The centuries-long discrimination, exclusion, and persecution of the Roma culminated in genocide during the Second World War under the Nazi regime.In Nazi ideology, Roma were portrayed as socially undesirable, “asocial,” and “racially inferior,” which led to the deprivation of their civil rights, imprisonment, deportation, and mass murder.
After the Nazis came to power in 1933, racial theory became part of the legal framework of the Third Reich. The status of the Roma i within Nazi racial ideology was contradictory. On the one hand, some Nazi anthropologists pointed to their Indian origin and a possible connection with Aryan ancestry. On the other hand, in practice, the authorities most often classified them as “asocial” and “racially inferior.” Despite these contradictions, Nazi policy towards the Roma became increasingly repressive. With the adoption of the Nuremberg Race Laws in 1935, Roma, like Jews, were gradually stripped of their civil rights and citizenship. This created the legal basis for their complete isolation and subsequent physical destruction.
Following the German invasion of the Soviet Union in June 1941, the systematic mass murder of Roma began. Thousands of Roma men, women, and children were killed by SS mobile units, with the support of the German army, in the occupied territories of Eastern Europe.
Unlike the persecution of the Jews, Nazi policy towards the Roma was not implemented in the same way everywhere. Due to contradictions within Nazi racial ideology, some Roma continued to serve in the German army until 1943, while at the same time thousands of their fellow Roma were being killed in concentration camps or at sites of mass executions.
Very soon after the German occupation of Belgrade in April 1941, the occupation authorities began implementing racial measures against Jews and Roma. As early as July 1941, the German occupation forces began executing insurgents, as well as Jews and Roma who were taken as hostages in reprisals for the uprising in Serbia. At the same time, the first camps were established for political prisoners, Jews, and other groups regarded by the occupation authorities as undesirable.
At the end of October 1941, mass raids were carried out in Roma neighbourhoods across Belgrade. German occupation forces, assisted by the collaborationist authorities, the gendarmerie, and the police, surrounded entire neighbourhoods and arrested Roma men under the pretext that they would be questioned or sent to forced labour. Those arrested were interned in the Topovske Šupe camp, where they were held together with Jews as hostages for reprisals. At any given time, the camp held around 1,500 prisoners, while approximately 5,000 Jews and around 1,500 Roma passed through it during its existence.
In addition to Topovske Šupe, Roma were also imprisoned in the Banjica concentration camp, through which more than 24,000 prisoners of different nationalities and political affiliations passed during the war, including Roma.
At the end of 1941, Roma women and children were interned in the Staro Sajmište camp together with Jewish women and children, where they remained imprisoned alongside other detainees interned by the occupation authorities.
The fact that it is still impossible to determine precisely how many Roma were killed during the Second World War is the result of the lack of reliable pre-war census data, the destruction of documentation, and the large number of mass killings carried out outside the camp system. At the same time, the long-standing neglect of the Roma genocide in historiography and the culture of remembrance has contributed to the fact that their suffering remains less well known than other crimes committed during the war. Most contemporary studies estimate that between 220,000 and 500,000 Roma were killed across Europe, while some historians believe the number of victims was even higher.
The exact number of Roma killed in Serbia during the Second World War also cannot be determined. Estimates of the number of Roma killed in Serbia range from approximately 1,000 to 12,000.