Genocide in the West

Nazi authorities also harboured the long-term goal of herding Roma in occupied territories into transit camps and from there transport them to Germany and Poland to labour and extermination camps.

Prior to German occupation, the Dutch government had policies in place against people who travelled in caravans, Roma among them: itinerant native Dutch were called "Gypsies" along with genuine Roma. SS and police chief Rauter, ordered in May 1943 that the "Germanic nomads' lifestyle" was to cease. 1,500 caravans were impounded at 247 camps. According to Ben Sijes, Dutch police following German orders brought 565 people who "looked like Gypsies" to the Westerbork transit camp, a camp intended for Jews. "Antisocial types" were separated from "the Gypsies", 245 of whom were sent to Auschwitz. Only 16 women and 10 men returned. Kenrick estimates the number of Dutch victims to be 500 in total.

A statement from Eichmann's trial indicates that Luxembourg's Roma were also interned. In 1944 a transportation of 351 people left Belgium for Auschwitz: the deportees were of several nationalities and among them there was a group who had been refuse political asylum in Denmark in 1934. Several months before the German occupation of France, Roma had been issued with special i.d. and placed under police observation; labour camps were also built.

Occupied Alsace-Lorraine witnessed an especially brutal wave of persecution of Manouche Roma. Both in northern, occupied France and in southern Vichy France, Roma were hunted and interned in labour camps. The Vichy "Ministry for Jewish Affairs" under Xavier Vallat was responsible for the 30,000 Roma internees. The majority were transported to Buchenwald, Dachau and Ravensbrück; 16,000 - 18,000 were the victims of the extermination camps. French collaboration has gone undiscussed until to-day. The Vichy government went as far as to extend persecution to Algeria, forcing 700 Roma into a ghetto at Maison-Carrée near Algiers; Oran and Mostagenem also saw the internment of Roma.

Fascist Italy had Roma held and transported to the Adriatic islands or to Sardinia before the beginning of the war. Roma were recruited into the army and posted to Albania, where their families usually joined them "of their own free will". It was not until the German occupation of Northern Italy in 1943 that Roma were actually murdered. Here, they were rounded up and shipped to Germany to labour or extermination camps. The number of victims is placed at approximately 1,000. However, Italian officials and civilians protected and hid many, especially those fleeing from Istria.

Danish and Finnish Roma were not affected by any persecutory measures because their governments refused to collaborate. Out of the few hundred Roma living in Norway, a few families were shipped to concentration camps.

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