Parallel Path of Gypsies & Palestinian Arabs
Yes I know that .... Palestinian Arabs and Gypsies .... are perjorative monikers
In December of 1938 Heinrich Himmler issued a decree designed to deal with the ‘Gypsy Problem’ titled, 'Combating the Gypsy Plague.’ Himmler, and the Nazi party, felt that the Zigeuner (Gypsies) were dangerous and irreparable lazy thieves. Dangerous because they added nothing to and only stole from society and irreparable 'due to the inner characteristics of the race'. Unlike the Jews, who were seen by the Nazis as an economic and political threat, the Gypsy problem was of a biological and social nature: Gypsies were viewed as a group of people whose blood was of an inferior quality and whose work habits were a detriment to a country in economic turmoil, (Lewy, 2000)
Romani, Roma, Sinti, Travelers, Zigeuner (Gypsies)
The history of the Roma during the time of the Third Reich is a story of racism, persecution, destruction, murder and horror. The holocaust experience of the Roma was ignored until the 1990s when in-depth investigations finally were undertaken by scholars.
The Roma are a forgotten people, quite a complex and varied people, who have learned to fend for themselves and not integrate into whatever society they enter. The origins of the oppression and maltreatment of Gypsies date back to the early fifteenth century when they first appeared in central Europe. The Gypsies were always seen as outsiders by the governing bodies of Europe, and with the establishment in 1899 of the Central Office for Gypsy Affairs in Bavaria the German government began a systematic cataloguing of the Gypsy population, (Lewy, Nazi Persecution of the Gypsys, 2000).
A German ‘racial scientist’, by the name of Dr. Robert Ritter, became the head of an Orwellian government department with a classic Orwellian NEWSPEAK name, Rassenhygienische und bevölkerungsbiologische Forschungsstelle (The Research Institute for Racial Hygiene and Population Biology). Since the degree of one’s racial purity was in many cases a matter of incarceration or extermination, Ritter and his colleagues devised a system that identified a person as one of five possible degrees of race status, (Lewy, 2000)
Racial Scientist, Dr. Robert Ritter, visits a Gypsy Concentration Camp
Beginning in at least 1938 the Roma experienced violent racism, beatings, killings, medical experiments, work camps, extradition, the break-up of families, starvation, and the introduction of disease. From March 1943 on, it was decided the final solution was to send all Gypsies of all racial backgrounds from Austria and Germany to Auschwitz or one of the other larger camps, such as Ravensbrük or Dachau. Authorities murdered tens of thousands of Roma in the German-occupied territories of the Soviet Union and Serbia and thousands more in the killing centers at Belzec, Chelmno, Sobibor, Treblinka, Ravensbruck, Auschwitz-Birkenau, Bergen-Belsen, Buchenwald, Sachsenhausen, Mittelbau-Dora, Natzweiler-Struthof, and Mauthausen.
Historians estimate that the Nazi’s and their allies killed at least 250,000 European Roma. Some scholars estimate that the full death toll of the Roma genocide was 500,000.
But for the sake of this ‘Connecting the Dots’ post I must repeat, the crimes committed against the FORGOTTEN Roma remained unacknowledged all over Europe and the Americas in the first decades after World War II.
Only in late 1965 did the West German compensation law explicitly acknowledge that acts of persecution that took place before 1943 were racially motivated, creating eligibility for most Roma to apply for compensation for their suffering and loss under the Nazi regime. By this time, many of those who became eligible had already died.
In March 1982 Federal Chancellor, Helmut Schmidt, formally stated that German Roma had been victims of the holocaust. A gypsy holocaust scholar writes, “They are still the forgotten victims. Many people are not really aware of the extent to which Roma and Sinti were targeted. Across Europe, Roma and Sinti face such high levels of discrimination, and frequently poverty, it continues to make it harder for these events to be remembered.”
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And now, the Palestinian People of Gaza are forgotten. When did YOU first realize they ACTUALLY existed? When did I? October 7th, 2023
Israeli Prime Minister Golda Meir addressing the Israeli public Credit: AFP
In 1969 Israeli Prime Minister Golda Meir stated, “There is no such thing as Palestinians. They do not exist.”
The Arab world has Forsaken the Palestine Cause
- Imad K. Harb Al Jazeera, May 14, 2023.
Not only are calls for democratic change stymied in Arab countries, but expressions of solidarity with Palestinians are also being met with vicious repression, as regimes seek to control the narrative of the Palestinian cause.
The aim of this monopolisation of how the Palestinian struggle is addressed in public is to cover up the fact that Arab regimes have increasingly abandoned making any significant political effort to help the Palestinians. Instead, official support has been limited to deceptive rhetoric and symbolic gestures so as to avoid confrontation with Israel and its backer, the United States. While this has been detrimental to the Palestinian struggle and popular Arab solidarity with it, it has enabled Arab governments to devote their energies to their own survival amid the myriad of political, economic, and social ailments they face.
In 1977, Egyptian President Anwar Sadat quipped that Washington held “99 percent of the cards” in the Middle East.
Seeking to maintain good relations with the superpower, Arab regimes allowed Washington – Israel’s main supplier of weapons and military support – to take control of peace efforts in the region. This left no space for Arab leaders to positively impact decision-making regarding the Palestinians.
The normalisation process between some Arab states and Israel that was shepherded by the Trump administration is just another iteration of the gradual Arab abandonment of the Palestine cause. It culminated in the so-called Abraham Accords, which despite all the promises of “benefits” for the Palestinians, held nothing of value for them or their national aspirations.
In fact, the Arab normalisation with Israel has only emboldened the Zionist state in its oppression of the Palestinians and paved the way for the de facto annexation of the occupied West Bank.
The escalating settler violence against the Palestinian people and the open calls by Israeli officials for ethnic cleansing are a reflection of how empowered and confident Israel feels that it can commit war crimes and crimes against humanity with complete impunity.
The most that Arab governments have done in response to Israeli aggression is issue futile condemnations and protests, abandoned by Arab leaders, the Palestinians find themselves with no apparent allies in their struggle against an increasingly brutal occupation and apartheid. The US-brokered “peace process” is clearly a farce and international institutions, such as the United Nations, remain too weak – or rather intentionally weakened by the US – to take any meaningful action on their behalf.
Heinrich Himmler and Benjamin Netanyahu and Joseph Biden… Nazis and ZioNazis live on. Different people, same story.
All are Punish’d