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3 Policy toward Gypsies in the Shadow of Auschwitz T he Gypsy policy of the Nazi regime collapsed along with the Third Reich in May 1945. The collective incarceration, enforced sterilization, and mass murder came to an end, and the bodies in the Reich’s criminal police office (RKPA), which had centralized the persecution, were dismantled. The formulation of a “Gypsy policy” after 1945 posed for the state’s authorities a moral and political challenge that was unprecedented in the history of German–Gypsy relations. This chapter concentrates on that challenge, in particular the way in which the German authorities dealt with Gypsy issues during the period of the Allies ’ military government (1945–1949) mostly in the American occupied zone and in the Federal Republic of Germany during the 1950s. gypsies in west germany at the end of the war Although there are no official statistical assessments on the number of Gypsies who resided in Germany in 1945 or thereafter, it is clear that the murder and mass sterilization of Gypsies during the Third Reich greatly reduced their number. In May 1940, an estimated 18,330 Gypsies had lived within the borders of the German Reich; in 1945, according to an unknown expert, Karl-Heinz Sippel, fewer than 5,000 remained. Of these, 2,000 were survivors of concentration camps and the rest had escaped incarceration. However, this assessment may well have underestimated the true number of Gypsies.1 After being released from concentration camps, the survivors began 56 Policy toward Gypsies in the Shadow of Auschwitz returning to the cities and villages from which they had been deported, in search of their families and kin. As most of the wagons in which many Sinti had lived up until the end of the 1930s had been confiscated by the police and burnt or sold, they had to find other accommodations. Some of them acquired new wagons and returned to a traditional vagrant way of life, but most either joined their few surviving relatives who had remained in the holding camps the Nazis had erected in various German cities or otherwise went to live in temporary housing. Thus, small concentrations of Gypsies were created anew throughout Germany.2 Nazi persecution had severely aggravated the Gypsies’ socioeconomic situation, which had already been marked by poverty and distress even before Hitler seized power. The Nazi regime robbed them of what valuables they had (mostly gold and jewelry), and after the war the Gypsies found it difficult to prove their ownership and recover their property, an issue which (as in the case of the Jews) largely remains unresolved until this day. The concentration camp survivors were physically and mentally broken. Some could hardly function, let alone make enough living to support their families. Although modernization had impaired the profitability of the Gypsies’ traditional ways of earning a living even before the Hitler era, the possibilities of their finding new occupations now were extremely limited, since most of them were illiterate. Thus many continued with their traditional occupations after the war, such as horse trading, peddling, and dealing in carpets, textiles, and haberdashery. Even though Gypsy women participated in these small businesses, Gypsy men rarely made enough to supply the needs of their often large families, and many found themselves in need of welfare support. In some cases the distress was so acute that they were driven to break the law. Otto Pankok, the Düsseldorf painter, and a wellknown friend of the Sinti, wrote in 1950: “It is as clear as daylight that among people in distress, criminal offenses, begging money, stealing food, etc., are more frequent than among officials who earn good salaries or citizens who are well-established.”3 The Gypsies did not reappear simultaneously all over Germany. In one or two places, such as Hamburg, they returned as early as May 1945. They reappeared in other states, such as Hesse, Bremen, and WürttembergBaden , over the next twelve months. Throughout Germany, their return was met by a negative response, both by the local population and by the authorities. For example, police reports compiled in rural areas near Hamburg in June 1945 state that the local German population accused Gypsies of illegally taking fodder from the fields for their horses and of demanding, under threats, especially of women, that they be given vegetables and fruit. Similar reports were made throughout Germany, at least up until the establishment of the FRG in 1949. These complaints were 57...

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