At a conference called by Heydrich on September 21st 1939, a decision was made to deport all Roma in "Greater Germany" to Poland, but it was not implemented until April 1940, when 2,800 were moved. Eichmann's offer to "attach a few wagons full of Gypsies" onto every transportation of Jews from Austria similarly found no takers at first. initially, they were housed in ghettos in Nazi-occupied Poland, the Generalgouvernement. Escapees, fleeing mostly to Polish Roma for help, were shot immediately if captured. Transports from Germany to Poland (3,000 deportees so far) were halted in October 1940. In 1941 Roma were moved from Germany's western regions; in the rest of the country camps were built and fenced off with barbed wire.

Kenrick and Puxon assume that the decision to "liquidate Roma completely was taken shortly after the Wannsee Conference". on September 18th 1942, Himmler, Thierack, Rothenburger, Streckenbach and Bender met in Himmler's HQ: here they decided to hand over "asocial elements... - Jews, Roma, Russians, Ukrainians - to SS commanders to be worked to death". On December 16th 1942, Himmler ordered the transportation of all Roma in Germany to Auschwitz. There was the intention to exempt "pure race" Roma and Lalleri, "good half-castes in the Gypsy sense" as well as those serving in the army and those with partners "of German blood". This differentiation was often overlooked however, leading the Germans' partners, recruits and even members of the "German Girls' Union" being transported to Auschwitz.

As said, Himmler favoured for a while a plan to exempt "pure race" Roma and Lalleri from persecution

and allow them a certain freedom of movement within a special legal framework. This plan fell through however, its final mention being an ordinance of March 27th 1942 exempting specially classified Sinti from military service. In 1943, almost 10,000 Roma were transported from Germany to Auschwitz within the space of a few weeks. The number still living as civilians had fallen so drastically by Summer 1944 that Himmler wrote claiming that the prohibitions Jews and Roma had faced in everyday life were now mostly redundant, thanks to the transportations.

The persecution of Roma in Austria was carried out with especial rigour, something for which Austrian politicians were not the last to blame. Dr. Tobias Portschy, Burgenland's well-respected former leader and still resident there, said in August 1938: "German! If you do not want to become the gravedigger of north German blood, then do not overlook the danger that is the Gypsy". He advocated that Roma be reduced to the same disenfranchised status as Jews, be sent to labour camps and be sterilised. In 1940, the highest ranking public prosecutor in Graz, Meissner, campaigned for the "sterilisation of every single Burgenland Roma" on the grounds that it would "greatly liberate the future evolution of [our] race".

As early as Autumn 1939, labour camps had been set up in the Tyrol and in the Salzburg region; thanks to the zeal shown by Portschy, groups of Austrian Roma were transported to Dachau, Buchenwald, Sachsenhausen, Mauthausen and Ravensbrück. 440 women alone arrived at Ravensbück, many sterilised in 1944 / 45. The "Gypsy camp" at Lackenbach was put into operation on November 23rd 1940 and was run by Austrian SS members Kollroß and Franz Langenmüller. The latter was accused of the murder of 287 Roma; in 1948 he was found guilty by a Viennese court of "the crime of terrorising and abusing camp inmates", sentenced to one (!) year's imprisonment without fines loss of property. Between 3,000 and 4,000 men, women and children were held at Langenbach; the camp's last records end with the number 3,050. In Autumn 1941, two transports with 1,000 souls apiece left for the Jewish ghetto in Lodz.

Austria's Twelfth Report on Compensation made provision for compensation for the still-persecuted Burgenland Roma, the sum corresponding exactly to half the number of inmates of acknowledged concentration camps. Austria's very specific collaboration in the persecution of Jews and Roma remains a taboo to this very day.