Free Speech on Israel
October 01, 2016
We are urging everyone who believes in Free Speech on Israel to write to momentum to urge them to end their harassment of Jackie Walker. There are many posts on this site giving the background to these events on this site. Messages should be sent to:
- John Lansman jonlansman@me.com
- James Schneider james.g.h.schneider@gmail.com
- Emma Rees emma.rees@peoplesmomentum.com
Messages need to be sent by Monday morning as the Momentum steering Committee is planning to meet on Monday to discuss removing Jackie from her position as Vice-chair: Jackie herself has not been invited to the meeting. Individually composed messages are most effective. If you are a Momentum and/or a Labour Party member please quote your Constituency in your message. Please send a copy of your message to info@freespeechonisrael.org.uk so we can let Jackie know of the support we are showing for her.
We are publishing the text of four letters sent by FSOI activists for you to quote from or adapt as you wish.
- An individual letter from Mike Cushman
- An individual letter from Naomi Wimborne-Idrissi
- A letter from Tony Greenstein that has been signed by thirteen of Jackie’s supporters
- An individual letter from Helen Marks
1. Dear Jon
As a Momentum and Labour Party member I am alarmed to learn from the Guardian that Momentum is contemplating removing Jackie Walker as vice-chair.
I have shared platforms with Jackie and been impressed by her sophisticated understanding of the complex relationship between the twin evils of antisemitism and anti-Black racism. She speaks from an experience that few of us share and we should listen to her with respect.
Jackie, as a woman of dual heritage, has to deal with the inherited pain of two Holocausts, the Jewish tragedy and the African horror story. Dealing with one is difficult, managing to live with the impact of both doubly so. No one has developed a language for this. Jackie is trying to provide one, a difficult task in the best and most supportive environment; an almost impossible one when every utterance is malevolently misinterpreted.
Jackie is also being attacked for asking for the definition of antisemitism on which the JLM trainers were basing their session, a patently reasonable request. Definitions of antisemitism are highly contested and there is a large literature on the topic, both academic and polemical, which has reached no consensus. Anti-racism training sessions have consistently started from trying to reach a definition, or at least a description, of racism the participants can use to underpin a discussion. It appears that the JLM trainers both know with certainty what antisemitism is and, extraordinarily, are not prepared to share that definition with the trainees.
She is being attacked on the basis of leaks form a training session that were definitely unethical and very probably illegal. It is the officers of JLM who should be facing sanctions not Jackie.
I am shocked to see Momentum officers dancing to the tune of the JLM and the Labour right-wing, the very people I joined Momentum to oppose and to loosen their stranglehold on thinking in Labour.
If you believe that moving against Jackie will increase the security of Momentum and strengthened Jeremy’s position you are more naïve than I believed possible. You are not being enjoined to ditch Jackie to strengthen Momentum and Jeremy but just the opposite. If they get Jackie’s scalp they will not be sitting back saying ‘job done’. They will be setting their sights on their next target and then the one after that to weaken and divide us.
I joined other Momentum members in the pub yesterday to celebrate Jeremy’s re-election but what was meant to be a party turned into a bitter contemplation of Momentum’s leadership wrecking an organisation days after the success of TWT [The World Transformed] and wondering if they have a future in a Momentum that treats its best activists I this manner. I have been receiving emails all day from members in other constituencies telling the same story. According to the Guardian, “A spokesperson for the leftwing grassroots movement, which was set up to support Jeremy Corbyn as leader of the Labour party, confirmed members wanted her to go.” I do not know which members the spokesperson was talking about, there has been no consultation and many, many members want her to stay.
One of our aims is to democratise the Labour Party; we can’t do that through an organisation that mimics the worst practices of the Compliance Unit and works through a system of kangaroo courts.
Please, even at this late stage, draw back from the precipice and do not undermine our hopes for the future.
Fraternally
Mike Cushman
Streatham CLP and Momentum
2. Dear Jon
I am writing to you as a Jewish member of both the Labour Party (Chingford and Woodford Green CLP) and of Momentum. I have opposed racism and supported human rights and social justice for half a century – since my teens. Therefore, naturally, I have been a fervent supporter of Jeremy’s leadership of the party from the first.
