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Centrul Memorial al Holocaustului Romilor

Before the Holocaust

Persecution, hunting and forced conversion

Centuries before the Nazis, Roma communities across Europe were expelled by imperial decree, placed outside the protection of the law, pursued in organised hunts, executed as a warning to others, and pressed to abandon their faith and their way of life.

Period covered
1500–1783
Where
The Holy Roman Empire, the Low Countries, the Bohemian lands, England and Scotland, Sweden, Italy
Why it is here
The Holocaust did not emerge in a vacuum. It was preceded by centuries of racism, exclusion, discriminatory legislation, religious persecution, hunting, violence and slavery.

The history of the Roma people in Europe is marked by centuries of institutional discrimination, expulsions, persecution, violence, assimilation policies and, in some regions, outright slavery.

Long before the Holocaust of the Second World War, Roma communities were treated across much of Europe as “foreign”, “undesirable”, “non-Christian” or “asocial” populations.

Civil and religious authorities passed laws restricting freedom of movement, the right of settlement, access to trades, and the protection of the law. In certain periods and territories, Roma were expelled, pursued, hunted and even killed as part of organised campaigns.

At the same time, many Roma communities were pressured to abandon their own traditions and way of life, and in various historical contexts were compelled or coerced into adopting Christianity and the dominant religious norms.

Section 1

The Holy Roman Empire — Augsburg, 1500

In 1500, the Imperial Diet (Reichstag) meeting at Augsburg, under the authority of Emperor Maximilian I, adopted severe measures against the Roma population. At Maximilian’s request, the Diet branded Roma as traitors to the Christian nations and accused them of espionage for the Ottoman Turks, of sorcery, of child abduction, and of banditry.

Roma were ordered to leave the territories of the Empire by Easter of the following year. Once that deadline passed, their legal situation became extremely precarious: in numerous territories, Roma were placed effectively outside the ordinary protection of the law (“vogelfrei”), which created the conditions for violence, pursuit and expulsion.

This 1500 decree was only the first of several. Further imperial edicts followed in the 16th century, including a 1541 order under King Ferdinand I calling for the expulsion of all Roma from the Empire, and a notorious 1545 ruling of the Diet of Augsburg, under Charles V, that anyone who killed a Roma person would not be guilty of murder — in effect legalising their killing across large parts of the Empire. These measures mark the beginning of a long period of anti-Roma legislation in Europe.

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Section 2

Roma hunted across Europe

In the 16th, 17th and 18th centuries, persecution of the Roma went well beyond legal discrimination. In several regions of Europe, authorities organised genuine campaigns to track down and capture Roma communities.

In certain territories, Roma could legally be:

  • pursued;
  • captured;
  • expelled;
  • whipped;
  • mutilated;
  • executed.

Some of these campaigns were organised by local authorities and involved:

  • soldiers;
  • infantry;
  • cavalry;
  • police;
  • local officials;
  • the civilian population.

Historical documents describe these operations as “Gypsy hunts” or “heathen hunts”. Similar patterns existed elsewhere: in Tudor and early modern England and Scotland, laws of 1547, 1554 and 1562 imposed the death penalty on male Roma simply for being Roma, and in 1577 eight people were hanged in England under such a law; a 1541 Scottish order gave Roma thirty days to leave the kingdom on pain of death.

Engraving of a mounted officer in a spiked helmet ordering two Roma women away from a roadside.
A mounted officer orders two Roma women on. The engraving is 19th-century and illustrates the practice of moving Roma along rather than documenting the earlier centuries described here.19th-century engraving · Public domain

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Section 3

Heidenjachten — the “hunting of the heathens”

One of the best documented examples of the organised pursuit of Roma took place in the Low Countries. In 1525, an edict ordered Roma to leave Dutch territory within an extremely short deadline.

Heidenjachten

“The hunting of the heathens”

In the 17th and 18th centuries, campaigns under that name were organised in several Dutch and neighbouring German territories. These were coordinated operations for tracking down and capturing Roma, in which local authorities, police, infantry, cavalry, soldiers and local populations could all take part. During these campaigns, Roma communities were hunted and driven out of entire territories. Archival records describe raids in which large numbers of Roma — men, women and children — were killed in a single operation.

The very term “hunt” applied to human beings illustrates the extreme degree of dehumanisation to which Roma communities were subjected.

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Section 4

Executions and policies of extermination

In Central Europe, persecution of the Roma at times took the form of direct extermination policies. In the 17th and 18th centuries, various imperial decrees permitted or ordered:

  • the execution of Roma men;
  • the whipping of women;
  • mutilation;
  • the cutting off of ears;
  • the expulsion of women and children;
  • the separation of families.

In some territories, executions were also used as a deliberate method of intimidation. In the Bohemian lands, historical sources describe Roma being hanged at border crossings, with the bodies deliberately left in place as a warning to other Roma who might attempt to cross.

