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Published online by Cambridge University Press: 10 January 2020
Following the passing of the “Law for the Prevention of Offspring with Genetic Diseases” in July 1933, sterilization became a means to tighten the borders of the German ethnic community against outsiders, including Sinti and Roma. For a while, Sinti soldiers were spared sterilization. After Himmler's Auschwitz decree of December 1942, they were deported to Auschwitz-Birkenau. They escaped the extermination of other Sinti and Roma in the Zigeunerlager on the night of August 2, 1944, only because they represented a human shield deployable against advancing Russian troops. Still, the Reich insisted on sterilizing them and their families before placing them in front of enemy guns because they were still considered “internal enemies.” As a result, some forty Sinti men and boys were sterilized by Dr. Franz Lucas in the men's camp in Ravensbrück in January 1945. Focusing on their story challenges Lucas's portrayal as the victim of SS practices, a narrative that long benefitted from the testimony of non-Sinti prisoners. In addition, compensation agencies in Germany underestimated the ongoing effects of psychological trauma resulting from sterilization. Sinti victims who were subjected to an “expert assessment” of their blood purity before war's end underwent a renewed assessment of their productivity for German society after the war.
Nach der Verabschiedung des “Gesetzes zur Verhütung erbkranken Nachwuchses” im Juli 1933 wurde die Sterilisation ein Mittel, die Grenzen der deutschen “Volksgemeinschaft” gegen Ausgeschlossene, darunter Sinti und Roma, abzudichten. Einige Zeit hindurch entgingen Sinti, die als Soldaten dienten, der Sterilisation. Nach Himmlers Auschwitz-Erlass vom Dezember 1942 wurden sie nach Auschwitz-Birkenau deportiert. Der Auslöschung der anderen Sinti und Roma im dortigen “Zigeunerlager” in der Nacht des 2. August 1944 entgingen sie nur, weil sie einen menschlichen Schutzschild darstellten, der gegen die vorrückenden sowjetischen Truppen in Stellung gebracht werden konnte. Dennoch bestand das Reich darauf, sie und ihre Familien zu sterilisieren, bevor sie dem feindlichen Feuer ausgesetzt wurden, da sie weiterhin als “innere Feinde” angesehen wurden. Daher wurden etwa vierzig Männer und Knaben im Männerlager Ravensbrück im Januar 1945 durch Dr. Franz Lucas sterilisiert. Ein näherer Blick auf ihre Geschichte stellt die Darstellung Lucas' als Opfer der SS-Praktiken in Frage, ein Narrativ, das sich lange auf die Zeugenaussagen nicht den Sinti angehöriger Insassen stützen konnte. Darüber hinaus unterschätzten die Entschädigungsbehörden in Deutschland die anhaltenden Wirkungen des psychologischen Traumas aufgrund der Sterilisation. Sinti-Opfer, die vor Kriegsende einem “Expertengutachten” über ihre “Blutreinheit” unterzogen worden waren, erlebten nach dem Krieg eine neuerliche Begutachtung ihrer Produktivität für die deutsche Gesellschaft.
I am grateful to Sabine Hildebrandt, Adrienne Harris, Stephen Silverstein, and my two anonymous reviewers for their perceptive comments, to Werner Renz at the Fritz Bauer Institut, and to the archivists at Ravensbrück Gedenkstätte for providing a copy of the transport list of the 213 Sinti and Roma prisoners at the heart of the following remarks. Visits to archives were supported in part by funds from the vice provost for research, Baylor University.
1 All translations are my own unless otherwise indicated, including court hearings and interrogations. Terms such as Gypsy, Gypsies, Aryan, blood, and Mischling (mixed-blood) derive from racial categories and are social fabrications. Such racial terms quote discourse that both preceded and outlasted the Nazi era. If they appear without quotation marks or italics, it is only for the sake of readability. My default remains “Sinti and Roma,” where “Roma” refers to persons speaking Romani who either settled east of Germany or migrated to Germany from eastern and southeastern Europe, and “Sinti” refers to the largest population group of Roma persons in German-speaking Europe whose linguistic roots are in India's Sind region. “Sinti” refers to the particular soldiers and their families whose persecution I describe. On naming in postwar racial assessments, see Karola Fings, “Die gutachtlichen Äußerungen der Rassenhygienischen Forschungsstelle und ihr Einfluss auf die nationalsozialistische Zigeunerpolitik,” in Zwischen Erziehung und Vernichtung. Zigeunerpolitik und Zigeunerforschung im Europa des 20. Jahrhunderts, ed. Michael Zimmermann (Stuttgart: Fritz Steiner, 2007), 425–26.