I am also a long-standing supporter of the campaign for justice for Palestine – a position I regard as entirely consistent with the Jewish values I grew up with. It is axiomatic in my family that the mass slaughter inflicted on Jews in Europe should never be inflicted on any other people, anywhere.
This past year we have seen Jeremy Corbyn’s socialist project attacked by a powerful combination of forces. Pro-Israel lobbyists, well practised at alleging that critics are motivated solely by hostility to Jews, have handed the perfect weapon to the political and media establishment ranged against him. They assert that criticism of the state of Israel or of Zionism is an assault on Jewish identity and therefore a kind of hate speech. But as you know, many Jews are not Zionists, while plenty of non-Jews are.
I chaired a meeting in Liverpool last Sunday where Jackie Walker shared the platform with a British Palestinian lawyer and a leading Jewish pro-Palestinian activist. Her contribution to our understanding of the anti-Corbyn campaign was hugely appreciated by the Momentum supporters who packed into the hall to hear her speak.
Jackie’s unique perspective, with her combined Jewish and African-Caribbean heritage and her history of anti-racist, left-wing activism, makes her a hate figure for Corbyn’s opponents. It would be shameful for Momentum to capitulate to the witch hunt which has seen newspapers, broadcasters and social media pundits uncritically reporting every allegation against Jackie and other Labour or Momentum members – of antisemitism, misogyny, bullying and support for terrorism. There is, actually, a nasty whiff of racism and misogyny in their targeting of Jackie. Her Jewish heritage is often deliberately passed over.
She has been a victim of distortions and deliberate falsehoods, such as those exposed by investigative journalist Asa Winstanley and still repeated with such frequency that they have become received wisdom, lightly tossed into the conversation in Radio 4 comedy shows. Everybody now “knows” that Jews are not safe in Corbyn’s Labour Party and Jackie Walker is an antisemite.
As someone whose mother had been called a Christ-killer when she was a little girl at school, I think I am pretty sensitive to prejudice and stereotyping directed at Jews. I do not tolerate it – nor any other form of racism – in the Labour Party, the Palestine solidarity movement or any other setting. Though I personally I have not encountered it, I acknowledge that antisemitism exists in the party, as in the rest of society. There are recommendations in the Chakrabarti Report that would – if implemented – strengthen the party as a bulwark against all forms of racism, which is absolutely essential in the post-Brexit world. Jackie will be a great asset in building our anti-racist movement.
I have been alarmed at the reluctance of our side to fight back. Jeremy has been incredibly conciliatory, restricting himself to pleading his own impeccable anti-racist credentials and swearing to stamp out the antisemitism that is alleged but not proven, thereby giving credence to the idea that Labour does indeed “have a problem with Jews”. Jeremy Newmark of the Jewish Labour Movement, in a debate at The World Transformed on September 25, used the fact that Jeremy had set up the Chakrabarti Inquiry, to explore antisemitism and other forms of racism, as proof that antisemitism was the huge problem the JLM alleges! We are in a Kafkaesque, looking-glass world where querying the veracity of an antisemitism allegation is taken as proof of antisemitism. Let’s throw in Catch 22 and a dollop of McCarthyism for good measure. Sacrificing Jackie will not do anything to keep the circling sharks at bay.
Please respect the voices of the vast number of Momentum supporters who value Jackie’s contribution and will feel disillusioned and betrayed if she is forced out.
Naomi Wimborne-Idrissi
Labour Party and Momentum member
3. Dear James Schneider and Jon Lansman,
We are Jewish members of the Labour Party. We are writing to you concerning reports in the press, which you have not denied, that Momentum’s Executive Committee is preparing to throw Jackie Walker to the wolves at its meeting next Monday. The reason for this is because of the wholly false anti-Semitism accusations that have been levelled against her.