A painted territorial warning board of 1734 showing a gallows with a hanged body, a man being flogged at a wheelbarrow and a woman being beaten, above a block of threatening text.
A territorial warning board signed Ampt Münden, 1734: a gallows with a hanged body, a man flogged at a wheelbarrow, a woman beaten, and text threatening corporal punishment to any vagrant entering. This is the kind of object the record describes when it says that signs along the roads depicted hanged Roma.Public domain

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Section 5

Christianisation and religious assimilation

A less widely known aspect of Roma history is the pressure placed on communities to adopt the dominant religion and social norms. In many parts of Europe, Roma were regarded as “pagans” or as people insufficiently integrated into Christian society.

Civil and religious authorities sought to control the life of Roma communities through:

  • baptism;
  • religious obligations;
  • bans on traditional practices;
  • pressure to abandon the traditional way of life;
  • compulsory permanent settlement;
  • the separation of children from their families;
  • the education of children in institutions controlled by the authorities.

In certain historical contexts, Roma who did not accept the dominant religious norms were labelled “non-Christian” and could be expelled or punished. Christianisation, therefore, should not always be seen as a free and voluntary process: in different periods it was closely tied to policies of pressure, assimilation and social control.

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The Centre’s document gives no citation for this section. The sections either side of it rest on the Council of Europe factsheets, but that is not a source for this one, and it has not been assumed. A citation has been asked for.

Section 6

Sweden — religious prohibitions

In Sweden, the persecution of Roma also had a religious dimension. In 1560, the religious authorities forbade priests from baptising Roma children. Roma communities were also excluded from certain religious ceremonies and funeral rites — a serious matter, since Christian baptism and burial were central markers of belonging to the dominant society.

Anti-Roma measures had already been discussed by the Swedish Riksdag as early as 1604 and 1617, when it was decided that Roma women and children should be expelled and Roma men killed. On 28 July 1637 the Riksdag issued a formal decree, the Placat om Tattarnes fördrifwande af landet — the decree on the expulsion of the Tattare from the country: any adult Roma man found in Sweden after 8 November of that year was to be sentenced to death, while women and children were to be driven across the border. This 1637 decree remained a defining piece of Swedish anti-Roma legislation for a very long time.

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Section 7

Italy — “good Christians” and the renunciation of nomadism

In the 16th and 17th centuries, civil and religious authorities in various Italian states adopted measures against Roma communities. Roma who refused to:

  • give up their nomadic way of life;
  • settle permanently;
  • adopt the dominant social norms;
  • demonstrate “good Christian conduct”;

could be subjected to punishment or expulsion. In this context, religion was sometimes used as an instrument of control and assimilation, as authorities sought to transform Roma communities into a stable, controllable population that conformed to the dominant religious and social norms. Similar measures were recorded in Milan in 1565 and Naples in 1617.

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The Holocaust did not emerge in a vacuum

The history of persecution against the Roma does not begin with the Holocaust. Centuries before the Nazi Holocaust, Roma communities were:

  • expelled;
  • pursued;
  • hunted;
  • captured;
  • whipped;
  • mutilated;
  • executed;
  • forced to assimilate;
  • subjected to religious pressure;
  • forced to abandon their traditional way of life;
  • separated from their families;
  • held in slavery.

In some regions of Europe, Roma were literally hunted in campaigns organised by the authorities. In other regions, Roma were pressured to become Christians and to abandon their own traditions and way of life in order to be accepted by the dominant society. In Moldavia and Wallachia, hundreds of thousands of Roma people lived for roughly five centuries in slavery.

This long history of discrimination, dehumanisation and persecution is essential background for understanding the Holocaust committed against the Roma and Sinti during the Second World War. The Nazi Holocaust did not emerge in a historical vacuum. It was preceded by centuries of racism, exclusion, discriminatory legislation, religious persecution, hunting, violence and slavery.

Surse recomandate

Council of Europe

Institutions and journals

  • OSCE Office for Democratic Institutions and Human Rights — Roma and Sinti resourcesDocuments on the historical and contemporary persecution of Roma and Sinti.
  • Swedish parliamentary and government reporting on Roma policySource for the Swedish anti-Roma legislation of the 16th and 17th centuries.
  • Critical Romani StudiesAcademic publication dedicated to Roma history, culture and persecution.
  • RomArchive — Roma history and the civil rights movementromarchive.eu

Also used in this chapter

  • European Roma Rights Centre, “The Roma: Between a Myth and the Future”
  • Granqvist, K., “Critical evaluation of Romani inclusion strategies in Finland and Sweden”, Journal of Contemporary European Studies, 2021
  • Fraser, A., The Gypsies, Blackwell, 1995
  • Willems, W., In Search of the True Gypsy, Frank Cass, 1997
  • Wikipedia, “1637 in Sweden”

Lista de lecturi de mai sus este cea furnizată de Centru împreună cu documentul, reprodusă așa cum este. Lucrările citate fără link sunt cărți, articole și publicații instituționale pe care documentul le numește fără link; nu s-a presupus niciun link pentru ele.

Istoria continuă în Roma slavery.

Roma slaveryToate capitolele