2 The figure 4,200–4,300 derives from Kubica, Helena and Setkiewicz, Piotr, “The Last Stage of the Functioning of the Zigeunerlager in the Birkenau Camp (May–August 1944),” Memoria 10 (2018): 15Google Scholar (https://view.joomag.com/memoria-en-no-10-july-2018/0531301001532506629).
3 Wagner, Jens-Christian, “Sinti und Roma als Häftlinge im KZ Mittelbau-Dora,” in Die Verfolgung der Sinti und Roma im Nationalsozialismus: Beiträge zur Geschichte der nationalsozialistischen Verfolgung in Norddeutschland, Heft 14, ed. Neuengamme, KZ-Gedenkstätte (Bremen: Edition Temmen, 2012)Google Scholar is an exception, although he examines not sterilization but the fate of fifteen hundred men and boys in the Harzungen and Ellrich-Juliushütte and Dora camps.
Major studies include Zimmermann, Michael, Rassenutopie und Genozid: die nationalsozialistische “Lösung der Zigeunerfrage” (Hamburg: Christians, 1996)Google Scholar; Bock, Gisela, Zwangssterilisation im Nationalsozialismus: Studien zur Rassenpolitik und Geschlechterpolitik (Münster: MV Wissenschaft, 2010), esp. 297–364Google Scholar; Riechert, Hansjörg, Im Schatten von Auschwitz: Die nationalsozialistische Sterilisationspolitik gegenüber Sinti und Roma (Münster: Waxmann, 1995)Google Scholar; and Krokowski, Heike, Die Last der Vergangenheit: Auswirkungen nationalsozialistischer Verfolgung auf deutsche Sinti (Frankfurt: Campus, 2001)Google Scholar.
The process of survivors seeking compensation has also been documented in depth. See Martin Feyen, “‘Wie die Juden?’ Verfolgte ‘Zigeuner’ zwischen Bürokratie und Symbolpolitik,” and Goltermann, Svenja, “Kausalitätsfragen: Psychisches Leid und psychiatrisches Wissen in der Entschädigung,” in Die Praxis der Wiedergutmachung. Geschichte, Erfahrung und Wirkung in Deutschland und Israel, ed. Frei, Norbert, Brunner, José, and Goschler, Constantin (Göttingen: Wallstein, 2009)Google Scholar; and von dem Knesebeck, Julia, The Roma Struggle for Compensation in Post-War Germany (Hertfordshire: University of Hertfordshire Press, 2011)Google Scholar.
4 See references to Lucas in Zimmermann, Rassenutopie und Genozid, 341, 346, 358. Lewy, Guenter, The Nazi Persecution of the Gypsies (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2000)Google Scholar mentions Lucas's involvement briefly (321). Strebel, Bernhard, Das KZ Ravensbrück: Die Geschichte eines Lagerkomplexes (Paderborn: Schöningh, 2003)Google Scholar considers Lucas's involvement in sterilization the only thing clouding the reputation of a doctor whose scruples seem to have increased over the course of the war (245–46, 314, 467, 527). Danckwortt, Barbara considers Lucas together with Drs. Sonntag, Walter, Schumann, Horst, Clauberg, Carl, and Treite, Percy in “Sinti und Roma als Häftlinge im KZ Ravensbrück,” in Die Verfolgung der Sinti und Roma im Nationalsozialismus: Beiträge zur Geschichte der nationalsozialistischen Verfolgung in Norddeutschland, Heft 14, ed. Neuengamme, KZ-Gedenkstätte (Bremen: Edition Temmen, 2012), 86, 96Google Scholar. See also Martin, Dunja, “Menschenversuche im Krankenrevier des KZ Ravensbrück,” in Frauen in Konzentrationslagern: Bergen-Belsen, Ravensbrück, ed. Füllberg-Stolberg, Claus et al. (Bremen: Edition Temmen, 1994), 103Google Scholar.
