Berlin-Marzahn concentration camp

Berlin-Marzahn Rastplatz was a camp set up for Romani people in the Berlin suburb of Marzahn by Nazi authorities.

Memorial stone on the nearby cemetery, commemorating the camp.

The Nazis used the Nuremberg Laws related to social misfits, vagabonds, and criminals as a means to intimidate and arrest Romani and Sinti Gypsies in Germany.[1] At 4 a.m. on 16 July 1936, prior to the opening of the 1936 Berlin Olympics, police arrested 600 Gypsies[2] in Greater Berlin and forcibly relocated them via 130 caravans[2] to Marzahn, an open field in eastern Berlin sandwiched between a cemetery and a sewage dump.[3][4] Upon arrival the men and women were separated and taken for medical inspection. From there, prisoners were either deemed fit to work or unfit. Those that were deemed unfit were sent to execution.[5] Later, the prison would be surrounded by barbed wire and prisoners were subject to forced labour in armament plants.[3][4] The camp also led to involuntary sterilization and loss of citizenship to the Gypsy prisoners as they were classified as aliens (Non-Aryans).[1]

Eventually, the men from Marzahn would be sent to Sachsenhausen concentration camp (in 1938), and women and children were sent to Auschwitz (in 1943).[3]

See also

References
  1. Milton, Sybil (1990-01-01). "The Context of the Holocaust". German Studies Review. 13 (2): 269–283. doi:10.2307/1430708. JSTOR 1430708.
  2. "Sinti & Roma : victims of the Nazi era, 1933-19 [i.e. 1945]". HathiTrust. Retrieved 2017-05-02.
  3. "Persecution of Roma (Gypsies) in Prewar Germany, 1933-1939". United States Holocaust Memorial Museum. 2008-05-20. Retrieved 2008-07-08.
  4. Friedlaender, Saul (1997). Nazi Germany and the Jews. I: The Years of Persecution, 1933–1939. New York: HarperCollins. Friedlaender puts the date of the initial arrests at May 1936, not July
  5. Mikaberidze, Alexander (2013). Atrocities, Massacres, and War Crimes. ABC-CLIO.


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