Photographs & documents

• ObiectRHMC/O/001Territorial warning board, Amt Münden, 1734A painted board set at a territorial boundary. It shows a gallows with a hanged body, a man being flogged at a wheelbarrow and a woman being beaten, above text warning vagrants to keep out of the district on pain of corporal punishment.Germany1734
• FotografieRHMC/P/001Roma women ordered on by a mounted officerAn engraving: an officer on horseback, in a spiked helmet, gestures two Roma women away. It illustrates the ordinary policing of movement that ran alongside the expulsion decrees.Germany1850
• FotografieRHMC/P/002A settlement of enslaved Roma in MunteniaLithograph, 1850. Six years before the final emancipation law, and roughly four and a half centuries after the first recorded gift of Roma families to a Wallachian monastery.Romania1850
• DocumentRHMC/D/001Auction notice: the sale of eighteen enslaved people, 1852A printed notice advertising the sale by auction, at Elias Monastery, of eighteen enslaved Roma — ten boys, seven women and three girls. Monasteries were among the largest slave-owning institutions in Wallachia and Moldavia.Romania1852
• FotografieRHMC/P/003“Esclave Tsigane” — engraving by Théodore ValérioA portrait of an enslaved Roma man by the French artist Théodore Valério, from the series he made travelling in the Danubian lands in the 1850s.Romania1852
• DocumentRHMC/D/002Zigeuner-Buch, Munich, 1905 — title pageThe register compiled by Alfred Dillmann for the Royal Police Directorate in Munich: a legal introduction, 310 pages listing more than 5,000 people by name, nickname, religion, trade, birth, residence, parents and family relationships, and an appendix of photographs. It was still in use forty years later.Germany1905
• Catalogue onlyFotografieRHMC/P/004Johanna and Erdmann SchmidtTwo children, photographed separately and printed side by side. The caption on the print identifies them as siblings, born 1937 and 1938, and records that both died in 1943 as victims of Josef Mengele’s experiments.Poland1943
• DocumentRHMC/D/003Gelsenkirchen city directory, 1939 editionThe municipal address book for the year the Sinti and Lovara families were moved into the forced camp on Reginenstraße. Ordinary civic paperwork, and part of the apparatus that located them.Germany1939
• DocumentRHMC/D/004Criminal police notification to the mayor of GelsenkirchenThe Kripo informs the city administration of the measures to be taken against the residents of the Reginenstraße camp. The deportation was organised by Criminal Inspectorate III Gelsenkirchen with the Recklinghausen division, and carried out with the help of several municipal departments.Germany1943
• DocumentRHMC/D/005Letter from the “Reich Head Office for Combating the Gypsy Plague”, 18 December 1940Correspondence about the Schopper family of Gelsenkirchen, replying to a Kripo enquiry of 11 December and citing an RSHA decree of 17 October 1939. It lists the addresses at which family members could be found.Germany1940
• FotografieRHMC/P/005Wilhelm Wernicke and Anna PaulWilhelm Wernicke, trader, born 19 January 1899 in Berlin-Spandau, with his partner Anna Paul, born 20 October 1907. The family reached Reginenstraße on 16 June 1939 and could not leave it. Deported to Auschwitz on 10 March 1943; Wilhelm Wernicke was killed there on 25 November 1943.Germany1940
• FotografieRHMC/P/006Anna PaulBorn 20 October 1907. She lived with Wilhelm Wernicke from the late 1930s and was the mother of seven of his children, almost all of whom were murdered at Auschwitz.Germany1940
• FotografieRHMC/P/007Anton and Josef WernickeAnton, born 27 December 1919 in Schwerin, killed at Auschwitz on 7 August 1943. His brother Josef, born 5 December 1922 in Altdamm in Pomerania, was killed at Auschwitz in 1943.Germany1940
• FotografieRHMC/P/008Josef WernickeBorn 5 December 1922 in Altdamm, Pomerania. Son of Wilhelm Wernicke and Anna Paul. Killed at Auschwitz in 1943.Germany1939
• FotografieRHMC/P/009Franz GroschBorn 5 September 1901 in Quedlinburg. Sent to the Cranger Straße camp in January 1939 and moved to Reginenstraße that June. Held in the Gelsenkirchen police prison in the early 1940s and killed at Buchenwald on 13 October 1942, five months before the transport that took his family.Germany1940