More recently, Karola Fings mentions Lucas in passing and in conjunction with Clauberg, Carl in Sinti und Roma. Geschichte einer Minderheit (Munich: Beck, 2016), 79Google Scholar. Weindling's, PaulVictims and Survivors of Nazi Human Experiments: Science and Suffering in the Holocaust (London: Bloomsbury, 2015)Google Scholar mentions Lucas's Ravensbrück colleague Percy Treite as involved in sterilizations, but not Lucas himself (137–38).
5 For several Sinti accounts and references, see Danckwortt, “Sinti und Roma,” esp. 92–98, and Schikkora, Christa, Kontinuitäten der Ausgrenzung: “Asoziale” Häftlinge im Frauen-Konzentrationslager Ravensbrück (Berlin: Metropol, 2001)Google Scholar. See also Salvesen, Sylvia's short chapter on sterilization in her memoir Forgive–But Do Not Forget (London: Hutchinson, 1958), 149–51Google Scholar.
6 Zimmermann, Rassenutopie und Genozid, 493–94; Danckwortt, “Sinti und Roma,” 85.
7 As Browning, Christopher notes: “If historians cannot find ‘smoking pistol’ documents, they must look for pattern and fit among the evidence that is available,” in Collected Memories: Holocaust History and Postwar Testimony (Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 2003), 36Google Scholar. Other sources of valuable information include the investigative material as part of the unsuccessful trials against Kripo agents, against Ritter, and against his research coworkers, spanning four decades from 1948 to 1989 (see Lewy, The Nazi Persecution of the Gypsies, 378–85), as well as the trial of former Zigeunerlager block leader Ernst-August König in Siegen from 1987 to 1991.
8 Listed in the GzVeN as the first of nine categories of genetic disease that justified sterilization, congenital feeblemindedness was cited in more than half the referrals of persons, including Sinti and Roma, to the genetic councils. See Friedlander, Henry, “The Exclusion and Murder of the Disabled,” in Social Outsiders in Nazi Germany, ed. Gellately, Robert and Stoltzfus, Nathan (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2001), 149Google Scholar.
9 Zimmermann, Rassenutopie und Genozid, 380.
10 On Himmler's “Runderlaß zur Bekämpfung der Zigeunerplage” (Directive for Controlling the Gypsy Plague) of December 8, 1938, see Zimmermann, Rassenutopie und Genozid, 126, 148–49.
11 Krokowski, Die Last der Vergangenheit, 26; Fings, “Die gutachtlichen Äußerungen der Rassenhygienischen Forschungsstelle und ihr Einfluss auf die nationalsozialistische Zigeunerpolitik,” 429.
12 Fings, “Die gutachtlichen Äußerungen,” 433–35.
13 Ibid., 427–29.
14 Patrick Wagner, “Kriminalprävention qua Massenmord: Die gesellschaftsbiologische Konzeption der NS-Kriminalpolizei und ihre Bedeutung für die Zigeunerverfolgung,” in Zimmermann, Zwischen Erziehung und Vernichtung, 382–83.
15 Wagner, “Kriminalprävention qua Massenmord,” 389.
16 Ibid., 387–88.
17 Fings, Karola, “A ‘Wannsee Conference’ on the Extermination of the Gypsies? New Research Findings Regarding 15 January 1943 and the Auschwitz Decree,” Dapim: Studies on the Holocaust 27, no. 3 (2013): 179Google Scholar.
18 Ibid., 181.
19 Due to influence from Ahnenerbe (SS Office for Ancestral Heritage), Himmler wanted to research the “pure” Gypsies of Indian descent for signs of Aryan traits. However, the Zigeunersprecher (Gypsy elders) who were forced to refer “pure Gypsies” to the Nazi leadership identified only between two and three hundred to add to the RHF's existing 2,096 assessments of “purity.” See Fings, “Die gutachtlichen Äußerungen der Rassenhygienischen Forschungsstelle und ihr Einfluss auf die nationalsozialistische Zigeunerpolitik,” 449.
