Digital Studies of The Holocaust
This collaborative research project aims to introduce the process of data analysis to Holocaust studies to create new ways of seeing and remembering the Holocaust.
Beyond the Family Camp: Roma Internment in Dachau, Natzweiler-Struthof, and Flossenbürg
Nils H. Roemer Director, Ackerman Center for Holocaust Studies
Jennifer Cantrell-Sutor, Research Assistant, Belofsky Fellow
Mallikarjun Nagaraja, Research Analyst
Katie Fisher, Project Manager
Persecution of European Roma began in 1935 when the Nuremberg Race Laws were amended, declaring Roma to be “carriers of non-German or related blood.”1 Persecution mounted rapidly over the following years, as anti-Roma legislation proliferated. In fact, Auschwitz-Birkenau would soon house upwards of twenty thousand Roma and Sinti, as Heinrich Himmler’s infamous 1943 Auschwitz Decree directed mass deportations of Roma and Sinti throughout Europe.2 The Auschwitz-Birkenau Roma camp’s ultimate shuttering in 1944—and attendant liquidation of the elderly, young, and infirm inmates—prompted a mass diaspora of Roma and Sinti throughout Germany and occupied territories, as “able-bodied prisoners”3 were dispersed into the camp system.
While the current study includes just a small fraction of National Socialism’s Roma victims, the 1,527 individuals included—their paths of detention, gender, age, and survival rate—begin to shed new light on the Roma experience, both underscoring and calling into question the prevailing historical narratives. The data suggests, for example, that family camp deportations originated primarily from Germany, Austria, Hungary, and Czechoslovakia, while post-family-camp arrests overwhelmingly originated in Hungary. In fact, research suggests that 1,408 prisoners departed the Auschwitz-Birkenau family camp shortly before its destruction.4 The dataset at hand, however, reflects a mere 13 prisoners arriving in the subject camps from Auschwitz in 1944, the year of its closure. Notably, 12 of these prisoners arrived in Flossenbürg, 4 of whom were female. These prisoners are listed as being either Belgian, Czech, or German/Austrian. Conversely, a single male Czech deportee arrived in Natzweiler from Auschwitz that same year. Consequently, data suggests that no female prisoners were sent to either Natzweiler or Dachau following the liquidation of the Auschwitz-Birkenau family camp. More puzzling still is the whereabouts of the other 1,395 prisoners who survived Auschwitz-Birkenau, both male and female. One reasonable explanation for this disparity, both in gender and prisoner count, is that the majority of former family camp internees were sent to Ravensbrück post-liquidation. Lying just 414 miles to the northwest, and having just been expanded in the fall of 1944, Ravensbrück would have been an attractive option for the relocation of such a large group.5 This is especially true as many Roma survivors have reported being sent to Ravenbrück in written memoirs and oral testimonies.
Hungarian deportations, on the other hand, reflect a different trajectory. According to the data analyzed herein, 1,081 prisoners—roughly 71% of the entire dataset—arrived at the subject camps via Sipo Budapest in late 1944 and early 1945. Interestingly, these contracted Hungarian deportations took place over a three-month period, from November 1944 to January 1945. In fact, 81% of Hungarian deportees arrived in November 1944, 18% in December 1944, and less than one percent in January 1945. Curiously, just one male deportee was sent to Flossenbürg by Sipo Budapest, with the remaining 1,080 arrestees arriving at Dachau, one of the few camps in operation in late 1944. One final anomaly worth noting is a March 1945 transport from Kripo Augsburg, carrying 15 Hungarian Roma between the ages of 15 and 25. An outlier in both arrival date and deportation authority, this single transport raises many questions that unfortunately remain unanswered. Overall, however, this data set provides valuable insight into Roma movement throughout the camp system, which is markedly characterized by transience as the Roma are transferred from one camp to the next. In fact, this perpetual movement frustrates attempts to calculate survival statistics, as the final disposition for a whopping 62% of the total dataset simply reads “transferred.”
References:
Burleigh, Michael, and Wolfgang Wippermann. The Racial State: Germany 1933-1945. UK: Cambridge University Press, 2010. First published in 1991.
Heydrich, Reinhard. “Schnellbrief.” Reichkriminalpolizeiamt, Tagebuch Nummer RKPA 6001/295.38. Birkbeck, University of London (website). http://www.camps.bbk.ac.uk/documents/049-social-outsiders.html.
Höss, Rudolf. Commandant of Auschwitz. UK: Phoenix Press, 2000. First published in 1951 by Wydawnictwo Prawnicze.
Kapalrski, Sławomir, Martyniak, Maria, and Joanna Talewicz-Kwiatkowska. Voices of Memory 7: Roma in Auschwitz. Poland: Auschwitz-Birkenau State Museum, 2011.
“1939-1945, Ravensbrück Concentration Camp.” Mahn- und Gedenkstätte Ravensbrück (website). https://www.ravensbrueck-sbg.de/en/history/1939-1945/. Accessed April 29, 2025.
Zimmermann, Michael. “The National Socialist ‘Solution of the Gypsy Question’: Central Decisions, Local Initiatives, and Their Interrelation.” Holocaust and Genocide Studies 15, no. 3 (2001): 412–27. https://doi.org/10.1093/hgs/15.3.412.