page_title: Holocaust victims
section_title: Romani
hierarchical_section_title: Holocaust victims / Ethnic criteria / Romani
caption_attribution_description: For documentary purposes the German Federal Archive often retained the original image captions, which may be erroneous, biased, obsolete or politically extreme. Dr. Robert Ritter mit alter Frau und Polizist Dr. Robert Ritter mit Aktenmappe und einer alten Frau (Sinti/Roma?), und Inspektor (?) der Ordnungspolizei Abgebildete Personen: Ritter, Robert Dr.: Rassenforscher, Leiter des Reichsgesundheitsamtes, Deutschland ( GND 119015501 )
context_page_description: Holocaust victims were people who were targeted by the government of Nazi Germany for various discriminatory practices due to their ethnicity, religion, political beliefs, or sexual orientation. These institutionalized practices came to be called The Holocaust, and they began with legalized social discrimination against specific groups, and involuntary hospitalization, euthanasia, and forced sterilization of those considered physically or mentally unfit for society. These practices escalated during World War II to include non-judicial incarceration, confiscation of property, forced labor, sexual slavery, medical experimentation, and death through overwork, undernourishment, and execution through a variety of methods, with the genocide of different groups as the primary goal.
  According to the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum, the country's official memorial to the Holocaust, "The Holocaust was the murder of six million Jews and millions of others by the Nazis and their collaborators during World War II." The museum puts the total number of murdered during the Holocaust at 17 million: 6 million Jews and 11 million others.
context_section_description: The Nazi genocide of the Romani people was ignored by scholars until the 1980s, and opinions continue to differ on its details. According to historians Donald Niewyk and Francis Nicosia, the genocide of the Romani began later than that of the Jews and a smaller percentage was killed. Hitler's genocidal campaign against Europe's Romani population involved the application of Nazi "racial hygiene" (selective breeding applied to humans). Despite discriminatory measures, some Romani (including some of Germany's Sinti and Lalleri) were spared deportation and death, with the remaining Romani groups suffering a fate similar to that of the Jews. Romani were deported to the Jewish ghettos, were shot by SS Einsatzgruppen in their villages, or deported and gassed in Auschwitz-Birkenau and Treblinka.
  Estimates of the Romani death toll in World War II range from 220,000 to 1,500,000.
  The Romani genocide was formally recognized by West Germany in 1982 and by Poland in 2011.
caption: Romani woman with German police officer and Nazi psychologist Dr. Robert Ritter
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