20 Fings, “A ‘Wannsee Conference,’” 176–78. Such “makers of extermination policy” as Hans Ehlich of the SD (Sicherheitsdienst, Security Service) and George Harders of the RuSHA (Rasse- und Siedlungshauptamt, Main Office for Race and Resettlement) involved in the Wannsee Conference and follow-up Final Solution discussions of degrees of blood purity in Jewish Mischlinge were also present at a meeting on January 15, 1943, to discuss how to implement Himmler's decree. Fings sees it as a sign that the “gypsy question” was to be decided on that day, as both Ehlich and Harders were experienced killers of European Jews and organizers of mass sterilization.
21 Bock, Zwangssterilisation im Nationalsozialismus, 346.
22 Zimmermann, Rassenutopie und Genozid, 106.
23 Ibid., 376; Riechert, Im Schatten von Auschwitz, 135.
24 Decrees of November 22, 1937, and February 11, 1941, were reinforced by a discharge directive of July 10, 1942. See Riechert, Hansjörg, “Im Gleichschritt … Sinti und Roma in Feldgrau,” Militärgeschichtliche Mitteilungen 53 (1994): 384–87Google Scholar. See also Bock, Zwangssterilisation im Nationalsozialismus, 385, and Zimmermann, Rassenutopie und Genozid, 197–99.
25 Zimmermann, Rassenutopie und Genozid, 200–07.
26 Fings, “Die gutachtlichen Äußerungen,” 448.
27 Ibid., 451–53.
28 Major roundups occurred on May 16, 1940, in Hamburg, Cologne, and other major cities pursuant to Himmler's order of April 27, 1940. Sinti were excused from this first major deportation if they had fathers or sons in military service, owned certain properties, or were married to full-blooded Germans (Zimmermann, Rassenutopie und Genozid, 172–73).
29 For exceptions, see Fings, “A ‘Wannsee Conference,’” 187–89.
30 Tadeusz Szymanski, Danuta Szymanska, and Tadeusz Snieszko, “Das ‘Spital’ im Zigeuner-Familienlager in Auschwitz-Birkenau,” in Auschwitz-Hefte: Texte der polnischen Zeitschrift Lekarski, Przegladüber historische, psychische und medizinische Aspekte des Lebens und Sterbens in Auschwitz, ed. Hamburger Institut für Sozialforschung, trans. August, Jochen, et al. (Weinheim and Basel: Beltz, 1987), 200Google Scholar.
31 Szymanski, Szymanska, and Snieszko, “Das ‘Spital’ im Zigeuner-Familienlager,” 206.
32 Höss, Rudolf, Death Dealer: Memoirs of the SS Kommandant at Auschwitz (Boston: Da Capo Press, 1996), 135–37Google Scholar.
33 Kubica and Setkiewicz, “The Last Stage,” 10.
34 The explanation offered by Kubica and Setkiewicz challenges the long-accepted notion, offered by inmate Tadeusz Joachimowski, that on the evening of May 16, 1944, the first attempt that SS guards made at extermination was thwarted by forewarned prisoners who refused to leave their barracks. See, for example, Czech, Danuta, Kalendarium der Ereignisse im Konzentrationslager Auschwitz-Birkenau 1939–1945 (Hamburg: Rowohlt, 1989), 774–75Google Scholar.
35 Zimmermann, Rassenutopie und Genozid, 341.
36 Czech, Kalendarium der Ereignisse im Konzentrationslager Auschwitz-Birkenau 1939–1945, 777.
37 “Vernehmung des Zeugen Bruno Stein” (“Hearing of Witness Bruno Stein”), April 22, 1965, Der Auschwitz-Prozeß. Tonbandmitschnitte, Protokolle, Dokumente, ed. Fritz Bauer Institut Frankfurt am Main and Staatliches Museum Auschwitz-Birkenau (Berlin: DirectMedia/Zeno.org, 2007), DVD-ROM, 31,964–65. Subsequent transcripts of witness and defendant hearings are rendered in English and use the page numbers of the DVD-ROM, whereas Der Auschwitz-Prozeß is shortened to AP. See also “Hearing of Defendant Franz Lucas, January 27, 1964,” AP, 4,873.
