Aveuglé par sa judéophobie, il perd de vue que les nazis ont également voulu exterminer le peuple tsigane et que, pendant la Seconde Guerre mondiale, plus de 300.000 hommes, femmes et enfants tsiganes furent assassinés en raison de leur prétendue infériorité raciale. On estime que 23.000 furent déportés à Auschwitz pour y être assassinés: 20.000 y moururent ou furent tués dans les chambres à gaz - dont l'évêque négationniste nie l'existence.
Classés en 1933 par les lois raciales de Nüremberg comme appartenant à une "race étrangère" (Fremdrasse) qui menaçait la pureté de la race allemande, leur sort fut aggravé par le décret Bekämpfung der Zigeunerplage (Combat contre le fléau tsigane) promulgué en 1938.
Ils étaient des chrétiens, comme ceux qui les ont assassinés et comme Mgr Williamson.
Stèle à la mémoire des Tsiganes qui périrent à Auschwitz ----------------------------------------------------------
A gauche: portrait d'une prisonnière tsigane à Auschwitz peint par l'artiste juive tchéque Dinah Gottliebova.
"There, she [Dinah Gottliebova] was assigned by SS Captain Dr. Josef Mengele, the senior SS physician at Birkenau, to make portraits of Gypsy prisoners used in his genetic and anthropologic medical experiments for a book about these experiments. She painted between ten and twelve portraits in all, seven of which are now located at the Auschwitz-Birkenau State Museum. Gottliebova later described this commission: "I painted slowly, conserving the work that was light, giving me a better opportunity of living through the camp. One portrait took about two weeks. Dr. Mengele examined each portrait very carefully; on some, he asked me to make minor changes or additions." Her assignment ended in early August 1944, when the Gypsy camp was dissolved and the remaining Gypsy prisoners gassed. In addition to these Gypsy portraits, Gottliebova produced portraits of Polish and Czech women prisoners."
Source: Art Produced at Auschwitz
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"(...) on December 16, 1942, Heinrich Himmler ordered the deportation of all remaining Gypsies to a concentration camp. The implementing regulations for this order, issued by the RSHA on January 29, 1943, specified that Auschwitz was the place of deportation.
As a result of this ruling, the Gypsy family camp known as the Zigeunerlager (Gypsy camp), which existed for 17 months, was set up in Auschwitz-Birkenau sector BIIe.
The deportation of the Gypsies began in February 1943 and continued until July 1944. (...)
It is estimated that about 23 thousand Gypsy men, women, and children were imprisoned in the camp. About 21 thousand were registered in the camp (including the more than 370 children estimated to have been born there). A group of about 1,700 Polish Gypsies was murdered immediately after arriving at the camp, without being entered in the records.Of the approximately 23 thousand Gypsies deported to Auschwitz, some 20 thousand died or were murdered in the gas chambers.
Since they were treated as asocial prisoners, they were marked with black triangles. A series of camp numbers, prefaced with the letter Z, was given to them and tattooed on their left forearms.
Gypsies were not subject to selection in the camp, and families were not broken up. Everyone in the transport was directed to the barracks. Their hair was not cut while they were in Auschwitz, and many of them could wear civilian clothing.
Since sector BIIe was still under construction, some of the men were assigned to finish the building work, and others were assigned to other kinds of camp work in internal labor details. A significant portion of them, however, did not have regular work assignments.
Insufficient food and the severe overcrowding in the Gypsy camp led to a dramatic deterioration in hygienic and sanitary conditions, which led in turn to frequent epidemics, especially of typhus and starvation diarrhea. These epidemics resulted in a high mortality rate among the Gypsies.
The group of approximately 1,700 Polish Gypsy men, women, and children mentioned above arrived from Białystok on March 23, 1943. Cases of typhus were found among them. Fearing an outbreak, the camp authorities sent the group directly to the gas chamber. Several weeks later, on May 12, 1943, another group of Gypsies from Białystok (468 men and 503 women) were placed in the camp. Since there continued to be a danger of a typhus outbreak in the Gypsy camp, the camp authorities ordered the selection of about a thousand Gypsies - mostly from Białystok and Austria - on May 25, 1943. They, too, were killed in the gas chambers.
A group of 39 children (20 boys and 19 girls) from the St. Josefspflege orphanage in Mulfingen, near Stuttgart, was also sent to the Gypsy camp. Dr. Robert Ritter and Eva Justin of the Institute for the Study of Racial Hygiene carried out various tests on them before deportation.
The main purpose of this research was to confirm that the supposed Gypsy traits were inborn; despite having been raised in a non-Gypsy environment, these children had allegedly been unable to overcome a disposition to theft, vagrancy, and resistance to assimilation.
In his autobiography, the first commandant of Auschwitz, Rudolf Höss, devotes a great deal of space to the extermination of the Gypsies, stressing that the conditions in Birkenau made it impossible to run a family camp there. He mentioned Heinrich Himmler’s visit to the Gypsy camp, during which the Reichsführer listened to reports about the high mortality rate, especially among children. Himmler also saw the overcrowded barracks, the unsatisfactory sanitary conditions, the hospital barracks full of patients, and sufferers from noma.
From the end of May 1943 to August 1944, SS-Hauptsturmführer Dr. Josef Mengele held the post of head physician in the "Gypsy camp." At the same time, as camp physician, he was on duty at hospitals and outpatient clinics in other parts of the camp. At the behest of the Institute for Anthropological and Biological-Race Research at the Kaiser Wilhelm Institute in Dahlem, he undertook anthropological studies of various racial groups, mostly Gypsies, and also of twins, especially identical twins. Part of the bathhouse (sauna) barracks in block 32 was set aside as a laboratory for him, where he carried out anthropometric studies of the twins at his disposal. A disease known as water cancer (noma faciei—gangrenous stomatitis), appeared in the Gypsy camp in the summer of 1943. Previously unknown among prisoners, it attacked children and young people especially. Mengele began research on its causes and treatment.
Mengele ordered that a "Kindergarten," a sort of nursery and preschool for children up to the age of 6 - and also for those of special interest to him - be opened in the Gypsy camp. At first, the children there received better food. However, this was purely a propaganda move. High-ranking SS officers and civilians on inspection trips to Auschwitz were taken to see the Kindergarten and photographed playing with the children.
Another area of research interest for Dr. Mengele was the biological anomaly known as heterochromia iridis, the appearance of differently colored eyes in the same person. A number of examples of this phenomenon were collected in the camp sauna barracks, and later shipped to the Reich as prepared samples.
Mengele held the post of head physician of the Gypsy camp until its liquidation. Later, he became camp physician (Lagerarzt) for the entire Birkenau camp. During the time that the Gypsy family camp was in operation, some of the people imprisoned there were transferred over time to camps in the depths of the Reich where they labored in factories. Some of the people transferred were used in pseudomedical experiments. A few Gypsies were released on the condition that they undergo sterilization. (...)
The Gypsy family camp in Birkenau existed until August 2, 1944. That evening, the approximately 3 thousand men, women, and children left in the camp were loaded onto trucks and driven to the gas chambers. The Gypsies attempted to resist, but the SS crushed their opposition brutally. (...)
The so-called Main Gypsy Book (Hauptbuch), saved by Polish prisoners assigned to work in the scribe chamber, contains the names of about 21 thousand Gypsies imprisoned in Auschwitz. It is an invaluable source of information about the extermination of the Gypsies there. An exhibition commemorating the destruction of the Gypsies is located in block 13 on the grounds of the Auschwitz-Birkenau State Museum, and there is a small monument at the site of Birkenau sector BIIe."
Source: Gypsies (Roma) in Auschwitz
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