sinti murdered by the Nazis

The situation deteriorated further after the Nazi takeover in 1933. Roma working in the service of the state were soon fired because of their "non-Aryan" background. Adolf Hitler's regime also classified the Roma as a group that could be forcibly sterilized.

In 1935, the government passed a series of discriminatory regulations on race, dubbed the Nuremberg Laws. The Roma were designated a "foreign and inferior race" under the new legislation, much the same terminology used for Jews and people of African origin. The authorities soon started moving Roma to concentration camps.

While Nazis focused most of their energy on targeting Jews, the regime also reinforced the anti-Roma police force in 1938, dubbing it the "Central Office of the Reich to Combat the Gypsy Plague."

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Watch video 05:11 Share Romani Rose - Giving Germany's Sinti and Roma a Face Send Facebook google+ Whatsapp Tumblr linkedin stumble Digg reddit Newsvine Permalink https://p.dw.com/p/17A7C Romani Rose - Giving Germany's Sinti and Roma a Face

Thousands gassed in one night

Heinrich Himmler served as head of the SS and Gestapo

With the outbreak of World War II in 1939, the Nazi authorities decided to deport Roma to newly occupied territories in Poland. The first mass deportation to the east started in 1940 and continued in the next few years. At the same time, German forces in the Soviet Union and in the Balkans also systematically executed the local Roma.

The official push toward extermination of the Roma culminated with Himmler's decree in late 1942. Some 23,000 Roma were subsequently deported to a special "Gypsy Camp" in Auschwitz-Birkenau.

Read more: Roma take center stage in Berlin on Holocaust Memorial Day

Unlike Jews, the Roma prisoners were allowed to wear civilian clothes and to stay with their family members while imprisoned in Auschwitz. In all other ways, however, their fate was similar to that of other inmates — they were killed in gas chambers, or died from infectious diseases, starvation or exhaustion through forced labor. They were also subjected to medical experiments at the hand of Auschwitz's doctor, Josef Mengele.

Around 20,000 of them died on the site.

Fighting for recognition

With the Red Army approaching from the east in August 1944, the Auschwitz authorities decided to dismantle the "Gypsy Camp." They deported around 3,000 Sinti and Roma to other camps across German-controlled territory. The remaining 2,900, mostly children, women and seniors, werekilled in gas chambers on the night of August 3, 1944.

The death toll of 20,000 in Auschwitz represents only a small part of the total number of Roma people who perished in the Holocaust. While estimates vary depending on the source, it is believed that Nazis killed between 220,000 and 500,000 Roma and Sinti in Europe.

However, the issue of genocide against Roma received very little attention after the end of the war in 1945. Authorities in former West Germany claimed that, unlike Jews, Roma were not targeted based on their race.

Instead, according to officials at the time, the Nazi regime persecuted the Roma because they were designated as a part of the so-called "asocial" segment of the population, which also included beggars, alcoholics and homeless people. This argument was also used to justify withholding reparations.

The German government only recognized the crimes as genocide in 1982, four decades after Himmler's decree. In 2012, Chancellor Angela Merkel inaugurated a large memorial to Roma victims near the Reichstag building in Berlin.