38 “Hearing of Stein,” AP, 31,937.
39 Zimmermann, Rassenutopie und Genozid, 342–43.
40 Kubica and Setkiewicz, “The Last Stage”; Zimmermann, Rassenutopie und Genozid, 339–44; Czech, Kalendarium der Ereignisse im Konzentrationslager Auschwitz-Birkenau 1939–1945, 837–38.
41 For Lucas's denial, see “Hearing of Lucas,” AP, 4,873, 4,877. Zimmermann lists Josef Kramer, Johann Schwarzhuber, and Otto Moll among the murderers (Rassenutopie und Genozid, 342–43), but Josef Mengele and Pery Broad also played major roles. See “Der Fall Pery Broad 1959–1993,” in “Schonung für die Mörder”: Die justizielle Behandlung der NS-Völkermordverbrechen und ihre Bedeutung für die Gesellschaft und die Rechtsstruktur in Deutschland—Das Beispiel der Sinti und Roma, ed. Herbert Heuß and Arnold Roßberg (Heidelberg: Zentralrat Deutscher Sinti und Roma, 2015).
42 Fritz Bauer Institut (FBI), Frankfurt am Main, Lucas file, letter from Karl Gerber to Frankfurt am Main Staatsanwaltschaft, January 29, 1964. See also Zimmermann, Rassenutopie und Genozid, 347.
43 Biographical information derives from the “Straftaten des Angeklagten Dr. Lucas,” Der Frankfurter Auschwitz-Prozess (1963–1965): Kommentierte Quellenedition, ed. Werner Renz and Raphael Gross (Frankfurt am Main: Campus, 2013), 893–94. Dates for transfers derive from Wehrmachtauskunftsstelle (WASt, Berlin), File of Lucas, Franz (September 15, 1911).
44 One of the SS-Weltanschauung lectures offered during Lucas's stint in Nuremberg was “Racial Hygiene and Population Politics of the National Socialist State” (BArch Freiburg, RS 5/903, July 9, 1943). On the impact of such indoctrinations, see Browning, Christopher, Ordinary Men: Reserve Police Battalion 101 and the Final Solution in Poland (New York: Harper, 1993), esp. 177–82Google Scholar.
45 Hördler, Stefan, Ordnung und Inferno. Das KZ-System im letzten Kriegsjahr (Göttingen: Wallstein, 2015), 168Google Scholar.
46 Franz Lucas, “Symptomatologie, Diagnose und Therapie der Extrauteringravidität” (dissertation, Danzig Medical Academy, 1942), 39 (http://d-nb.info/570860911). Lucas's dissertation analyzed 306 ectopic pregnancies of women treated at Danzig's Women's Clinic from May 1934 through December 1940.
47 Lifton, Robert Jay, The Nazi Doctors: Medical Killing and the Psychology of Genocide (New York: Basic Books, 1986), 42Google Scholar.
48 “Urteil des Landgerichts Frankfurt am Main in der Strafsache gegen Lucas vom 8. Oktober 1970,” in Gross and Renz, Frankfurter Auschwitz-Prozess, 1,329–53.
49 Section 226 (“Causing grievous bodily harm”) of the German Criminal Code reads: “(1) If the injury results in the victim losing his sight in one eye or both eyes, his hearing, his speech or his ability to procreate … the penalty shall be imprisonment from one to ten years.” Section 78 (“Limitation period”) limits the imposition of punishment to “ten years in the case of offenses punishable by a maximum term of imprisonment of more than five years but no more than ten years.” “Bundesministerium der Justiz und für Verbraucherschutz, German Criminal Code,” trans. Michael Bohlander (https://www.gesetze-im-internet.de/englisch_stgb/englisch_stgb.html#p1867; accessed November 4, 2018). With respect to sterilization and other bodily abuses that he caused short of murder, Lucas was thus beyond the range of prosecution after April 1955.
