The Roma Holocaust affected between 10 and 30 percent of Europe's two million Roma, according to various estimates (most sources put the death toll at between 250 and 500,000). Scholars estimate the number of Hungarian victims to be anywhere from 5 to 10 thousand, and possibly even as high as 100 thousand. However, historical research, supported by documentary evidence, puts the total number at between one and two thousand, while those who suffered some form of persecution for being gypsies may have numbered around five thousand.
The Gypsies in the Third Reich
Unlike the Jews, the Gypsies were not considered by the Germans to be a dangerous race bent on world domination. After Hitler came to power, all individuals leading a nomadic lifestyle were considered Gypsies, so there was no decree defining who should be considered Gypsies. It was a common accusation against vagrants that they spread disease, that they were too prolific, that they spied for the Jews, and that they had degenerated since their arrival from India and had developed criminal tendencies. Because of their way of life, the bureaucratising state organisation had little to do with them, and their existence was perceived as a law enforcement and health problem.
Facts are that the Germans did not plan to kill the entire gypsy population, and mainly considered the so-called wandering gypsies to be inferior. In 1938, Himmler declared that the issue had to be resolved on racial grounds. The Nazis made a distinction between 'pure-blood' and 'mixed-blood' Gypsies, extended the law prohibiting mixing between groups of people to them, herded them into ghettos and deported many of them sporadically. However, it was not until 1943 that we can speak of a unified Nazi policy towards Gypsies, when the mass deportation of Gypsies finally began; large numbers of men, women and small children were deported to Auschwitz-Birkenau, not only from Germany, but also from Belgium, France and Romania, among others. The gypsy camp at Birkenau (where people lived in more acceptable conditions than Jews) was finally closed down on 2 August 1944 due to epidemics and overcrowding. The Roma, unlike the Jews, tried to resist with all their might, but to no avail: the Nazis used guns and dogs to break up the resistance, and the camp's inhabitants were dragged into gas chambers.
According to the literature on Porajmos, the gypsy question was probably intended to be "solved" after the total extermination of the Jews, after the war. The Gypsies were not given a separate charge in the Nuremberg trials, and it was not until 1963 that the Federal Supreme Court in the FRG ruled that the Germans had also persecuted them on racial grounds.
The persecution of Gypsies in Hungary - History
In the late nineteenth and early twentieth century, the term 'gypsy question' was used by the administration primarily to refer to the wandering gypsies, as in German. It did not include the itinerant tradespeople – though makers, basket weavers, potters, travelling merchants - who had the appropriate permits and did not come into conflict with the authorities. It was mainly in relation to the wandering gypsies that most of the pre-1845 regulations on Gypsies were issued (and those who suffered persecution were mainly from these communities in 1944-1945).
In the period between the First and Second World War, as traditional Gypsy lifestyles disintegrated, unemployment, illiteracy and, as a consequence, poverty continued to rise. Traditional Gypsy craftsmen were increasingly unable to keep pace with industrial production. In the Lowlands (Alföld), Romungros and the recently resettled Vlax Romani became casual agricultural labourers. However, it was precisely in these decades that the dwarf minority of Gypsies - musicians from the capital and a few Beash Romani from Transdanubia who formerly became factory workers - 'clung' to the ranks of the petty bourgeoisie.
The "gypsy problem" in those days was represented by groups of mainly Vlax Romani, known as "wandering gypsies": according to a 1928 Interior Ministry decree, raids were carried out against them twice a year, at first mainly "on paper", and from the late 1930s onwards in practice. These raids were not, however, against the Hungarian Roma as a group of people, but against the wandering gypsies as a social stratum threatening public order and public safety. And if a group was confirmed not to be in fact a Gypsy, the authorities did not even sanction their movements any further.