• FotografieRHMC/P/010Paprika MüllerBorn 15 October 1908. Registered by the authorities under the name Weiß because her relationship with Franz Grosch was not recognised. Deported from Gelsenkirchen to Auschwitz on 10 March 1943; her arrival was never entered in the camp registers. Seven of her children were deported with her.Germany1939
• FotografieRHMC/P/011Dietrich BehrensBorn 20 June 1879 in Bremen. Arrived at Auschwitz on 13 March 1943 and was killed there ten days later, on 23 March. His wife Franziska was killed on 15 September 1943.Germany1939
• FotografieRHMC/P/012Karl BehrensBorn 10 September 1910 in Hanover. Arrested during 1940 and sent to the Niedernhagen concentration camp at Wewelsburg on 22 April 1941, where he died on 24 September 1942. The cause recorded was pulmonary tuberculosis.Germany1940
• FotografieRHMC/P/013Johann BehrensBorn 19 April 1921 in Zetel, twin brother of Frinka Behrens. At Auschwitz he was prisoner Z-2383 and his sister Z-2381. Both were almost certainly victims of the medical experiments — see the dental examination list of 16 April 1943, which names them by number.Germany1940
• FotografieRHMC/P/014Anna Geisch, née HellbergBorn 15 November 1892 in Recklinghausen. Deported with her whole family on 9 March 1943. Her death on 12 November 1943 is entered in the Auschwitz death book. Her children were registered under her maiden name because the authorities did not recognise marriage “in the Gypsy manner”.Germany1940
• FotografieRHMC/P/015Male “Mala” GeischBorn 1 May 1918 in Essen. While held at Reginenstraße she worked for the Küppersbusch company in Gelsenkirchen. Deported with her whole family and killed at Auschwitz on 3 January 1944, entered in the records under her mother’s name as Mahle Hellberg.Germany1940
• FotografieRHMC/P/016Siegfried GeischBorn 22 October 1920 in Bremen. While held at Reginenstraße he worked for the building firm Wilhelm Jäger. His death at Auschwitz in 1943 was recorded under the name Siegfried Hellberg.Germany1938
• FotografieRHMC/P/017Maria Strauss, widow of Johan PetermannHer husband was shot at the Reginenstraße camp in September 1939, and their daughter Magdalene, not yet two, died there in a caravan fire in March 1940. She kept her maiden name because the marriage was never recognised. She was deported with her children Hans and Mimi, aged ten and seven; Hans was killed at Auschwitz on 25 March 1944.Germany1940
• FotografieRHMC/P/018Gescha ZenzBorn 15 April 1904 in Berlin-Charlottenburg. Registered at Cranger Straße from March 1939 and then at Reginenstraße. Killed at Auschwitz on 25 May 1943. Her three children were deported with her; the youngest, Tanja, had been born in the camp in June 1940.Germany1939
• FotografieRHMC/P/019Adolf SchopperTrader, born 9 October 1863 by his own account. Tried in April 1941 in a case the authorities used publicly to denounce the conduct of “Gypsies”, imprisoned at Essen from that June, and died on 8 August 1942 in Bochum, probably in the Krümmede prison. The circumstances of his death are unknown.Germany1936
• FotografieRHMC/P/020Patzura Schopper, 1936Born 12 May 1880 in Klucken. A trader, like her husband Adolf. She lived at Wilhelminenstraße 94 until her deportation, and was killed in the “Gypsy camp” at Auschwitz on 18 June 1943.Germany1936
• FotografieRHMC/P/021Patzura Schopper, shortly before deportationThe same woman, a few years later. The source sets the two photographs side by side and lets the interval speak: seven years of registration, dispossession and confinement, and then a transport.Germany1943
• FotografieRHMC/P/022Maria SchopperEldest daughter of Adolf and Patzura, born 12 February 1902 in Altenhagen. Deported with her mother and siblings and killed at Auschwitz on 29 September 1943.Germany1936
• FotografieRHMC/P/023Mimmi SchopperBorn 16 July 1908 in Bielstein. She came to Gelsenkirchen with her family in 1934 and worked as a labourer for Küppersbusch from 1940. Deported in March 1943 and killed at Auschwitz on 26 August 1943. Two of her three children survived.Germany1936
• FotografieRHMC/P/024Klara SchopperBorn 2 August 1918 in Breslau. From 1934 she lived in Gelsenkirchen with her husband Josef Wernicke. She was killed at Auschwitz on 29 September 1943; their younger son Hans Josef, born in Gelsenkirchen in April 1940, died there on 20 April 1943.Germany1936
• FotografieRHMC/P/025Josef Wernicke, born 1916A door-to-door salesman, born 6 May 1916 in Berlin, husband of Klara Schopper. Deported to Auschwitz and killed there on 19 November 1943.Germany1939