50 “Hearing of Witness Paul Morgenstern, July 16, 1964,” AP, 12,445–46.
51 Bundesarchiv (BArch) Berlin-Lichterfelde, Nachlass Albert und Erika Buchmann, NY 4178/54, Erika Buchmann et al., “Erklärung,” June 20, 1945.
52 Buchmann, Erika, Die Frauen von Ravensbrück (East Berlin: Kongress, 1959), 88Google Scholar.
53 Schleswig-Holsteinisches Landesarchiv (SHLA), Abt. 352 Itzehoe Nr. 806, Itzehoe State Attorney Völker, “Vermerk,” November 28, 1963.
54 Salvesen, Forgive–But Do Not Forget, 168.
55 United States Holocaust Memorial Museum (USHMM), Record Group 59.016M, Judge Advocate General's Office, War Crimes Case Files, Second World War, WO 235/318, Ravensbrueck Case, Gerda Schröder, deposition, September 25, 1946. Schröder recalled that Treite's sterilizations consisted of tying or excising part of the Fallopian tubes of “mostly debilitated German women and gypsies and gypsy children aged 12 to 14 years, perhaps also some younger ones.”
56 SHLA, Abt. 352 Itzehoe Nr. 806, Gerda Schröder, interrogation, August 7, 1963.
57 Helm, Sarah, Ravensbrück: Life and Death in Hitler's Concentration Camp for Women (New York: Doubleday, 2014), 541Google Scholar.
58 FBI, Lucas file, letter from Schwester Felixina (i.e., Margareta Armbruster) to Frankfurt State Attorney's Office, January 3, 1963.
59 SHLA, Abt. 352 Itzehoe Nr. 806, Margareta Armbruster, interrogation, July 30, 1963.
60 SHLA, Abt. 352 Itzehoe Nr. 806, Franz Lucas, interrogation, November 18, 1963.
61 Tillion, Germaine, Ravensbrück (Geneva: Editions Famot, 1976), 110Google Scholar. Based on Tillion's eyewitness perspective, historians Barbara Danckwortt and Dunja Martin also mention Lucas's role in sterilizing women at Ravensbrück, including Sinti and Roma children younger than ten years old (see note 4). Martin thus reverses the earlier assertion from her master's thesis that Lucas had refused to sterilize; see “Die Funktion des Krankenreviers in NS-Konzentrationslagern am Beispiel des Frauenkonzentrationslagers Ravensbrück” (master's thesis, Hannover, 1994), 150.
62 “Hearing of the Witness Margareta Armbruster, January 11, 1965,” AP, 27,624–25.
63 Finkelmeier, Conrad, Die braune Apokalypse (Weimar: Aufbau, 1947), 139Google Scholar.
64 FBI, Lucas file, letter of Karl Gerber to Frankfurt am Main Staatsanwaltschaft, January 29, 1964.
65 Ibid.
66 Ibid.
67 FBI, Lucas file, Conrad Finkelmeier, interrogation, March 10, 1964.
68 Ibid.
69 “Hearing of Gerber, January 11, 1965,” AP, 27,547–51.
70 Stein reported that Suhren was the one who handed out the declaration of voluntary sterilization for release from Ravensbrück and that the report leader who announced the offer during the morning roll call mentioned the name Dr. Lucas. See Langbein, Hermann, Der Auschwitz-Prozeß: Eine Dokumentation, vol. 2 (Frankfurt: Verlag Neue Kritik, 1995 [1965]), 614–15Google Scholar.
71 Strebel, Das KZ Ravensbrück, 258.
72 SHLA, Abt. 352.3 Kiel Nr. 16,444, Carl Clauberg, statement, September 4, 1956. Clauberg's line of reasoning invites comparison with the logic popular among defense lawyers such as Hans Laternser that selecting prisoners on the ramp constituted a saving action.
73 Zimmermann estimates that at least 140 Sinti and Roma women and girls became victims of the Clauberg sterilization procedure without anesthesia (Zimmermann, Rassenutopie und Genozid, 357).