During the World War
In 1941, there was a Gypsy population of over 200 000 in the country. A significant proportion of them belonged to the poorest strata of society and did not represent a real social problem, but they were highly differentiated. In addition to the mainly rural masses living in extreme poverty or, better still, in 'respectable poverty', many families, mainly from the cities, were on the road to 'getting by'. Among the gypsy musicians, the more talented and fortunate sometimes found a stable livelihood in cafés and restaurants, while other Roma earned a regular income by becoming industrial workers. In some cases, entire small communities found their fulfilment by serving the needs of the contemporary manufacturing industry: one of the most spectacular examples of this phenomenon is the case of the Újpest peg-smiths, who, with their special products (e.g. dowel pin, iszkaba (bushing), rail spike), became important servants of the Újpest shipbuilding, leather and iron industries in the first decades of the twentieth century.
In addition, from the mid-nineteenth century onwards, children in the families of prominent gypsy musicians in particular not only became educated, but also began to mix with the bourgeois or noble elite of the time through their marriages. Thus, many intellectuals of Gypsy origin, but no longer considered Gypsy by virtue of their social status, lived in Hungary. We do not know of any Gypsy graduates who suffered restrictions, harassment or persecution in Hungary during the Second World War because of their origin.
After the German invasion on 19 March 1944, the situation of the Roma masses did not change significantly. The news from the front and the "final solution" of the Jewish question were the main focus of the authorities and public attention. There were no decrees similar to the Jewish Laws on Gypsies. Masses of men fought as soldiers and their families, widows and orphans, if any, received the same benefits as anyone else.
From the scarcely preserved archival sources, it can be stated that in Hungary before the Arrow Cross Party takeover, not a single order was issued that required the racial discrimination, ghettoization, internment and deportation of the entire Roma population
At the same time, however, there was a steady increase in antipathy and also strictness on the part of the authorities, especially towards Roma living in extreme poverty.
The changes were slow and initially rather unconceptual. From the spring of 1944, Gypsies were sent to internment camps more and more frequently on charges of work avoidance or minor offences, some of whom were deported. On 23 August, 1944, a decree was issued for the organisation of the military labour battalion for Roma. These were for men who were nomadic, unemployed or had settled but had no steady occupation. The Ministry of Defence had hoped to recruit between 10 and 12,000 gypsy conscripts, but they could not gather more than one or two thousand. This meant that at most 4-5 Gypsy labour battalions could eventually be set up.
The first order that applied to "all gypsy" residents of Hungary was issued on the day after the Arrow Cross takeover: it was ordered by the authorities in southern Hungary to protect public order and security. The order was only in force in the counties of Baranya, Somogy, Vas and Zala, and prohibited the gypsies in these counties from leaving their home, and made it subject to special permits.
The harsh persecutions began under Ferenc Szálasi from early November 1944. The majority of the Roma victims of the Holocaust in Hungary came from the Transdanubian region and partly from the northern part of what is now Slovakia. In November, sporadic raids and deportations took place in the capital, as well as in Budafok, Csepel, Kispest, Pestújhely and Rákospalota, among other places.
The most important domestic collecting camp was the Csillagerőd in Komárom. From here, a large number of prisoners were first sent to Dachau, from where many were transferred to Bergen-Belsen, Buchenwald, Mauthausen and Ravensbrück.
The most important destination was the camp in Dachau, where Hungarian Gypsies were transported between 10 November 1944 and 28 March 1945. The larger of these transports arrived on the following dates and in the following numbers: 212 persons on 14 November 1944, 532 persons on 18 November, 279 persons on 20 November and 227 persons on 21 December.
All but one of the 279 people who arrived on 20 November 1944 were women. Of these, 266 were taken to Ravensbrück on 1 December, where many were subjected to sham medical experiments. The fate of the 227 Gypsies who arrived on the transport of 21 December 1944 was also tragic, with more than 100 of them dying in various camps. More than 1,300 Hungarian Gypsies, now identified by name, suffered in Dachau, most of them being transported to other concentration camps such as Bergen-Belsen, Buchenwald, Natzweiler and Ravensbrück.