• FotografieRHMC/P/026Sophie SchopperBorn 7 April 1920 in Grimma. She came to Gelsenkirchen with her family in 1934 and was killed at Auschwitz on 29 March 1944.Germany1939
• FotografieRHMC/P/027Janosch SchopperTrader, born 21 November 1909 in Cologne-Mülheim. Conscripted into the Wehrmacht in 1940 and discharged about a year later when all Sinti and Roma were removed from the army. Arrested at work on 9 March 1943 and killed at Auschwitz on 9 May. His four-year-old son Harald was deported with him and killed on 16 December 1943.Germany1936
• DocumentRHMC/D/006Death certificate of Rudolf Wernicke, NatzweilerRudolf Wernicke, born 13 March 1925 in Anklam, was transferred from Auschwitz to the Natzweiler concentration camp on 9 November 1943 and died there three days later, on 12 November. The stated presumed cause of death was “a state of weakness”.France1943
• DocumentRHMC/D/007Prisoner card of Karl Behrens, NiedernhagenKarl Behrens was sent to the Niedernhagen concentration camp at Wewelsburg on 22 April 1941. He signed three crosses to confirm the details recorded on the card.Germany1941
• DocumentRHMC/D/008Death notice for Karl Behrens, NiedernhagenRecords the death of Karl Behrens on 24 September 1942 at Niedernhagen (Wewelsburg). The presumed cause given is pulmonary tuberculosis.Germany1942
• DocumentRHMC/D/009Prisoner card of Rigo Hellberg, NiedernhagenRigo Hellberg, born 1 April 1915 in Berlin, was sent to Niedernhagen on 10 February 1940. Besides his clothing he was required to surrender his work booklet — the document that made lawful employment possible.Germany1940
• DocumentRHMC/D/010Notification of the death of Rigo HellbergNotifies the death of Rigo Hellberg on 13 February 1942 at Niedernhagen. The presumed cause given is intestinal catarrh.Germany1942
• DocumentRHMC/D/011Death certificate of Rigo HellbergThe formal certificate. Three separate documents were generated for one death in a camp that had held him for two years.Germany1942
• DocumentRHMC/D/012Prisoner card of Sophie Weiß, BuchenwaldSophie Weiß, born 14 November 1911 in Oppeln, was registered at Auschwitz-Birkenau on 3 March 1943, transferred to Ravensbrück on 27 May 1944 and registered at Buchenwald on 31 August 1944. She survived, and later lived in Berlin. Her husband and at least three of her four children did not.Germany1944
• DocumentRHMC/D/013Prisoner card of Josef Schopper, BuchenwaldJosef Schopper, born 6 September 1926 in Neuss, was arrested with his family on 9 March 1943. From the “Gypsy camp” he was moved to the Auschwitz main camp, to Buchenwald on 17 April 1944, to the Harzungen and Ellrich details of Dora-Mittelbau, and then to Sachsenhausen. He survived a death march that killed more than six thousand people and was liberated in May 1945. He died in 1962, aged thirty-six.Germany1944
• DocumentRHMC/D/014Twins examined and dental casts taken, 16 April 1943The camp’s chief dentist reports to the protective-custody camp commander and the garrison physician that on 15 April, as ordered, twins from the “Gypsy camp” were examined and models of their teeth were taken. Seven pairs are listed by prisoner number and date of birth, followed by Paul Hanstein, whose twin was held at Neuengamme, and a ninth line giving only a surname. The youngest were seven years old, the oldest sixty-six. Pair two is Frinka Behrends, Z-2381, and Johann Behrends, Z-2383, born 19 April 1921 — the Behrens twins of Gelsenkirchen, five weeks after their transport arrived. Pair three is Karl Ernst, Z-5645, and Hermann Ernst, 113336, brothers registered in two different number series.Poland1943
• DocumentRHMC/D/015Letter on contaminated water and child mortality, 24 April 1943Hans Kammler, as chief of Office Group C of the SS Economic and Administrative Main Office, writes to the Central Construction Office of the Waffen-SS at Auschwitz. He is relaying a report made five days earlier by the chief of Office Group D: because the water in the existing wash troughs is excessively contaminated, mortality among children under the age of ten is disproportionately high. To prevent an epidemic the troughs are to be replaced immediately by perforated pipes, so that clean water can flow without being fouled from outside. What has been done is to be reported by 5 May.Poland1943
