Gypsies as victims of the Holocaust

While most of the research on the Holocaust has appropriately focused on the suffering of the Jewish population of Axis-occupied Europe, the Gypsies also were targeted for extinction by the Nazis. The Gypsies as a people survived the campaigns directed against them in large measure because they were located in areas under the control of governments allied with Germany. These governments generally refused to participate in the extermination of the Gypsies (just as some did not participate in the destruction of the European Jews). The majority of the Gypsy population in Axis Europe was beyond the direct control of the Nazi extermination machinery and, as a consequence, survival rates were higher. In contrast the European Jews were concentrated in areas under direct German control, and therefore the proportion of fatalities was much higher. Geographic location thus was one major factor that explains the greater survival rate of the Gypsies compared to that of the Jews.