We tell ourselves the Holocaust began in 1933. For the Roma, the paperwork began in 1899. This is the story of a book — an ordinary, bureaucratic, one-mark book — and how counting a people became the first step toward destroying them. ‘
When Lina Jackson was tattooed Z574 at Auschwitz, the Z stood for Zigeuner. The number replaced her name. But her people’s names had been in a book for forty years.
Return to the Roma and Sinti Holocaust
The night of August 2, 1944 was the end of a road centuries long.
Roma were enslaved in the Romanian principalities for nearly 500 years — bought, sold, and gifted as property until 1856, longer than almost any people in European history. They were hunted in the Holy Roman Empire, rounded up in Spain, expelled from nearly every country they entered. And in 1899, decades before Hitler, a police office in Munich began keeping a list of their names.
This timeline traces what Europe had already built for the Nazis to use. Follow the dates — registration becomes restriction, restriction becomes internment, internment becomes Auschwitz. And after the war: the silence, the denied reparations, the thirty-seven years before Germany even called it what it was.
The center of this timeline is a single night — August 2, 1944, when the Roma of Birkenau fought to the very end. Everything before leads to it. Everything after struggles to face it. Look and do not forget.
Before the Timeline: Centuries of Persecution
The Roma and Sinti genocide of 1933–1945 was the culmination of centuries of European persecution rooted in fear of difference, economic exploitation, and racial ideology that long predated the Nazis. To understand what happened at Auschwitz, you need to know what came before.
The Story of the Roma. Watch on YouTube.
NOTE: This video includes humor and references which can be difficult to hear. Also there is a claim that 1.5 million Roma were killed. This is much higher than the 220,000-500,000 historical estimates.
Origins and Migration
Roma peoples originated in northern India and began migrating westward approximately 1,000 years ago, reaching Europe by the 14th century. They spread across the continent — distinct groups settling in different regions and developing their own dialects, customs, and trades. The Sinti settled primarily in Central Europe (Germany, Austria, northern Italy). Other Roma communities established themselves across Eastern and Southern Europe. They were never a single unified people. They had no common nation-state, no central government, no army. What they shared was a language family (Romani), a cultural identity, and the experience of being outsiders everywhere they went.
Five Centuries of Slavery in Romania
The longest and most systematic persecution of Roma in Europe was their enslavement in the Romanian principalities of Wallachia and Moldavia. The first written record dates to 1385, when Prince Dan I of Wallachia gifted 40 Roma families to a monastery as property. For nearly 500 years — from the late 14th century until 1856 — Roma were held as hereditary slaves, legally owned by the state, the Orthodox Church, and the nobility. They could be bought, sold, gifted, punished, and separated from their families. Children inherited their parents’ slave status. Women endured intersectional violence. Roma craftspeople were essential to the economy — metalworkers, musicians, builders — yet their labor enriched their owners while they received nothing.
Abolition came gradually: 1848 in Transylvania, 1855 in Moldavia, and February 20, 1856, in Wallachia. Approximately 250,000 Roma became legally free. They received no land, no reparations, no support. Their former owners were financially compensated for the “loss of property.” The consequences of five centuries of enslavement — poverty, landlessness, illiteracy, marginalization — continued into the 20th century and persist today. Romania now commemorates February 20 as the National Day of the Abolition of Slavery, though full acknowledgment of this history remains incomplete.
For deeper reading on Roma slavery: European Roma Rights Centre | Travellers’ Times | rroma.org
European Persecution Before the 20th Century
Across Europe, Roma faced expulsion orders, forced settlement, criminalization, and violence for centuries. In the Holy Roman Empire, “Gypsy hunts” were authorized in the 18th century. In Spain, the Great Roundup of 1749 saw thousands of Roma arrested simultaneously. In many countries, Roma were forbidden from owning land, practicing their trades, speaking their language, or traveling in groups. Laws treated Roma identity itself as a crime. These patterns — registration, restriction, forced settlement, criminalization — would be repeated and intensified by the Nazi regime.
The Timeline
1899 — The First Registration Office
The Munich police establish the “Intelligence Service for the Security Police in Regard to Gypsies” (Zigeunerzentrale) — the first centralized office dedicated to registering and surveilling Roma and Sinti in Germany. This creates the bureaucratic infrastructure that the Nazis will later exploit.