74 Schröder corroborates the date of Clauberg's visit but indicates nothing about Goebel working in his stead (Schröder, Deposition, September 25, 1946).
75 SHLA, Abt. 352.3 Kiel Nr. 16,446, State Attorney Albrecht, “Vermerk,” December 14, 1956.
76 “Hearing of Stein,” AP, 31,921–27, 31,940–45, 31,957.
77 Ibid., 31,962.
78 FBI, Lucas file, Heinrich Schenk, statement, August 18, 1960.
79 SHLA, Abt. 352 Itzehoe Nr. 806, Heinrich Schenk, interrogation, July 10, 1963.
80 Schenk, interrogation, July 10, 1963.
81 Ibid. The only exception Schenk could give was hearsay knowledge of the role of all the camp doctors, including Lucas, in selecting prisoners for death.
82 FBI, Lucas file, Franz Lucas, interrogation, November 15, 1961.
83 SHLA, Abt. 352 Itzehoe Nr. 806, Franz Lucas, interrogation, November 18, 1963.
84 “Magisterial interrogation of Franz Lucas, Frankfurt am Main, February 14, 1962,” AP 4,205.
85 SHLA, Abt. 352 Itzehoe Nr. 806, Lucas, interrogation, November 18, 1963.
86 “Hearing of Morgenstern,” AP, 12,445–59. Morgenstern's wife declared that a doctor unknown to her at the time sterilized some seventy women, including her (SHLA, Abt. 352.3, Nr. 16,447, Elma Morgenstern, statement, March 1, 1957). Five months after Morgenstern's appearance in court, the Sinto Max Friedrich testified that the Sinti veterans, himself included, had been transferred to Ravensbrück for the purpose of sterilization and release, but he made no mention of Lucas (“Hearing of Witness Max Friedrich, December 11, 1964,” AP, 26,861–62).
87 “Hearing of Morgenstern,” 12,459.
88 Indeed, the Sachsenhausen transport list of March 3, 1945, records the birth year of Josef Höllenreiner as 1933.
89 “Hearing of Morgenstern,” 12,459–60.
90 Ibid., 12,462–66.
91 “Hearing of Stein,” 31,966.
92 Ibid., 31,967.
93 SHLA, Abt. 352.3, Nr. 16,447, Ella S., statement, May 18, 1957; letter of Ella S. to Kiel Staatsanwaltschaft, June 3, 1957. January 8, 1945 was the second of two days on which, as she claimed, seventy-one women and girls were sterilized.
94 SHLA, Abt. 352.3, Nr. 16,447, letter of Karl D. to Kiel Staatsanwaltschaft, January 3, 1957.
95 SHLA, Abt. 352.3, Nr. 16,447, Karl D., statement, February 19, 1957.
96 SHLA, Abt. 352.3, Nr. 16,447, Josef Höllenreiner, statement, January 22, 1957.
97 Toby Sonneman, Shared Sorrows: A Gypsy family remembers the Holocaust (Hertfordshire: University of Hertfordshire Press, 2002), 169–70. The family had hoped that Manfred's sterilization could be reversed, but this was not the case (174). Manfred is likely the twelve-year-old recorded as “Josef” on the transport list.
98 Zimmermann, Rassenutopie und Genozid (346, 358) gives the number of 213 persons to be sterilized, but mistakenly assumes that Lucas came to Ravensbrück directly from Auschwitz in early 1945.
99 Guth, Karin, Z 3105. Der Sinto Walter Winter überlebt den Holocaust (Hamburg: VSA-Verlag, 2009), 133Google Scholar.
100 Helgard Kramer, “Tätertypologien,” in NS-Täter aus interdisziplinärer Perspektive, ed. Helgard Kramer (Munich: Meidenbauer, 2006), 287.
101 Sinti did occasionally receive better positions based on their ability to communicate with their captors. This was the case in Mittelbau-Dora due to the smaller number of German-speaking criminal and political prisoners in functionary positions (Wagner, “Sinti und Roma als Häftlinge im KZ Mittelbau-Dora,” 103).
102 Krokowski, Die Last der Vergangenheit, 67–68.
103 Bloxham, Donald, Genocide on Trial: War Crimes Trials and the Formation of Holocaust History and Memory (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2001), 89CrossRefGoogle Scholar.