• DocumentRHMC/D/016Commandant’s order 11/43, 7 May 1943 — first pageRudolf Höss’s standing order for the camp. Item one commends an SS guard for his attentiveness on 4 May in recapturing two “Gypsies” who had left their work detail, and awards him three days’ special leave. Items three to five concern a mountain hut, a book order and a training course.Poland1943
• DocumentRHMC/D/017Commandant’s order 11/43, 7 May 1943 — second pageThe remaining items: telegrams are to be kept soldierly and short, prisoners are to be turned out at six in the morning from 10 May, and the commandant will be absent from that Monday. The order closes with a lost-property notice — one bunch of keys, one ring.Poland1943
• DocumentRHMC/D/018Requisition for the camp kindergarten, 13 May 1943Requisition number 15, submitted by the “Kindergarten Zigeunerlager”: three thousand spoons and three thousand bowls. Signed by SS-Oberscharführer Ludwig Plagge, who ran the Roma camp until August 1943. A kindergarten was built inside a section of Birkenau where, of 371 infants born, 323 died.Poland1943
• DocumentRHMC/D/019Telegram reporting an escape, 27 May 1943The commandant’s office circulates the escape of three Roma men — Anton, Ludwik and Wiktor Daniel — correcting an earlier message that had named the wrong man as recaptured. Ludwik and Wiktor were caught, held in the basement of block 11 and shot. What became of the third man was never established.Poland1943
• DocumentRHMC/D/020Referral to the SS Institute of Hygiene, 6 November 1943A printed form of the Hygienic-Bacteriological Examination Station of the Waffen-SS South-East, sent from the camp doctor of section BIIe. Under “material” is written: head. Under “name, forename”: the corpse of prisoner no. Z-2078. The examination requested is for noma, a gangrenous disease of the mouth that follows severe malnutrition and killed children in the family camp. The form has room for a clinical diagnosis and a rank; both are left blank. The dead person is identified by a number and nothing else.Poland1943
• DocumentRHMC/D/021Blood tests for typhus, 12 November 1943Blood taken the same day from three women held in BIIe and sent from the prisoners’ infirmary of the “Gypsy camp” for the Weil–Felix test: Lisette Weiss, Z-156; Amanda Brzeziński, Z-4555; Hedwig Rose, Z-8882. The clinical diagnosis entered is spotted fever. The form is signed by the camp physician of the Zigeunerlager, Josef Mengele.Poland1943
• DocumentRHMC/D/022Penal company register, 27 November 1943The register records thirty-five Roma joining the penal company on 27 November 1943. Five were released back to the “Gypsy camp” some months later. The remainder died or were killed; the entries alongside their names read “gestorben”.Poland1943
• DocumentRHMC/D/023Referral for histological sections, 29 June 1944A further referral from the camp doctor of BIIe. Material: the head of a corpse, annotated in the margin “12-year-old child”. Examination requested: histological sections. Signed by Josef Mengele. Five weeks later the family camp was destroyed.Poland1944
• DocumentRHMC/D/024The camp after the liquidation, August–September 1944Three records read together. The list of employed prisoners for 3 August 1944, the day after the family camp was destroyed: the “Zigeunerlagerstärke” heading no longer appears, and 1,408 Roma selected beforehand are entered as transferred out, while different prisoners are entered in section BIIe. Then two reports from the camp resistance — 34 Roma alive across Auschwitz I and Monowitz on 21 August, and 31 on 2 September.Poland1944
• FotografieRHMC/P/028Settela Steinbach at the wagon door, Westerbork, 19 May 1944A Sinti girl looks out through the closing door of a freight wagon as the transport leaves the Westerbork transit camp for Auschwitz. On the night of 2 August she was murdered in the gas chamber with her mother and nine of her brothers and sisters. For forty years she was assumed to be a Jewish child, and the photograph was published as such until she was identified in 1994.Netherlands1944
• FotografieRHMC/P/029Elisabeth Emmler and her brothers and sisters, StettinA family photograph. In March 1943 the whole family was deported to Auschwitz and held in the “Zigeunerlager”. None of them survived.Germany1943