We urge you not to remove Jackie as Vice-Chair of Momentum. When a comrade is under attack then you defend them and extend the hand of solidarity. An injury to one is an injury to all. Betraying a comrade in order to ease the pressure on you is contrary to all Labour movement traditions of solidarity. The Jewish Labour Movement [JLM] will not stop at Jackie Walker. They will look for new targets for their ‘anti-Semitism’ witch hunt.
The JLM is not an ordinary affiliated socialist society. It has a close relationship with Israeli state agencies, for example its newly appointed Director, Ella Rose, came directly from the Israeli Embassy. The ‘anti-Semitism witchhunt’ over the last year has been a carefully orchestrated and co-ordinated affair alongside papers like the Daily Mail. Jackie is but the latest target for those who are using ‘anti-Semitism’ as a means of attacking Jeremy Corbyn.
The JLM invited to Labour Party Conference representatives of Ha Avodah, the Israeli Labour Party. This is a party that presided over the forcible expulsion of ¾ million Palestinian refugees and placed Israel’s Arabs under military rule until 1966. The ILP initiated the settlements in the West Bank. Earlier this year, its leader Isaac Herzog stated that the ILP mustn’t be identified as an ‘Arab lovers’ party. If Jackie Walker had talked about ‘Jew lovers’ then the charges of anti-Semitism against her would be justified. Herzog later described his ‘nightmare’ of waking up to find that Israel had an Arab Prime Minister. If Jackie had spoken of her fears that Britain might one day have a Jewish Prime Minister then she would rightly be called an anti-Semite. If anyone should be called out for racism it is the JLM.
Jews who are not Zionists cannot join the JLM because of its affiliation to the World Zionist Organisation and its Jerusalem Programme, which speaks of ‘the centrality of the State of Israel … in the life of the (Jewish) nation’. The ‘Jewish nation’ means Jews in Israel or the Diaspora. This includes ourselves and Jon Lansman. The idea that we are Jewish not British nationals and Israel is the centre of our lives is a deeply anti-Semitic one.
The Jerusalem programme also speaks of ‘Settling the country as an expression of practical Zionism.’ Settlement means occupying the West Bank and Golan Heights as well as Judaising Israel. That is why Israel is a racist settler colonial state.
Last Monday the JLM held an ‘anti-racism training’ session at Labour’s conference. The session was filmed without the agreement of participants and contrary to all ethical considerations. It was then leaked to the media in order to wage a vicious racist attack on Jackie Walker and other Jewish dissidents present.
Even before the ‘training session’ the JLM had been conducting a political lynching of Jackie. It had refused to accept that the false accusations made against Jackie, that she had alleged that Jews were the main financiers of the slave trade, were untrue, despite her being acquitted of these allegations last May.
In the Jewish Chronicle of 24th September Jeremy Newmark, Chair of JLM was quoted as saying of John McDonnell’s appearance on a platform with Jackie that
“The Shadow Chancellor … must explain his defence of Walker which is inconsistent with his call for zero tolerance (of antisemitism). This raises serious questions. Our members expect him to explain himself.’
What happened at the session was all too predictable. Having the JLM hold an anti-racist training course was like the General Medical Council asking Harold Shipman to organise a course on medical ethics. This was why the Chakrabarti Report stated that:
‘having gauged the range of feelings within the Party, it is not my view that narrow anti-racism training programmes are what is required. There is a grave danger that such an approach would seem patronising or otherwise insulting rather than truly empowering and enriching for those taking part.’
Instead of stabbing Jackie in the back and running scared of the media’s faked concern for ‘antisemitism’ you would be better spending your time finding out why the JLM was allowed to undertake an ‘anti-racist training session’ in the first place.
What Jackie Walker said may have enraged the Zionists, for whom the holocaust serves primarily as an ideological justification for Israel’s crimes, but it was not anti-Semitic.