104 Ibid., 93–94.
105 Ibid., 107.
106 Marrus, Michael R., “The Nuremberg Doctors’ Trial and the Limitations of Context,” in Atrocities on Trial: Historical Perspectives on the Politics of Prosecuting War Crimes, ed. Heberer, Patricia and Matthäus, Jürgen (Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 2008), 112–13Google Scholar.
107 Zimmermann, Rassenutopie und Genozid, 23.
108 Wagner, “Sinti und Roma als Häftlinge im KZ Mittelbau-Dora,” 125.
109 Bloxham, Genocide on Trial, 186, 196.
110 Lewy, The Nazi Persecution of the Gypsies, 378–85.
111 Bock, Zwangssterilisation im Nationalsozialismus, 359.
112 Lewy, The Nazi Persecution of the Gypsies, 378.
113 No Sinti and Roma, for example, testified in the Dachau Dora trial of 1947 (Wagner, “Sinti und Roma als Häftlinge im KZ Mittelbau-Dora,” 102).
114 Hohmann, Joachim, “‘Persilscheine’ für den Schreibtischtäter. Das Beispiel des NS-Kriminalbiologen Dr. Dr. Robert Ritter,” Historical Social Research/Historische Sozialforschung 19, no. 4 (1994): 54Google Scholar.
115 Ibid., 56–58.
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117 Saupe, Achim, “Zur Kritik des Zeugen in der Konstitutionsphase der modernen Geschichtswissenschaft,” in Die Geburt des Zeitzeugen nach 1945, ed. Sabrow, Martin and Frei, Norbert (Göttingen: Wallstein, 2012), 75Google Scholar.
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119 Krokowski, Die Last der Vergangenheit, 17–19.
120 Petersen, P. and Liedtke, U., “Zur Entschädigung zwangssterilisierter Zigeuner: Sozialpsychologische Einflüsse auf psychische Störungen nationalsozialistisch Verfolgter,” Der Nervenarzt 42, no. 4 (1971): 199Google Scholar.
121 Knesebeck, The Roma Struggle for Compensation in Post-War Germany, 137–38.
122 Rahe, Thomas, “Die Bedeutung der Zeitzeugenberichte für die historische Forschung zur Geschichte der Konzentrations- und Vernichtungslager,” Kriegsende und Befreiung, ed. Neuengamme, KZ-Gedenkstätte (Bremen: Ed. Temmen, 1995), 89–90Google Scholar.
123 Petersen and Liedtke, “Zur Entschädigung zwangssterilisierter Zigeuner,” 198.
124 Most Sinti survivor witnesses would not have received compensation for psychological damages by the time of the trial, unless they had appealed to the Frankfurt Higher District Court, led by tireless advocates such as the Attorney General Fritz Bauer and Judge Franz Calvelli-Adorno, president of the Compensation Senate (Knesebeck, The Roma Struggle for Compensation in Post-War Germany, 125–26, 137–38). See also Joskowicz, Ari, “Separate Suffering, Shared Archives: Jewish and Romani Histories of Nazi Persecution,” History & Memory 28, no. 1 (2016): 125CrossRefGoogle Scholar.
125 Knesebeck, The Roma Struggle for Compensation in Post-War Germany, 64.
126 Langer, Lawrence, Holocaust Testimonies: The Ruins of Memory (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1991), 92Google Scholar.
127 Ibid., 95.
128 Ibid., 52.
129 On the basis of narratives that they heard from Jewish survivors, compensation courts believed that Sinti and Roma did not deserve the same compensation as Jewish prisoners, because their hardships had been perceived as less extreme. Jewish survivors envied Sinti and Roma prisoners for certain privileges; for example, they could keep their hair, wear their own clothes, remain with their families, and, initially, they were not expected to work. As a sign of what Joskowicz calls multidimensional memory, Jewish broaching of Romani suffering both undermined and spurred on efforts for its acknowledgment (Joskowicz, “Separate Suffering, Shared Archives,” 124–25).
130 Ibid., 119–20.