• FotografieRHMC/P/030Children of the St Josefspflege orphanage, MulfingenRoma and Sinti children from across Württemberg were gathered at this orphanage, run by Catholic nuns, where the racial researcher Eva Justin used them as subjects for her doctoral thesis. In May 1944 they were deported to Auschwitz. The Church did not protest and made no attempt to keep them. Almost none survived.Germany1944
• FotografieRHMC/P/031Children of the St Josefspflege orphanage, Mulfingen — second viewA second photograph of the same group. A scribe at Auschwitz recalled that the welfare nurses who delivered Roma children to the camp sometimes wept as they handed them over, having grown attached to them.Germany1944
• FotografieRHMC/P/032A young woman held in the “Zigeunerlager”One of very few surviving photographs of a prisoner of the Roma family camp. Her name is not known.Poland1943
• FotografieRHMC/P/033Rosa-Böhmer-Platz, Gelsenkirchen, 2020A square in the centre of Gelsenkirchen named after Rosa Böhmer, born there on 22 September 1933 and murdered at Auschwitz on 13 August 1943, one of nine children of the Böhmer family deported together. The naming followed a campaign of more than ten years by Gelsenzentrum e.V. Until 2020 the city had no public memorial to the Sinti it deported.Germany2020
• DocumentRHMC/D/025Alexander Vaszi — Weiden in der Oberpfalz, ITS 064A municipal list of Allied nationals and other foreigners who had stayed in Weiden but were no longer resident, drawn up by the railway depot on 8 April 1947. Under “Nationality: Hungary” it records Vaszi, Alexander, born 7 July 1913 in Kronstadt — the German name for Brașov — present in Weiden from 22 January to 22 April 1945.Germany1947
• DocumentRHMC/D/026Anton Vaszi — Landshut grave registration, ITS 396A list of foreign nationals who died in Landshut, compiled for grave registration by the civil registry office on 14 August 1946. It records Vaszi, Anton, aged 38, died 16 June 1945 in Landshut, buried in the town cemetery, plot IV/2/8. Cause of death: unknown. Eight others on the same sheet died in improvised military hospitals in the town between November 1944 and August 1945.Germany1946
• DocumentRHMC/D/027Lajos Vaszi — Simbach am Inn, ITS 201A list drawn up by the Simbach district court on 15 May 1950. Nationality is entered as “unknown”, with the handwritten note “vermutlich Rumänier” — probably Romanian. The first name on the list is Vaszi, Lajos, born 20 June 1916 in Brassó, present from 22 June to 2 July 1945. Most of the eight others listed are recorded as coming from Siebenbürgen — Transylvania.Germany1950
• DocumentRHMC/D/028Sandor Vaszi — Weiden residents' registration office, ITS 017A second Weiden list, this one from the residents' registration office, dated 13 August 1947, under “Nationality: Romania”. It records Vaszi, Sandor, born 7 July 1913, home town Kaschau — Košice. Sándor is the Hungarian form of Alexander, and the date of birth is identical to that on ITS 064: the two cards very probably record the same man, registered twice in the same town by two different offices.Germany1947
• DocumentRHMC/D/029RSHA urgent instruction, 29 January 1943The implementing order for Himmler's Auschwitz Decree, issued by the Reich Main Security Office. It directs that transfers to the “Gypsy camp” at Auschwitz are to be carried out by family, irrespective of the degree of racial mixture. Everything that followed — the transports from Gelsenkirchen, Remscheid, Herbolzheim and hundreds of other places — was carried out under this instruction.Germany1943
• DocumentRHMC/D/030Instruction from the Munich “Department for Gypsy Affairs”, 23 February 1943The Munich office instructs the district administrator in Dingolfing on the deportation of local Sinti and Roma to Auschwitz-Birkenau. A regional office passing an order down to a rural district: this is how a decree signed in Berlin reached a particular family in a particular village.Germany1943
• DocumentRHMC/D/031Transport arrangements from Herbolzheim, 10 March 1943The Karlsruhe criminal police enclose a railway timetable for the transport of Sinti and Roma from Herbolzheim to Auschwitz, and ask that the necessary escort be provided and departure times observed punctually.Germany1943
• DocumentRHMC/D/032The deportation of Christine Lehmann, April 1943The Essen criminal police direct that, in accordance with the Reichsführer-SS order of 16 December 1942, the person named is to be transferred to the “Gypsy camp” at Auschwitz. One name, one form, one instruction.Germany1943