It is a fact that Holocaust Memorial Day has focused almost exclusively on the Nazi holocaust and has ignored the extermination of the Disabled and the Gypsies. The doyen of Zionist holocaust historians, Professor Yehuda Bauer argued, in a debate with the late Dr Sybil Milton, Senior Historian at the US Holocaust Memorial Museum that ‘the Nazis only attempted to annihilate one people, the Jews: Roma were not Jews, therefore there was no need to murder all of them.’ According to Bauer, ‘the Holocaust is very much a unique case.’ [“Gypsies and the Holocaust” Yehuda Bauer; Sybil Milton The History Teacher, Vol. 25, (Aug., 1992)]. As the late Elie Wiesel put it, to compare the sufferings of others with Jews was a “betrayal of Jewish history”. [Elie Wiesel, Against Silence, v. iii, 146.] The truth may be uncomfortable but it is not anti-Semitic.
Jackie Walker was also right to question the JLM’s assertion that the EUMC’s Working Definition of Antisemitism was the standard definition of what constitutes antisemitism. This is simply dishonest. In 2013, this definition was scrapped by the EU’s Fundamental Rights Agency, as the Times of Israel reported ‘’The European Union’s agency for combating racism dropped its definition for anti-Semitism… We are not aware of any official definition [of anti-Semitism],” Blanca Tapia of the EU’s Fundamental Rights Agency told JTA on Tuesday.’
We are seriously disturbed by the report in the Guardian Momentum likely to oust Jackie Walker over Holocaust remarks and a similar report in the Independent that ‘Senior members of Momentum are “fuming” at her remarks’. It is your duty not to betray comrades.
The JLM voted 92-4% in favour of Owen Smith. Antisemitism is a weapon to attack the left. Any betrayal of Jackie Walker will be unacceptable to grassroots Momentum supporters who are sick to the back teeth of the cynical use of antisemitism to ward off criticism of Israel.
We also understand that Jackie Walker has not even been invited to the meeting which it is intended will dismiss her. What kind of democracy is this? Because of the racist abuse she has received from the JLM’s supporters Jackie has had to suspend her Twitter account. Of, not being an MP, this kind of abuse will not make the headlines. Jackie is suffering extreme abuse which the JLM has given a green light to. Abuse which openly states that Black people can’t be Jewish. If you attack Jackie you will be a party to this abuse.
We are writing to you to demand that you stand up to the JLM when it demands the head of a well respected Black and Jewish anti-racist. You will not be forgiven if you betray her.
Graham Bash Hackney North CLP
Haim Bresheeth Hornsey and Wood Green
Mark Elf Barking CLP
Kenny Fryde Cambridge CLP
Tony Greenstein Brighton & Hove District Labour Party
Abe Hayeem Harrow East CLP
Helen Marks Riverside CLP
Elizabeth Morley Ceredigion CLP
Diana Neslen Ilford South Constituency Labour Party
Dr Brian Robinson Milton Keynes South CLP
Leon Rosselson Brent Momentum
David Selzer City of Chester CLP
Sam Semoff Riverside CLP
4. Dear Jon
I am really concerned that as founder of Momentum your response to the antisemitism witch hunt has not been more robust. Your advice to Momentum groups up to now has been that they should simply publish short statements condemning antisemitism. Well, shouldn’t that be a given? You told them the problem would quickly go away if they did this. Well it hasn’t.
Why have you been leaving those of us who have been suspended or complained against to be falsely harangued in the press and to be at the mercy of a grossly undemocratic complaints procedure in the Labour Party that fails even to tell those suspended or complained against the grounds for the complaint and leaves them dangling not having any time scale for an investigation.In my case I haven’t even been informed of the complaint and just heard about it through the press and rumour.
It must surely be crystal clear to you that this sudden so called rise in anti-semitism in the Labour party is a cynical move to rid the party of Jeremy Corbyn, a leader who is both truly on the left and who has always been a campaigner for justice for the Palestinians.
Not only has this campaign by the JLM and the right of the party brought the party into disrepute and split it in a way that will make it harder to rid us of the Tories but it has totally debased the meaning of the term anti-semitic and whipped up a problem that was barely there before.Apart from some exceptions we Jews in the UK have been so fortunate that until recently we have been free of the kind of discrimination that other Jews have faced at different times.Even the former chief rabbi said he had not really experienced any incidents of anti-semitism.