Researchers have so far found documents on nearly 1,500 Hungarian Gypsy deportees in the camps' surviving archives.
In addition to the deportations, German and Hungarian soldiers have many other war crimes on their consciences. The most serious are the mass murders committed between October 1944 and March 1945. Literature records around ten massacres in the former territory of Hungary. The best known are the massacres in Doboz on 5 October 1944, in Lajoskomárom on 30 January 1945 and near Várpalota on 14 February 1945. On the latter occasion alone, more than a hundred gypsies from Székesfehérvár and Várpalota were shot dead by the gendarmerie and the Arrow Cross party at Grábler Lake near Várpalota.
Around 400 Gypsies in Hungary were victims of similar mass murders in the final stages of the Second World War.
Memory
Many Roma survivors did not apply for compensation (for example, because they could not write or because they were afraid of the authorities), while others were often refused by the authorities on the grounds that the deportations were not the result of racial persecution but of their own behaviour. The international Roma movement of the 1970s made recognition of the Roma Holocaust one of its main goals.
Since 1972, the Day of Rememberence for the Porajmos has been observed on 2 August, the day of the liquidation of the Birkenau camp. Memorial plaques have been erected in Hungary, and a monument on the Nehru embankment in the capital: a memorial with a poem by József Choli Daróczi commemorates the mass murder at Lake Grábler in várpalota.
Fates and tragedies of the Roma Holocaust
Born on 6 May 1928. His father and mother were also born in Újpest, both branches of the family came from Érsekújvár in the Highlands.
From mid-September 1944, Dráfi and his mother were visiting relatives in Érsekújvár, which had been annexed to Hungary by the first Vienna decision, and they returned home only in the first half of November, after the Arrow Cross takeover. On 8 November 1944, they were waiting at the Western Railway Station for the train to Újpest when they were stopped by some security police who took Joseph, barely 16 and a half years old, away without any explanation.
The fate of Dráfi was clarified by camp documents that were found decades later. According to these documents, he arrived in Dachau on 14 November 1944 on the first major transport of gypsies from Hungary, from where he was transferred to the Ravensbrück concentration camp on 28 November. He died in Barth, a subcamp of Ravensbrück near the Baltic Sea, on 20 April 1945.
In 1967 he was declared dead, and in 2015 a stumbling stone was laid in his memory in Újpest.
Vlax Romani child deported to Dachau. He was born on 12 November 1930 in Zalaegerszeg to an Vlax Romani family, his parents were József Kolompár and Angéla Kolompár. On 18 November 1944, six days after his fourteenth birthday, he arrived in Dachau, where he remained until the liberation of the camp by American troops on 29 April 1945. His fate remains unknown.
He was one of the small number of Hungarian Gypsy deportees whose photograph survives among the documents from Dachau.
Zsuzsa was born in 1930. Her father fought in World War I, and supported the family by playing music and working in the fields. Zsuzsi went to church, sang in the choir of István Török, a teacher. In 1944, she had just returned home with her father from a seasonal job when they came for her.
"We were told not to be scared, just to get dressed because we were being taken to Sárvár to work in the sugar factory. Well, I wasn't afraid of the work, because I had been working since I was a kid, I wasn't scared." But it turned out differently.
"Then, when we were already there at school, these children from Sé, who were guarding us two (...) they were Arrow Cross children. They said that we were being taken (...)." Finally they were transported to Komárom, where, according to Zsuzsi's recollection, they slept on corn stalks among lice, some of them did not survive the inhuman conditions, and the soldiers just scattered bread among them - whoever got it, got it.
Zsuzsi was eventually sent to Ravensbrück. "We lived in wooden huts, but we had to wait for that too. They put up a tent for us because they had no place for us. Then somebody died or was killed, and we were taken to their place. We were given such a small loaf of bread, like a horseshoe, even though we went to work, whoever had a little strength."
