We don't know their names.
- 7 days ago
- 2 min read
This is the story of 800 Romani children, who were gassed at Auschwitz on January 29, 1944. We don’t know their names or their families, but we do know how and why they arrived at this fateful day, and theirs is a tale worthy of consideration.
The roundup of Gypsies had begun in Germany in 1937, supposedly for purposes of identification and research. These particular children had previously been detained in camps and children’s homes as subjects of genetic research by Dr. Robert Ritter and his colleagues. To be clear, the term "Gypsies" in the 1930s referred to Roma and Sinti people who collectively were called Romani.
Dr. Ritter was a child psychiatrist and a staunch believer in eugenics or "racial hygiene" as it was termed in Germany. He believed that inherited traits determined criminal behavior – pause and think about that for a moment – one would necessarily become a criminal because of one’s genetic makeup. He gathered copious research on Gypsies to support this theory because he believed they never matured past adolescence and thus were perfect subjects for a child psychiatrist. Of course, there was nothing scientific about his research. He simply asked questions about people’s behaviors and what they could remember of their relatives in generations past. He came to the conclusion that gypsies were "asocial", "born criminals" and therefore not fit for Aryan society, an idea that suited Nazi sensibilities quite well.
In 1938, Heinrich Himmler addressed the "Gypsy Question". Forced sterilization would be required and segregation, of course. These measures soon morphed into detention and internment in work camps. As to our 800 children, when all their "scientific" data was collected, their "research" interviews complete, these obvious little criminals were just shipped to Auschwitz and disposed of.
And what of Dr. Ritter? He had never joined the Nazi Party despite being head of the Criminal Biology Institute, a government department of the Third Reich. His background was reviewed in 1946, and he stated himself to be a non-political public health official. He was thus cleared of any wrongdoing and resumed working as a child psychiatrist. He steadfastly maintained that his work in the Nazi era made a valuable contribution to public health in Germany. Dr. Robert Ritter was directly or indirectly responsible for the deaths of a quarter million Romani people between 1933 and 1945.
