The Nazi Persecution of the Gypsies (Hardcover)

by Guenter Lewy (Author) "During the first three years of the Nazi regime, the treatment of the Gypsies did not change very much..." (more)
Key Phrases: preventive police custody, preventive crime fighting, wird schlimm, General Government, German Gypsies, Community Destroyed (more...)

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly
The Nationalist Socialist dream of a pure society demanded elimination not only of the Jews but of all those who challenged the homogeneity of a racial and cultural utopia. Europe's Gypsies presented a particular problem for the race-obsessed Nazis: on the one hand they were viewed as antisocial liars and thieves, as "work-shy" and as wanderers without a homeland. Yet they supposedly descended from "Aryan" roots in India. Hence Lewy finds policies concerning them to be often contradictory and fluctuating. A professor emeritus of political science at UMass (Amherst), Lewy has plumbed the archives and, through meticulous documentation and a painstaking reconstruction of events, arrived at a startling new interpretation of the Nazi policy toward the Gypsies. Lewy argues that in contrast to the Final Solution of the "Jewish Question," the Nazis had no comparable plan to exterminate the Gypsies. And when the latter were sent to the concentration camps for extermination, it was not solely because of their biological existence, like the Jews, but because their wandering way of life challenged the social and cultural construct of the Third Reich. An important facet in the Gypsies' fate, according to Lewy, was ordinary Germans' insistence on measures against them, something the Nazi regime did not have to foster. Lewy shows how Nazi persecution of the Gypsies evolved through the 1930s: at first, local officials were responsible for measures of control and harassment; eventually, the racial laws written against Jews were directed against Gypsies. Lewy traces this sequence of events in detail; his theory may be controversial, but he argues his case carefully. 20 b&w photos. (Feb.)
Copyright 2000 Reed Business Information, Inc.

From Library Journal
This book by Lewy (emeritus, political science, Univ. of Massachusetts) addresses an important need in the historiography of the Nazi era. His systematic study of the persecution of the Gypsies places their story in the context of German racial law. Since many Gypsies lived an indigent life and were often shunned as thieves, they were initially classified as "work shy" by the Nazis. As Nazi racial laws further defined "racial pollution," the Gypsies found themselves stigmatized as a foreign element potentially dangerous to the Aryan racial utopia. Of particular interest is Lewy's analysis of how some Gypsies managed to survive by being classified as "socially adjusted," meaning they had jobs and permanent residence, and therefore could avoid deportation (although not sterilization). Based on solid archival sources, this should become the standard work on the subject. Recommended for most public and academic libraries.
-Frederic Krome, Jacob Rader Marcus Ctr. of the American Jewish Archives, Cincinnati
Copyright 1999 Reed Business Information, Inc.

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Product Details

• Hardcover: 320 pages
• Publisher: Oxford University Press, USA; illustrated edition edition (January 13, 2000)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0195125568
• ISBN-13: 978-0195125566
• Product Dimensions: 9.3 x 6.1 x 1.3 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.3 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 2.7 out of 5 stars See all reviews (17 customer reviews)
• Amazon.com Sales Rank: #347,654 in Books (See Bestsellers in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

36 of 44 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars A Frightening Account of Germany's Extermination of Gypsies, July 11, 2000

By	Barron Laycock "Labradorman" (Temple, New Hampshire United States) - See all my reviews (TOP 50 REVIEWER)    (REAL NAME)

This is an absorbing, well-written and quite readable text book by a noted 20th century historian, Guenter Lewy, and it constitutes a disturbing, graphic and poignant overview of the Nazi campaign against the gypsy population of central Europe. The German national socialist regime, always in search for helpless, infirm and unwell sectors of the population to scapegoat and persecute, found in the gypsies an ideal target by way of a collection of powerless, rootless, and socio-politically unsavory groups of individuals to prey upon. Yet this persecution has not been widely publized or recognized until now largely because of the nature of the gypsy population, i.e. due to their own lack of social and political visibility, no one has paid a lot of attention to their plight or to the multitude of ways in which they were persecuted, along with Jews and other political groups by the Nazis.