Zsuzsi, still a child, worked in camps and factories until the end of the war. She finally escaped from a factory. "Once we got into such a big forest, we lay down in a hollow, and then we woke up to see (...) soldiers coming in cars (...) Americans, not English (...). They took us to Pilsen and Prague, they put us in barracks." Zsuzsi then returned home. "(...) the boys, my little brothers and sisters, and many people from the village (...) somehow they knew we were coming and ran to meet us. We were happy. (...)"
Zsuzsi eventually settled in her home village. She had four children, grandchildren and great-grandchildren.
The Lake Grabler massacre
It was the mass murder with the highest death toll in the Hungarian Roma Holocaust. The perpetrators of the massacre on 14 February 1945 were Hungarian gendarmes and Arrow Cross officers, most of the victims were Gypsies from Székesfehérvár and a minority from Várpalota. The number of those murdered is still most often given as 118, due to certain newspaper articles from 1946. The number of victims is more likely to be between 100 and 120, about half of whom were subsequently identified.
On 22 December 1944, Soviet troops occupied Székesfehérvár, which was retaken on 23 January by the 1st German Panzer Division and Hungarian SS troops led by Károly Ney. In the areas temporarily in the hands of the Red Army, a large-scale "cleansing" began, with internments and deportations, as well as numerous executions. The victims of the executions were mainly deserters and labour service consripts, but in Lajoskomárom and Szolgaegyháza there were already gypsy casualties in January as a result of the "cleansing" by the gendarmes and members of the Arrow Cross.
Around 10 February, members of the Péti unit of the National Accountability Unit under the command of István Botond (Pilhoffer), a gendarme captain, collected the inhabitants of the Székesfehérvár gypsy settlement and transported them to Várpalota. In the same days, the local members of Arrow Cross in Várpalota also arrested 25 to 30 local Gypsies. On February 14, 1945, on the written orders of István Botond (Pilhoffer) Botond, the more than 100 people were shot by gendarmes and Arrow Cross officers in a pit dug into the sandy ground near Várpalota, in the acacia grove near Grábler Lake. Two of the victims, two young girls - Angéla Lakatos "Mici" and Margit Raffael "Falat" - miraculously survived and eventually crawled out of the corpses. The gendarmes who committed the mass murder were acting on orders, while the Arrow Cross party members acted voluntarily.
From February 1946, the perpetrators and those responsible for the Grábler Lake massacre were tried before the People's Courts of Veszprém, Győr and Székesfehérvár, and the case was also heard by the Budapest People's Court and the National Council of People's Courts (NOT). Several of the perpetrators defended themselves by claiming that the execution of the Gypsies in Székesfehérvár was carried out as a measure of martial law, due to the collaboration with the Red Army or because of criminal offences. This defence is strongly challenged by the fact that the victims included women and children, as well as Roma from Várpalota.
Of the war criminals involved in the massacre, Norbert Orendy gendarmerie colonel, the commander of the National Accountability Unit, as well as István Botond (Pilhoffer) Botond's superior, and József Pintér, the Arrow Cross county chief of Fejér County and Székesfehérvár, were sentenced to death and executed, while others received longer or shorter prison sentences. Of the actual perpetrators of the mass murder, only Andor Farkas, an Arrow Cross party member, was sentenced to death by the National Council of People's Courts and executed at an unknown date. The others were imprisoned or fled abroad and were never caught.
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Remembering the HolocaustHungary
Return and emigrationHungary
LMBTQHungary
History of the HolocaustHungary
Fascist ideologyHungary
The HolocaustHungary
The HolocaustSlovakia
Slovak StateSlovakia
IdeologySlovakia
PersecutionSlovakia
AntisemitismSlovakia
AryanisationSlovakia
PorajmosSlovakia
PorajmosHungary
LGBT minoritySlovakia
First transportSlovakia
DeportationsSlovakia
Life in the campSlovakia
Slovak National UprisingSlovakia
HomecomingSlovakia
EmigrationSlovakia