1905 — The “Gypsy Book”
Alfred Dillmann, head of the Munich registration office, publishes the Zigeuner-Buch — a registry containing the personal descriptions, names, and photographs of over 3,000 Roma and Sinti. Its introduction describes Roma as “a harmful foreign body in German culture.” The book is distributed to police departments across Germany for use in identifying and tracking Roma.
1911 — Fingerprinting Begins
Germany mandates the fingerprinting of all Roma and Sinti encountered by police, regardless of whether they have committed any crime. For all other groups, a criminal act is required before fingerprinting can occur.
1926 — Bavaria’s “Gypsy Law”
Bavaria passes the “Law for the Combating of Gypsies, Travellers, and the Work-Shy,” which restricts Roma movement, forbids groups of more than two from traveling together, and requires registration with local police. Other German states follow with similar legislation.
1933 — Hitler Comes to Power
The Nazi regime inherits and intensifies existing anti-Roma infrastructure. Roma and Sinti are subjected to increasing discrimination, deprived of citizenship rights, and excluded from social life. The first Roma are interned in concentration camps.
A People Uncounted — The Untold Story of the Roma
This documentary explores the Roma experience across Europe — the Holocaust, centuries of discrimination, and the fight for recognition — through the voices of Roma people themselves. It remains one of the most comprehensive English-language films on Roma history and identity.
1934 — Forced Sterilization
Roma and Sinti begin to be subjected to forced sterilization under the “Law for the Prevention of Hereditarily Diseased Offspring.” The program, which also targets people with disabilities, is part of the Nazi eugenics agenda.
1935 — The Nuremberg Laws
The Nuremberg racial laws, which strip Jews of citizenship and forbid marriage between Jews and “Aryans,” are extended to Roma and Sinti. Reich Interior Minister Wilhelm Frick decrees in January 1936: “Alien races include all other races; in Europe, these are, apart from the Jews, as a rule only the Gypsies.” Roma are forbidden from marrying ethnic Germans and excluded from certain professions and military service. Read more: Gypsies and the Nuremberg Laws →
1936 — Marzahn and the Olympics
Two weeks before the Berlin Olympic Games open, hundreds of Roma and Sinti in Berlin are forcibly relocated to an internment camp in the borough of Marzahn — the first such camp in Nazi Germany. The roundup is designed to “cleanse” Berlin for international visitors. Otto Rosenberg, then nine years old, is among those sent to Marzahn with his family. His memoir A Gypsy in Auschwitz describes this period. Compulsory camps are established in many German cities to concentrate, register, isolate, and exploit Roma labor.
1938 — Mass Arrests
Over 2,000 Sinti and Roma from Germany and Austria — including children as young as twelve — are seized and deported to Dachau, Buchenwald, Sachsenhausen, Ravensbrück, Mauthausen, and other concentration camps. Himmler establishes a central office at the Reich Criminal Police Office in Berlin to coordinate the registration and persecution of Roma across the Reich.
1938 (December) — Himmler’s “Final Solution” Decree
Himmler issues the decree “to tackle the Gypsy question on the basis of race,” aiming for a “final solution to the Gypsy question.” The Research Office for Racial Hygiene is tasked with preparing racial classifications of all Roma and Sinti. By the end of the war, approximately 24,000 “racial expert opinions” will be produced — the bureaucratic basis for deportation to the killing centers.
1940 — Lackenbach Opens
The Lackenbach internment camp opens in Nazi-annexed Austria — the largest such camp for Roma in the Third Reich. Entire families are subjected to forced labor.
1941–1942 — Mass Shootings in the East
As German forces advance into the Soviet Union, the Balkans, and Eastern Europe, mobile killing squads (Einsatzgruppen) and local collaborators carry out mass shootings of Roma alongside Jews. In Serbia, virtually the entire Roma population is murdered. In the occupied Soviet territories, Roma are shot in ravines, forests, and fields — often alongside or immediately after Jewish victims. Many of these killings are poorly documented, and the exact numbers remain unknown.
1942 (December) — The Auschwitz Decree
Himmler orders the deportation of Roma and Sinti from across the Reich and occupied territories to Auschwitz-Birkenau.
