Bookstore Glossary Library Links News Publications Timeline Virtual Israel Experience
Anti-Semitism Biography History Holocaust Israel Israel Education Myths & Facts Politics Religion Travel US & Israel Vital Stats Women
donate subscribe Contact About Home

Nazi Reply to Soldier Whose Fiancé was Deported as a Gypsy

From a reply by the administration of the “General Gouvernement” (department of “Population and Welfare”) to corporal Werner S., whose fiancee had been deported to Poland as a “Gypsy” in May 1940:

“As the gypsies are of foreign blood like the Jews, marital union between members of the German people and gypsies is liable to destroy the German nation and is therefore to be refused in principle. Even if the gypsy you have called your fiancee has not previously been convicted and appears different from gypsies, she remains of foreign blood and the characteristics associated with her blood may surface at a given time and may also appear in your children. You as a German cannot be responsible for taking a racially inferior woman of foreign blood as a partner.”

Source: German Federal Archive: Film No. 56894
From a letter of July 1942 from the mayor of the town of Schirwindt to Franz H., a soldier in the Wehrmacht married to a Sintezza:

“I am very surprised that the expulsion of your wife so upset you. (...) As a German man you were told in no uncertain terms, when you divorced from your German first wife, not to betray your German blood: yet you have committed this betrayal of the German blood. How do you propose to continue living together with your current wife? The German people wishes to be completely free of the blood of foreign races in the future and will never tolerate Jews and gypsies continuing to live in Germany.”

From: Manoschek, Walter (ed). “Es gibt nur eines fuer das Judentum: Vernichtung”: Das Judenbild in deutschen Soldatenbriefen 1939-1944, Hamburg, 1995.

Source: Yad Vashem