I was at the training meeting that Jackie Walker attended during the Labour party conference. People may not have agreed with all she said but there was no way it was antisemitic. She was doing what the trainer several times urged us to do, namely engage in debate. I have been at meetings in Liverpool where Zionist members of the community have come and heckled loudly and made their loud contributions but nobody ran to complain that they should be suspended or expelled or reported to the police. The occupation of Palestine and the actions of the Israeli government are emotive subjects and it is vital that people of different shades of opinion get together to discuss even if it is very painful at times.
Manuel Cortes is now bullying Momentum into taking action against Jackie Walker by threatening to reconsider TSSA’s support for Momentum if Jackie is still in post in a week’s time.His use of hyperbole is phoney and disgraceful.He talks about Jackie “holding such abhorrent racist views” . How can we discuss openly and with trust if those of us who hold views that don’t agree with pro Israel and pro zionists are vilified in this way?
Momentum itself is now the subject of concerted attack for being a hard left secretive body within the party. You surely realise that this too is just another form of attack on Corbyn? We at the grass roots are fighting off these accusations. Please do the same and stand by Jackie and the rest of us as we will try and stand by Momentum. You have done wonders in growing the Labour party. Don’t desert us when we most need your support.
Helen Marks
Membership of the All-Party Parliamentary Group Against Antisemitism
Chair & Registered Contact | John Mann | Labour |
President | Mr Graham Brady | Conservative |
President | Mr Dominic Grieve | Conservative |
President | Lord Haskel | Labour |
President | Lord Dubs | Labour |
President | Lord Alderdice | Liberal Democrat |
Vice-President | Mike Freer | Conservative |
Vice-President | Lord Boswell of Aynho | Non-affiliated |
Vice-President | Lord Dholakia | Liberal Democrat |
Vice-President | Mrs Louise Ellman | Labour (Co-op) |
Vice-President | Natascha Engel | Labour |
Vice Chair | Tom Brake | Liberal Democrat |
Vice Chair | Dr Eilidh Whiteford | Scottish National Party |
Vice Chair | Mark Durkan | Social Democratic & Labour Party |
Vice Chair | Mr David Burrowes | Conservative |
Vice Chair | Guto Bebb | Conservative |
Vice Chair | Ruth Smeeth | Labour |
Vice Chair | Luciana Berger | Labour (Co-op) |
Vice Chair | Wes Streeting | Labour |
Vice Chair | Lilian Greenwood | Labour |
Vice Chair | Dr Matthew Offord | Conservative |
Vice Chair | Stuart Andrew | Conservative |
Vice Chair | Tulip Siddiq | Labour |
Vice Chair | Bob Blackman | Conservative |
Vice Chair | Mr Nigel Dodds | Democratic Unionist Party |
Comments by JfJfP postings editor:
Finding a definition of antisemitism you can work with: The definition of antisemitism is highly contended. The chairman of the all-party parliamentary group on antisemitism should know this. Only the antisemitism policy wonks are likely to know the succinct definition proposed by Brian Klug and widely accepted:
Hostility towards Jews as Jews, in which they are perceived as something other than what they are.
Although the EUMC short working definition of antisemitism is also clear and uncontroversial:
Antisemitism is a certain perception of Jews, which may be expressed as hatred toward Jews. Rhetorical and physical manifestations of antisemitism are directed toward Jewish or non-Jewish individuals and/or their property, toward Jewish community institutions and religious facilities.
However, it obfuscates this with its examples of antisemitism:
Examples of the ways in which antisemitism manifests itself with regard to the State of Israel taking into account the overall context could include:
Denying the Jewish people their right to self-determination, e.g., by claiming that the existence of a State of Israel is a racist endeavour.
Applying double standards by requiring of it a behaviour not expected or demanded of any other democratic nation.
Using the symbols and images associated with classic antisemitism (e.g., claims of Jews killing Jesus or blood libel) to characterize Israel or Israelis.
Drawing comparisons of contemporary Israeli policy to that of the Nazis.
