Editing Romani Holocaust (section)

=== Aryan racial purity ===
{{Main|Nazi racial theories|Nazi eugenics|Racial policy of Nazi Germany}}
[[File:Bundesarchiv R 165 Bild-244-71, Dr. Robert Ritter mit alter Frau und Polizist.jpg|thumb|Romani woman with a German police officer and Nazi psychologist [[Robert Ritter]]|381x381px]]
For centuries, Romani tribes had been subject to [[Antiziganism|antiziganist]] persecution and humiliation in Europe.{{sfn|Hancock|2002|}} They were [[social stigma|stigmatized]] as habitual criminals, social misfits, and [[Vagabond (person)|vagabonds]].{{sfn|Hancock|2002|}} When Hitler came to national power in 1933, anti-Gypsy laws in Germany remained in effect. Under the "Law against Dangerous Habitual Criminals" of November 1933, the police arrested many Roma, along with others the Nazis viewed as "asocial"—prostitutes, beggars, homeless vagrants, and alcoholics—and imprisoned them in internment camps.

After Hitler's rise to power, legislation against the Romani was increasingly based upon a rhetoric of racism. Policy originally based on the premise of "fighting crime" was redirected to "fighting a people".<ref name=ReferenceA /> Targeted groups were no longer determined on juridical grounds, but instead, were victims of racialized policy.<ref name=ReferenceA />

The Department of Racial Hygiene and Population Biology began to experiment on Romani to determine criteria for their racial classification.{{sfn|Tyrnauer|1992|p=19}}

The Nazis established the Racial Hygiene and Demographic Biology Research Unit (''Rassenhygienische und Bevölkerungsbiologische Forschungsstelle'', Department L3 of the Reich Department of Health) in 1936. Headed by [[Robert Ritter]] and his assistant [[Eva Justin]], this unit was mandated to conduct an in-depth study of the "Gypsy question (''Zigeunerfrage'')" and to provide data required for formulating a new Reich "Gypsy law". After extensive fieldwork in the spring of 1936, consisting of interviews and medical examinations to determine the racial classification of the Roma, the unit decided that most Romani, whom they had concluded were not of "pure Gypsy blood", posed a danger to German racial purity and should be deported or eliminated. No decision was made regarding the remainder (about 10 percent of the total Romani population of Europe), primarily [[Sinti]] and Lalleri tribes living in Germany. Several suggestions were made. ''[[Reichsführer-SS]]'' [[Heinrich Himmler]] suggested deporting the Romani to a remote [[Indian reservation|reservation]], as the United States had done to Native Americans, where "pure Gypsies" could continue their nomadic lifestyle unhindered. According to him:

{{blockquote|The aim of measures taken by the State to defend the homogeneity of the German nation must be the physical separation of Gypsydom from the German nation, the prevention of [[miscegenation]], and finally, the regulation of the way of life of pure and part-Gypsies. The necessary legal foundation can only be created through a Gypsy Law, which prevents further intermingling of blood, and which regulates all the most pressing questions which go together with the existences of Roma in the living space of the German nation.<ref>{{cite book |last1=Burleigh |first1=Michael |last2=Wippermann |first2=Wolfgang |year=1991 |title=The Racial State: Germany 1933–1945 |url=https://archive.org/details/racialstate00mich |url-access=registration |publisher=[[Cambridge University Press]] |page=[https://archive.org/details/racialstate00mich/page/121 121] |isbn=978-0-521-39802-2}}</ref>}}

Himmler took special interest into the "Aryan" origins of the Romani and distinguished between "settled" (assimilated) and "unsettled" Romani. In May 1942 an order was issued according to which all "Gypsies" living in the Balkans were to be arrested.

Although the Nazi regime never produced the "Gypsy Law" desired by Himmler,<ref name=USHMM_1>{{cite web |title=Sinti and Roma: Victims of the Nazi Era |publisher=[[United States Holocaust Memorial Museum]] |url=http://www.ushmm.org/m/pdfs/2000926-Roma-and-Sinti.pdf}}</ref> policies and decrees were passed which discriminated against the Romani people.{{sfn|Longerich|2012|p=230}} Roma were classified as "asocial" and "criminals" by the Nazi regime.{{sfn|Longerich|2012|p=229}} From 1933 on, Roma were placed in [[Nazi concentration camps|concentration camps]].<ref>{{Cite book|date=1 January 1972 |title=America's Uncounted People |publisher=[[The National Academies Press]] |doi=10.17226/20212 |isbn=978-0-309-02026-8}}</ref> After 1937, the Nazis started to carry out racial examinations on the Roma living in Germany.{{sfn|Longerich|2012|p=230}} In 1938, Himmler issued an order regarding the 'Gypsy question' which explicitly mentioned "race" which stated that it was "advisable to deal with the Gypsy question on the basis of race."{{sfn|Longerich|2012|p=230}} The decree made it law to register all Roma (including ''Mischlinge'' – mixed race), as well as those people who "travel around in a Gypsy fashion" over the age of six.{{sfn|Longerich|2012|p=230}} Although the Nazis believed that the Roma had originally been Aryan, over time, the Nazis said, they became mixed-race and so were classified as "non-Aryan" and of an "alien race".{{sfn|Lewy|2000|p=36}}