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The Romani tribes had gone through persecution and humiliation for centuries in Europe. They faced the stereotype and were seen as criminals, social misfits, and vagabonds.
After Adolf Hitler came into power, more racist laws were made against the Romani. The policy supposedly had the aim to fight crime, however, what it did was fight the Romani tribes. The laws were no longer determined on judicial grounds but were based on the premise of racism.
Rassenhygienische und Bevölkerungsbiologische Forschungsstelle, Department L3 of the Reich Department of Health; the Racial Hygiene and Demographic Biology Research Unit was established by the Nazis in 1936.
Dr Robert Ritter and his assistant Eva Justin headed this department. They were in charge of conducting a study providing and formulating a new Reich “Gypsy law”.
After doing a lot of research work, medical interviews and examination, the Racial Hygiene and Demographic Biology Research Unit in classifying the Roma declared that the Romani unit was dangerous to the German racial purity and should be deported or eliminated.
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Numerous suggestions were made, however, Reichsführer-SS Heinrich Himmler suggested that the Romani were deported to a new remote location. This was to replicate what the United States had done for its Native Americans, where “pure Gypsies” could continue their nomadic lifestyle without restrictions.
While the “Gypsy Law” was never produced by the Nazi regime, policies and decrees were passed that discriminated against the Gypsies. They were seen as the criminals of the Nazi regime.
The Nazis eventually put them into camps and racial examinations were carried out on them. They eventually made a law to register all Gypsies above 6. They believed the Romanis had contaminated their race by mixing with others.
Eventually, thousands of Roma and Sinti were kept in concentration camps and subjected to medical experimentation, extermination and forced labour. The historians estimated that over 200,000 people were killed by the Nazi government and their allies.
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