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Roma Gypsies And The Concentration Camps

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By 1940, Roma gypsies were rounded up and made to live in encampments. These in time became fenced in ghettos. From these ghettos, many were transported by train to detention camps to await deportation. They were forced to wear black triangle markings for being asocial or a green triangle for being professional criminals. Besides being treated as in the camps, they were also subjected to multiple medical experiments, including “special experiments that were supposed to prove scientifically that their blood was different from German blood.” Many of the gypsy women were sterilized against their will, which included any female child over the age of twelve. This was done so they would not be able to continue their ancestral line, thought to be impure inferior and worthless. Most Roma gypsies were exterminated in the camps. Roma gypsies also endured the holocaust not only in concentration camps, but also in other parts of Europe. France, Croatia and Romania all sent gypsies to either Nazi concentration camps or deported them to the Ukraine. Many of them died of disease and starvation once reaching the Ukraine. It is estimated that between 500,000 and 600,000 Roma gypsies died as a result of the holocaust. Anton Fojn, a Roma gypsy recounts his entrance into a Nazi camp in Ian R. Friedman’s book: The Other Victims: First Person Stories of Non-Jews Persecuted by the Nazis: I cried when the prison barber clipped my hair and threw the locks into my lap. ‘A souvenir gypsy.’ At

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