13 June 1938: The start of a week of increased persecution of Roma and Sinti People
On 13 June 1938 German police began a week of operations against Roma and Sinti people in Germany.
Roma and Sinti prisoners © USHMM
By 18 June over 1,000 Roma and Sinti had been arrested and deported to concentration camps. What has now become known as ‘Gypsy clean-up week’ was the beginning of an increasingly extreme programme against the Roma and Sinti community that led ultimately to their mass murder in Nazi death camps.
The impetus for the ‘clean-up’ action against the Roma and Sinti people had come from the Decree on the Fight to Prevent Crime, a 1937 law enacted by the Nazis. Both in Imperial and Weimar Germany, Roma and Sinti people had often been the victims of legal persecution. They were attacked for their itinerant way of living that did not conform to German norms, and for allegedly being prone to criminal activities. After the Nazis came to power in 1933, Roma and Sinti people were subject to a host of restrictions that targeted ‘asocial’ groups. As part of the 1937 Decree, they were forced to register permanent addresses. Failure to do so, or migration from a registered address, would result in arrest and deportation to concentration camps.
In the event, some of the Roma and Sinti people arrested during the ‘clean-up’ week had complied with laws imposed on them; they were arrested simply to demonstrate a tough stance on the part of local police. Many would later be murdered as Nazi persecution of the Roma and Sinti population intensified and spread across Europe. In Germany, several months after ‘Gypsy Clean-up Week’, in June 1938, the Nazis arrested and deported over 30,000 Jews during the November Pogrom (Kristallnacht). For both Jews and Roma and Sinti people, the year 1938 witnessed a major escalation of violence against them in Germany, to such an extent that it may be seen as a point of no return on the path to the Nazi extermination programme.