• DocumentRHMC/D/033A landlord asks for the March rent, 13 March 1943Four days after the deportations, a Berlin landlord writes to the Gestapo about two shops in his house on Markusstrasse. Following the arrest and deportation of the families, the March rent has not been paid, and he requests reimbursement of 110 Reichsmarks.Germany1943
• DocumentRHMC/D/034Commercial exploitation of deportees' property, 24 June 1943The Stuttgart Gestapo writes to the mayor of Sindelfingen: those named were transferred to a concentration camp on 16 March 1943 and their property confiscated. The subject line is the sale of what they left behind.Germany1943
• DocumentRHMC/D/035Children sent from institutions to Auschwitz, 12 May 1944Filed under “home education of minors”, the Stuttgart criminal police record that the children listed were sent to the “Gypsy camp” at Auschwitz on 12 May 1944. These are the children gathered from Württemberg institutions at St Josefspflege in Mulfingen.Germany1944
• DocumentRHMC/D/036From the notes of Rudolf HössA page from the autobiographical notes written by the commandant of Auschwitz in Polish custody after his arrest, in which he describes the Roma of the family camp.Germany1946
• DocumentRHMC/D/037Buchenwald receives the transport of 3 August 1944The chief camp physician of the Waffen-SS at Buchenwald writes on 5 August 1944 concerning the “transport of Gypsies of 3.8.1944 from Auschwitz concentration camp” — the men selected out of the family camp in the days before it was destroyed.Germany1944
• DocumentRHMC/D/038Drawing of the “Gypsy camp” at Hodonín u Kunštátu, 1943A contemporary drawing of the Moravian camp. Built for 800 people and overfilled from the day it opened, Hodonín held more than 1,300 prisoners in all, of whom 194 died there. On 21 August 1943 a single transport took 749 people from it to Auschwitz-Birkenau.Czech Republic1943
• FotografieRHMC/P/034The deportation of the Remscheid Sinti and Roma, 3 March 1943Photographed in the street as they were taken away. Six days later the same operation reached Gelsenkirchen. Both transports went to Auschwitz-Birkenau under the same January instruction.Germany1943
• FotografieRHMC/P/035The barracks of Birkenau, section B II a, with B II e behindOne of very few surviving contemporary photographs of section B II. The wooden barracks in the foreground are B II a; behind them lies B II e, the “Gypsy camp” — twenty barracks either side of the camp road, holding up to a thousand people each on three-tiered bunks.Poland1944
• FotografieRHMC/P/036Crematorium V, Auschwitz-BirkenauOn the night of 2 August 1944 the last of the family camp were murdered in the gas chambers here and at Crematoria II and III.Poland1944
• FotografieRHMC/P/047The Sonderkommando at the burning pit, Crematorium VMen of the Sonderkommando burning bodies in the open pit beside Crematorium V, photographed in August 1944 — the month the Roma family camp was destroyed at this same crematorium. The picture was taken in secret, from inside a gas chamber doorway, by a prisoner forced to do this work. It is one of only a handful of photographs made from within the killing process at Birkenau, and it exists because the men who took it judged the risk worth it.Poland1944
• FotografieRHMC/P/037Building the incinerators, Crematorium II or IIIConstruction work photographed by the camp administration. The gas chambers were built, costed and signed for like any other works contract.Poland1943
• FotografieRHMC/P/038Roma and Serbs marched to Jasenovac under Ustaša guardPrisoners rounded up for deportation are marched to the Jasenovac camp complex in the Independent State of Croatia. Of a pre-war Roma population of roughly 25,000 to 28,000 in the NDH, only a small fraction survived the war.Croatia1942
• FotografieRHMC/P/039The “Gypsy camp” at Hodonín u Kunštátu, 1942A view of the Moravian camp in the year it opened. Guarded by Protectorate police rather than German personnel, and filled beyond its planned capacity from the first week.Czech Republic1942
• FotografieRHMC/P/040A Roma victim of the seawater experiments at DachauPhotographed during the experiments to make seawater drinkable. Roma prisoners were deprived of fresh water and given treated seawater instead, to see how long they would last.Germany1944