Holding Jews collectively responsible for actions of the state of Israel.
However, criticism of Israel similar to that leveled against any other country cannot be regarded as antisemitic.
This unseemly and thoughtless hounding of Jackie Walker, wholly based on false inferences drawn from what she has said is not actually about antisemitism or even Ms Walker except as a scapegoat for right-wing vitriol.
Holocaust denial
Ms Walker is NOT denying that the mass murder of European Jews took place. To say she is is a lie. It is very common for Jews to question the uses to which the ‘Holocaust’ – the Nazi judeo-cide – is put. [See for example Finkelstein’s The Holocaust Industry: Reflections on the Exploitation of Jewish Suffering.] Not only is questioning not antisemitic, it is right and proper that Jews like Ms Walker, and others, ask questions about this defining abomination in the history of Jews, of gypsies, of the mentally deficient, of homosexuals, and of citizens of the Soviet Union, especially the Soviet PoWs held in Nazi concentration camps.
To imagine Jews were the only victims of Nazi aggression is very ignorant and to miss a vital point about the nature of Nazi ambitions. No serious historian of this grimmest of episodes in human history makes this mistake.
However it may not be true that ‘proportionately [Jews were not] the main victim of the Nazis’:
Other genocides: Gypsies
It is estimated that 30% of Europe’s Jews were exterminated by the Nazis and 25% of Europe’s Gypsies (Roma, Sinti). However this second figure is likely to be an underestimate as far fewer records were kept and often local populations took it into their hands to shoot Gypsies stemming from a long hostility to Gypsies as a nomadic peoples who were not, unlike many Jews, assimilated into the national culture. An example of a 20% variation in the guesstimate is from the US Holocaust Museum: “The total number of Roma killed in Serbia will never be known. Estimates range between 1,000 and 12,000”.
Other genocides
Proportionately
The largest single group exterminated by the Nazis were captured people from the USSR most, but not all, Soviet military prisoners-of-war. For Hitler’s primary war-aim being to seize as much land, and kill as many citizens in the USSR as possible, see Arno Mayer, ‘Why Did the Heavens not Darken?’
Soviet prisoners of war starving to death at Mauthausen concentration camp. Unknown date. Photo from Bundesarchiv.
The Holocaust – attempted extermination of all Jews – is not the only such ‘holocaust’. The 1915 Armenian genocide killed a far higher proportion of Armenians living in the Ottoman empire – one and half million out of two million, 75%. The 1994 Rwandan genocide killed 70% of the Tutsi people in the country.
Martin Gilbert: Gypsies
Martin Gilbert is one of the world’s authorities on the Holocaust. Although his best known book is called The Holocaust: The Jewish Tragedy he nonetheless finds time to include the tragedy of Europe’s Gypsies at various salient points:
Death by gassing was introduced in 1939.
Between January 1940 and August 1941, more than seventy thousand Germans had been killed by gas in five separate institutions, by what was called sonderbehandlung, ‘special treatment’. The principal victims were the chronically sick, gypsies, people judged ‘unworthy of life’ because of mental disorders, and after June 1941, Soviet prisoners-of-war.
Auschwitz main camp was first used to imprison and torture Polish opponents of Nazism. From September 1941 killing by Cyclon B gas was used to kill six hundred Soviet PoWs and 300 Jews. p239
Several thousand German, Austrian and Czech gypsies were deported to the Lodz ghetto alongside Jews, most of whom came from families which had converted to Christianity but, by Nazi standards, were Jewish by blood. They were treated by Jewish doctors, most of whom died of typhus. p244.
Chelmno 1942:
At Chelmno, the gassing of whole communities was continuing day by day. Gypsies, too, were among the first victims. On January 7, the first of five thousand Gypsies, who had earlier been deported to the Jewish ghetto of Lodz by truck. All were gassed.
The deportation of Gypsies from Lodz, to Chelmo for extermination, was complete on January 13, 1943. p253
Gas lorries. Notes by Yakov Grojanowski, January 6, 1942.