→ Marking the point historians identify as when the Final Solution began for the Roma.
1943 (February) — The “Gypsy Camp” Opens
The first transports of Roma and Sinti arrive at Section B-IIe of Auschwitz-Birkenau — the Zigeunerfamilienlager, or “Gypsy Family Camp.” Unlike other sections of Birkenau, families are kept together. Over the next 18 months, approximately 23,000 Roma and Sinti from across Europe are imprisoned here. Conditions are catastrophic: starvation, disease, forced labor, and systematic brutality. Thousands die. Dr. Josef Mengele is assigned to the camp and conducts medical experiments on Roma prisoners, including children. Read more: Gypsies in Auschwitz →
Lina Jackson, age 13, arrives at Auschwitz with her grandparents, siblings, and young niece. She is tattooed with the number Z574. The Z stands for “Zigeuner” — Gypsy. Read her story →
1944 (May 16) — Roma Resistance Day
The SS attempt to liquidate the “Gypsy Camp.” The Roma have been warned. Armed with tools, rocks, and whatever they can find, 600 Roma prisoners resist. The SS withdraw. The camp holds — for now. This date is commemorated annually as Roma Resistance Day. KaskoSan Roma Charity performs their musical drama The 600 Roma on this date each year, telling the story in Romani and English. Read about the 600 Roma →
1944 (May 19) — Settela Steinbach
At Westerbork transit camp in the Netherlands, 245 Roma and Sinti are loaded into cattle cars for deportation to Auschwitz. A Jewish prisoner named Rudolf Breslauer, ordered to film life in the camp, captures seven seconds of a nine-year-old girl peering through the closing door of a railcar. The girl’s face becomes one of the most iconic images of the Holocaust. For fifty years, she is assumed to be Jewish. In the 1990s, Dutch journalist Aad Wagenaar identifies her as Anna Maria “Settela” Steinbach — a Sinti girl from Limburg. She, her mother, two brothers, two sisters, an aunt, two nephews, and a niece were all murdered at Auschwitz-Birkenau. Only her father survived; he died in 1946.
August 2, 1944 — The Night the Roma Died
On the night of August 2–3, 1944, the SS surrounded all remaining inmates of the “Gypsy Family Camp” at Auschwitz-Birkenau. Those men and boys still capable of working had been transported to other camps earlier that day. That night, the women, the children, the elderly, and the sick — over 4,000 Roma and Sinti — were loaded onto trucks, driven to the gas chambers, and murdered.
Accounts from other prisoners say the Roma fought to the very end.
A Jewish survivor in Kraków, meeting a Romani woman named Sally Woodbury decades later, told her: “I can remember the night the Gypsies died.” He said the ovens could not cope with the number of bodies. They burned them in open pits. The smell of flesh lingered for days.
This date is now commemorated internationally as Roma Holocaust Memorial Day.
Roma Holocaust Memorial Day — August 2 →
1944–1945 — Death Marches and Liberation
As Allied and Soviet forces advance, surviving Roma prisoners are transferred between camps or forced onto death marches. Lina Jackson is marched from Ravensbrück toward Dachau, walking barefoot on blistered feet, surviving on raw oatmeal and sour leaves. Her sister Amanda escapes from a transport train. A German woman hides Amanda in her basement and feeds her until the war ends. Lina is liberated at Dachau by American soldiers. A Black American soldier pulls her from under a bunk where she is hiding, gives her a chocolate bar, and cries. Read Lina’s full story →
1945 — Liberation and Silence
The war ends. An estimated 220,000 to 500,000 Roma and Sinti have been murdered — some scholars estimate the number is higher. No Roma survivors are called to testify at the Nuremberg trials. No Roma organizations participate in the post-war reckoning. Many survivors return to find their communities destroyed, their property stolen, their identity still criminalized. In Germany, the pre-war police files on Roma — the same registries used to identify people for deportation — continue to be used by post-war authorities.
1950s–1970s — Continued Exclusion
Roma survivors are largely excluded from reparations programs. German courts rule that pre-1943 persecution of Roma was “legitimate” police action against “asocials,” not racial persecution — effectively endorsing the Nazi classification. The Federal Court of Justice in Germany does not reverse this ruling until 1963. Even after, most Roma survivors receive minimal or no compensation.