• FotografieRHMC/P/041Sinti and Roma in the Dachau seawater experimentsA second photograph from the same series of experiments at Dachau.Germany1944
• FotografieRHMC/P/042Jakob BambergerRunner-up in the flyweight division at the German boxing championships of 1938 and 1939. He was later used in the seawater experiments at Dachau.Germany1939
• FotografieRHMC/P/043Sylvester Lampert, shortly after liberationHe survived Auschwitz, Natzweiler-Struthof — where he was used for medical experiments — Neckarelz and Dachau, and escaped from a death march. Photographed in prisoner's uniform not long after the war ended.Germany1945
• FotografieRHMC/P/044Franz RosenbachDeported to Buchenwald before the family camp was destroyed, then to Mittelbau-Dora, where he was worked in the underground tunnels of the armaments industry. His mother Cäcilie was murdered in the Holocaust.Germany1945
• FotografieRHMC/P/045Sinti and Roma women transported from Altenburg, autumn 1944Held at a satellite camp and used as forced labour for the armaments firm Hugo Schneider AG. The photograph was taken by a company engineer and is visibly staged, with the guards placed in the foreground.Germany1944
• FotografieRHMC/P/046Two hundred sent back to Auschwitz, 26 September 1944Two hundred Sinti and Roma, most of them children and adolescents, were transported from Buchenwald to Auschwitz for extermination. Apart from two, all were gassed a fortnight later.Germany1944
• FotografieRHMC/P/052“Obóz cygański” — the Gypsy camp drawn from memory, 1945A drawing in ink and pencil of a barrack in the Roma camp: the doors standing open, clothed figures talking in the middle distance, and in the foreground four emaciated naked figures, one of them a man with a distended belly. A woman in a long skirt and hooped earrings stands at the left edge with a child pressed against her.Poland1945
• FotografieRHMC/P/053Josef MengeleSS-Hauptsturmführer and physician, chief physician of the “Gypsy family camp” from the end of May 1943 until it was destroyed. He conducted experiments on twins and on children with noma, selected for the gas chambers, and cultivated the trust of the camp's children, who ran to greet him. He was never tried, and died in Brazil.Germany1943
• FotografieRHMC/P/054Rudolf Höss in the dockThe first commandant of Auschwitz, photographed in court in headphones for the interpreter, a microphone before him and a guard standing behind. His memoirs describe the Roma of the family camp as childlike and carefree, and close on the admission that he already knew of the order for their destruction.Poland1946
• FotografieRHMC/P/055Pery Broad, photographed on arrestSS-Rottenführer, responsible for Roma affairs in the Political Department at Birkenau. Photographed years later in three views by the criminal police at Frankfurt am Main, the identification board reading “Kriminalpolizei Frankfurt a.M. 60/2085”. His memoirs concede that the exemption for settled Roma existed on paper only, and that decorated soldiers were withdrawn from the front over a fraction of Roma ancestry.Germany1960
• Catalogue onlyFotografieRHMC/P/050Portrait of a man of the Roma campA watercolour head-and-shoulders study of a man with a shaved head, painted from life inside the camp. He looks past the painter rather than at her. An inscription in pencil runs along the foot of the sheet.Poland1943
• Catalogue onlyFotografieRHMC/P/051Portrait of a woman of the Roma campA watercolour head-and-shoulders study of a young woman in a red patterned headscarf, painted from life inside the camp. An inscription in pencil runs along the foot of the sheet.Poland1943
• Catalogue onlyFotografieRHMC/P/048The bodies of prisoners executed at JasenovacPhotographic evidence of the killings carried out by the Ustaša guard at the Jasenovac complex.Croatia1942
• Catalogue onlyFotografieRHMC/P/049Ustaša militia executing prisoners near JasenovacA killing in progress, photographed by or for the perpetrators.Croatia1942
• Catalogue onlyObiectRHMC/O/002The knife known as the srbosjekA curved blade worn strapped over the hand, used by Ustaša guards at Jasenovac to cut prisoners' throats quickly. What distinguished Jasenovac from most camps of the war was its reliance on this kind of close, manual killing rather than on gas.Croatia1942

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