Jews are compelled to be grave-diggers in the forest, burying the bodies killed in the gas-lorries.
The leader was a high-ranking SS man, an absolute sadist and murderer.
He ordered that eight men were to open the doors of the lorry. The smell that met us was overpowering. The victims were gypsies from Lodz. Strewn about the van were all their belongings: accordions, violins, bedding, watches and other valuables.
p256
A total of 3,830 Jews and around 4,000 Gypsies were killed at Chelmno by gas before February 1942. Wikipedia
Mengele’s experiments
Not only Jews, but also Gypsies were the victims of Mengele’s perversions of medical sciences, Another survivor, Vera Alexander, recalled in the same courtroom how two Gypsy twins, one a hunchback, had been sewn together and their veins connected by Mengele who concentrated on blood transfusions in many experiments. Their wounds were infected,’ she said, ‘and they were screaming in pain. Their parents managed to get hold of some morphine and used it to kill them in order to end their suffering.’
Jews and Gypsies had both been chosen by Mengele for the ultimate senseless and barbaric suffering. As well as twins he also selected Jews with physical deformities, hunchbacks and dwarfs in particular, in order to experiment on them as well. p689
1945, Mauthausen
In just over four months, more than thirty thousand people had been murdered at Mauthausen, or had died from starvation and disease. Jews and Gypsies formed the largest groups of those killed, but other groups had been singled out by the Nazis: homosexuals, Jehovah’s witnesses, Soviet prisoners-of-war and tens of thousands of Spanish Republicans. p807
Only Jews were selected to be murdered in their entirety. Over ten million civilian non-Jews were also killed including
as many as a quarter of million Gypsies, tens of thousands of homosexuals and tens of thousands of mental defectives. Also murdered, often after the cruelties of tortures, were several million Soviet prisoners-of-war, shot or starved to death long after they had been captured or disarmed. p824
From ‘The Holocaust: The Jewish Tragedy’ by Martin Gilbert, pub’d William Collins 1986, pb Fontana 1987 (all quotations and page references are taken from this edition).
Roma Victims of the Holocaust:
It is extremely difficult to locate sources about the Roma people (otherwise known as Gypsies) in the Holocaust like those widely available about Jewish victims, which may reflect the difference between a literate culture and a largely illiterate one. It is known that perhaps 250,000 Roma were killed and that, proportionately, they suffered greater losses than any other group of victims except Jews.
Roma Gypsies are an ethnic group originating from India which for unknown reasons took to a wandering lifestyle in the late middle ages. Eventually, the Romas reached Europe and became part of the ethnic mix of many countries, contributing in areas such as music and the arts.
Although they were “Aryan” according to the Nazi racial typology, they were pursued relentlessly for persecution.
For Nazi Germany, the Roma became a racist dilemma. The Roma were Aryans, but in the Nazi mind there were contradictions between what they regarded as the superiority of the Aryan race and their image of the Roma people.
At a conference held in Berlin on January 30, 1940, a decision was taken to expel 30,000 Roma from Germany to the territories of occupied Poland.
The reports of the SS Einsatzgruppen which operated in the occupied territories of the Soviet Union mention the murder of thousands of Romas along with the massive extermination of the Jews in these areas.
The deportations and executions of the Roma came under Himmler’s authority. On December 16, 1942, Himmler issued an order to send all “Gypsies” to the concentration camps, with a few exceptions…
The deported Romas were sent to Auschwitz-Birkenau, where a special Gypsy camp was erected. Over 20,000 Romas from Germany and some other parts of Europe were sent to this camp, and most of them were gassed there…
Wiernik described the arrival of the largest Roma group brought to Treblinka, in the spring of 1943:
One day, while I was working near the gate, I noticed the Germans and Ukrainians making special preparations…meanwhile the gate opened, and about 1,000 Gypsies were brought in (this was the third transport of Gypsies). About 200 of them were men, and the rest women and children…all the Gypsies were taken to the gas chambers and then burned…
Roma from the General Government [Poland] who were not sent to Auschwitz and to the operation Reinhard camps were shot on the spot by the local police or gendarmes. In the eastern region of the Cracow district, in the counties of Sanok, Jaslo, and Rzeszow, close to 1,000 Roma were shot.
