500,000 Nazi Victims – Lost and Found

Based on a news release by the British news agency Reuters, the Jewish periodical Forward headlined on October 25, 2012:

The article came with a photograph as shown here to the right with the following caption:

Unrecognized Horror: Dignitaries gather at a new memorial to the 500,000 Roma, or gypsies, killed in the Holocaust. (Getty Images)

Already six days earlier, the German daily Berliner Morgenpost had written that the new memorial was to be opened on Oct. 24 by both Germany’s Chancellor Angela Merkel and the country’s formal 1st man in charge, Federal President Joachim Gauck. It is a rare thing to see both heads of state appear on such an occasion, hence public attention was accordingly large.

But what about the claim of 500,000 gypsies allegedly murdered by Nazi Germany? Is that correct at all?

Numbers are important weapons in the psychological war that is being waged not only against the German people but also against anybody not submissive to lobby groups enforcing political correctness in an attempt to further their agendas, whatever they might be. It is a fact that there is no basis for the claimed number of 500,000 gypsy victims, and that’s not a mere revisionist contention:

1. In a paper bearing the title “Against Two Legends on the Holocaust,” German mainstream historian Prof. Dr. Eberhard Jäckel, a major opponent of revisionism, wrote the following some twelve years ago in Germany’s most prestigious daily newspaper:[1]

   “The conclusion is that the historical concept of the Central Council of German Sintis and Romas [the two largest gypsy tribes] contradict the level of knowledge of international science. This is also true for the numbers. […] It is certain to say that already as early as 1972 the highest estimates [of the gypsy death toll under Nazi rule] were far lower than the number repeatedly claimed by the Central Council of German Sintis and Romas [=500,000]. It is to be hoped that the Central Council finally quits its struggle against science and against historical truth.”

2. Guenter Levy, Professor Emeritus of Political Science at the University of Massachusetts, Amherst, writes in his book The Nazi Persecution of the Gypsies(Oxford University Press, 2000) on page 222:

   “No sources or breakdown by country have been provided for this estimate [500,000 gypsy victims], which renders it of questionable value.”

   On page 225 he states:

   “Most important, no overall plan for the extermination of the Gypsy people was ever formulated, and as argued above, the evidence shows that none was implemented.”

   On page 227 he argues:

   “The assertion that half a million Gypsies died under Nazi rule is put forth regularly without any kind of substantiating evidence…”

   And finally, Professor Levy has this to say on page 228:

   “Simplified accounts according to which Gypsies […] were persecuted and annihilated simply and solely on account of their biological existence are not only a distortion of the historical record but also a hindrance to progress in the relationship between Gypsies and non-Gypsies.”

3. In 1989, German mainstream historian Michael Zimmermann published the most thorough study on the fate of the gypsies yet.[2] While in progress, Zimmermann's research was commented as followed by the German leftist newspaper Frankfurter Rundschau:[3]

   “Only through an extensive study of documents was it possible to discover that the number of the murdered Sinti and Roma obviously lies well below that officially claimed: 50,000 instead of 500,000 murdered."

And that's just the beginning. Now let's turn an eye to some really critical researchers, who don't have an agenda like Jäckel and his ilk who aren't interested in truth either but who merely have an interest in granting the genocidal victim status to Jews only.

1. Dr. Otward Müller has shown in his paper "Sinti and Roma – Yarns, Legends, and Facts" on the population statistics of gypsies in Europe that they cannot have suffered any major population loss during World War II at all.
2. And finally, the intrepid Italian researcher Carlo Mattogno has demonstrated in his thoroughly research paper "The 'Gassing' of Gypsies in Auschwitz on August 2, 1944" that the claim that the gypsies deported to the Auschiwtz camp were murdered there is untenable either.

In conclusion it may be safely argued that not just the Central Council of the German gypsies is manipulating the world with mendacious propaganda, but also Germany's leading politicians in unison with the world's media. Nothing new, really, is it?

Notes

I am grateful for Dr. Otward Müller's important input to this paper.