This book remedies that egregious oversight, painting a vivid, quite compassionate picture of the gypsies' dilemma, and at the same time marshaling a damning indictment of the general campaign of mistreatment, disenfranchisement, torture, and murder conducted by the Third Reich against all subjugated peoples both in greater Germany and also in the countries conquered as they pushed both east and west during the prosecution of the war. According to the author, the policy seemed to evolve as the Nazis encountered such groups in their conquests, and whatever policies as emerged did so more in relation to the local officials' negative views of the gypsies as being thieves, trouble-makers and undesirables than due to any overall pre-planned approach.

Of course, this sort of insight shouldn't come as a total surprise to students of Third Reich social policies. Even Himmler's well-documented plan for the "Final Solution" is now considered by a number of noted historians to owe more to the requirements of exigent circumstance that evolved as the Wehrmacht rolled through Poland during Operation Barbarossa than from any long-term plan to systematically exterminate all European Jews. The Nazis realized they could not feed or shelter the Jews and maintain their schedule for populating the hinterlands, and the extermination program was conceived of as a way out of that dilemma.

It should also be noted that the Nazi bureaucracy was rife with duplications and redundancies, and that this led to disorganization and confusion. As a result, it was exceedingly ineffective and inefficient. The history associated with the conduct of the army and its special branches toward extermination also reflects this disorganization and amateurish, rigid and unfocused leadership and direction. In spite of this lack of leadership or any clear and unambiguous policy, the local officials often improvised, with gruesome effect. As history shows, they were a deadly, murderous crew.

The campaign as described in this well-documented and painstakingly researched book reflects that lack of coherent policy and disorganization in the actions taken against the gypsies. However, this lack of specific focus does not mean they were not massively and negatively affected by government policies. On the contrary, from the inception of programs against the gypsies began in 1938 to the bitter end, they suffered the fates of so many others; deportation to concentration camps, exclusion from school, work and social life, slave labor, involuntary sterilization, torture, medical experimentation, and extermination. This book fully documents the place of the gypsies as a class of victims in the Holocaust, and fills a void too long left vacant by scholarship and public recognition. This is an excellent book, carefully researched, well documented, and compassionate in its comprehensive consideration of the plight of European gypsies at the hands of the Third Reich.

23 of 28 people found the following review helpful:

1.0 out of 5 stars A Book That Diminishes the Place Of the Roma ., May 9, 2002

By	V.L. Reyes-Wimberly (USA) - See all my reviews

I find this book personally insulting and full of revisionist conclusions. As a Romani who lost Grandmother and many Aunts and Uncles in the Porrajmos (the devouring in Romany)I am outraged that once again we, the victims of this insanity are blamed for the crimes committed against us. That ANY victims of the Holocaust are essentially blamed for their own demise is cruel and unjustified. I also contest, and detest, Mr. Lewy's conclustion that the Roma people were not racially marked for extermination: this is both absurd and untrue as withnessed by the nazi's own words, we were "lives unworthy of life, we were criminals due to our genetics, Germany must be cleansed of the Gypsy plague" etc. An inaccurate book full of racial sterotypes, the gist of which was used by the nazi's as justification for the extermination of the Roma in the first place and is still being used to justify the persecution of Roma today. Horrid book.

25 of 31 people found the following review helpful:

1.0 out of 5 stars Full of Important Holes, May 10, 2002

By	tpandle (Oakland, CA USA) - See all my reviews

I originally was excited to see this book come out and hoped that it would bring to greater attention the overlooked genocide of the Roma. However, investigation of the book itself proved not only disappointing, but even disturbing.

Lewy _appears_ to present a very scholarly and thoroughly-researched work, and yet the many strange and significant gaps in his text can only suggest that he had an unspoken agenda: to actually deny the genocide of the Roma during the Holocaust .

Further, at least as far as I could find, he does not seem to have made any effort whatsoever to include in his research the work of Romani scholars and historians. This would seem to have been an obvious place to start. And while apparently standing as a defender of the persecuted, he actually writes about the Roma in prejudicial and condescending ways.

... Instead, that description accurately belongs to "The Gypsies During the Second World War." For anyone who's truly interested, _this_ is the work that should "become the standard work on the subject."

...

I hope that readers who came to this Amazon page with an interest in this subject will investigate The Gypsies During the Second World War, vol. 1 & 2, and the works of Ian Hancock.