According to The Institut Fuer Zeitgeschicthe in Munich, at least 4,000 Roma people were murdered by gas at Auschwitz-Birkenau.
Like the Jews, Roma were singled out by the Nazis for racial persecution and annihilation. They were ‘nonpersons,’ of ‘foreign blood,’ ‘labour-shy,’ and as such were termed asocials. To a degree, they shared the fate of the Jews in their ghettos, in the extermination camps, before firing squads, as medical guinea pigs, and being injected with lethal substances.
Ironically, the German writer Johann Christof Wagenseil claimed in 1697 that Romas stemmed from German Jews. A more contemporary Nazi theorist believed that “the Gypsy cannot, by reason of his inner and outer makeup (Konstruktion), be a useful member of the human community.” 1
The Nuremberg Laws of 1935 aimed at the Jews were soon amended to include the Roma. In 1937, they were classified as asocials, second-class citizens, subject to concentration camp imprisonment. As early as 1936, some had been sent to camps. After 1939, Roma from Germany and from the German-occupied territories were shipped by the thousands first to Jewish ghettos in Poland at Warsaw, Lublin, Kielce, Rabka, Zary, Siedlce and others.
It is not known how many were killed by the Einsatzgruppen charged with speedy extermination by shooting. For the sake of efficiency Roma were also shot naked, facing their pre-dug graves. According to the Nazi experts, shooting Jews was easier, they stood still, ‘while the Gypsies cry out, howl, and move constantly, even when they are already standing on the shooting ground. Some of them even jumped into the ditch before the volley and pretended to be dead.’ 4 The first to go were the German Roma; 30,000 were deported East in three waves in 1939, 1941 and 1943. Those married to Germans were exempted but were sterilized, as were their children after the age of twelve.
How were the Roma of Europe ‘expedited’?
Adolf Eichmann, chief strategist of these diabolical logistics, supplied the answer in a telegram from Vienna to the Gestapo:
Regarding transport of Gypsies be informed that on Friday, October 20, 1939, the first transport of Jews will depart Vienna. To this transport 34 cars of Gypsies are to be attached. Subsequent trains will depart from Vienna, Mahrisch-Ostrau and Katowice [Poland]. The simplest method is to attach some carloads of Gypsies to each transport. Because these transports must follow schedule, a smooth execution of this matter is expected. Concerning a start in the Altreich [Germany proper] be informed that this will be coming in 34 weeks. 6
Open season was declared on the Roma, too. For a while Himmler wished to exempt two tribes and ‘only’ sterilize them, but by 1942 he signed the decree for all “Gypsies” to be shipped to Auschwitz. 7 There they were subjected to all that Auschwitz meant, including the medical experiments, before they were exterminated.
Roma perished in Dachau, Mauthausen, Ravensbruck and other camps. At Sachsenhausen they were subjected to special experiments that were to prove scientifically that their blood was different from that of the Germans. The doctors in charge of this ‘research’ were the same ones who had practiced previously on black prisoners of war. Yet, for ‘racial reasons’ they were found unsuitable for sea water experiments. Roma were often accused of atrocities committed by others; they were blamed, for instance, for the looting of gold teeth from a hundred dead Jews abandoned on a Rumanian road.
Roma women were forced to become guinea pigs in the hands of Nazi physicians. They were sterilized as ‘unworthy of human reproduction’ (fortpflanzungsunwuerdig) and ultimately annihilated as not worthy of living.
For a while there existed a “Gypsy Family Camp” at Auschwitz, but it was liquidated on August 6, 1944. Some men and women were shipped to German factories as slave labor while the rest – about 3,000 women, children and old people – were gassed. 10
No precise statistics exist about the extermination of European Roma. Some estimates place the number between 500,000 and 600,000, most of them gassed in Auschwitz. 11 Others indicated a more conservative 200,000 Roma victims of the Holocaust.