1970 — Otto Rosenberg Founds the Berlin Association
Otto Rosenberg, survivor of Auschwitz, Buchenwald, and Bergen-Belsen, founds what becomes the Berlin-Brandenburg State Association of German Sinti and Roma. He chairs the organization until his death in 2001 and receives one of Germany’s highest state decorations in 1998 for his advocacy.
1971 — First World Romani Congress
The first World Romani Congress takes place in London, bringing together Roma delegates from across Europe. The congress adopts the Romani flag (green and blue with a red wheel) and the anthem “Gelem, Gelem” — a song about the Roma experience during the Holocaust. The word “Roma” is adopted as the preferred self-designation in English.
1982 — Germany Acknowledges the Genocide
West German Chancellor Helmut Schmidt formally acknowledges that the Nazi persecution of Roma and Sinti was racially motivated — 37 years after the end of the war. This is the first official recognition by a German government that what happened to Roma was genocide, not criminal policing.
1988 — Ceija Stojka Breaks the Silence
Austrian Lovara Romani writer and artist Ceija Stojka publishes her first memoir, We Live in Secrecy — one of the first accounts by a Roma Holocaust survivor. She was interned at Auschwitz-Birkenau, Ravensbrück, and Bergen-Belsen from age nine to twelve. She goes on to create over a thousand paintings and drawings documenting Roma life before, during, and after the camps.
1997 — Lina Jackson’s Testimony
In Wheeler, Texas, Sinti-Roma survivor Lina Jackson sits for a two-hour interview with the USC Shoah Foundation — one of only four Roma survivor testimonies conducted in English in the Foundation’s archive. She is 67 years old. She tells the story of Auschwitz, the death marches, liberation, finding her father, and building a family of eight children, fourteen grandchildren, and five great-grandchildren. Read her story →
1999 — Otto Rosenberg’s Memoir
Otto Rosenberg publishes A Gypsy in Auschwitz, recorded on tape in 1995 — one of the most accessible English-language Roma Holocaust memoirs. It becomes a bestseller when reissued in 2022.
2012 — Memorial in Berlin
The Memorial to the Sinti and Roma Victims of National Socialism is inaugurated in Berlin, near the Reichstag. Designed by Israeli artist Dani Karavan, the memorial features a circular pool of water with a retractable triangular stone at its center. Fresh flowers are placed on the stone daily. The memorial was first proposed in 1992; it took twenty years to build.
2015 — IHRA Committee Established
The International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance establishes a permanent Committee on the Genocide of the Roma, dedicated to strengthening education, remembrance, and research on the Roma Holocaust. The committee publishes the first comprehensive online teaching resource on the genocide and develops the working definition of antigypsyism adopted by EU institutions.
2023 — Prague Forum Database Launches
The Prague Forum for Romani Histories launches romatestimonies.org on August 2, 2023 — Roma Holocaust Memorial Day. The searchable database of Roma and Sinti testimonies from the Czech Republic and Slovakia, with an interactive map, represents a new model for centering Roma voices in Holocaust scholarship. See our full resources list →
2025 — KaskoSan Goes Viral
KaskoSan Roma Charity’s dance videos reach over 25 million views on TikTok and Facebook, bringing Roma culture to a global audience. Founded by Juice Vamosi and Maria Palmai, KaskoSan continues to perform The 600 Roma, teach the Romani language, and build community across northern England. Read about KaskoSan →
Remember.org launches its Roma and Sinti Holocaust section, thirty-one years after the site was founded. It is built in friendship and respect, appreciating the Roma educators, artists, filmmakers, and communities whose work made it possible. Visit the Roma section →
For Deeper Reading
This timeline provides an overview. For comprehensive chronologies with greater detail, we recommend:
Council of Europe — Chronology of the Roma Genocide — A detailed year-by-year timeline maintained by the Council of Europe’s Roma genocide education program.
The Genocide of European Roma and Sinti — Learning Website — Comprehensive teaching resource with biographical entries, place histories, and over 70 worksheets.
Auschwitz-Birkenau Memorial — Sinti and Roma in Auschwitz — The memorial’s own account of the Roma experience at Auschwitz.
Remember.org — Roma and Sinti Holocaust Resources — Our full annotated list of ten essential sources for educators, students, and researchers.
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