For those unaware, the Yenish are a European minority who tend to live nomadically, similarly to the Roma. In fact, some Yenish folk are related to the Roma, and many gadje confuse the Yenish for Roma. Because of this, it is safe to say that the Yenish have been victims of antiziganism, despite not being (fully) Romani themselves.
English information on the Fascists’ persecution of the Yenish folk is in short supply. Not even the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum has an article on the subject. This paper is written in broken English, but unfortunately it is the best source in the language on this obscure subject.
Yeniche were often sterilised, incarcerated in concentration camps as asocials, in many cases being directly and indirectly murdered there, causing anyone think twice before even talking about their fate or that of relatives after the war.
[…]
Siegmund A. Wolf was a contemporary authority on the Travelling People, their history, culture and languages, Romany and Yenich. Wolf (1956) was convinced of an intensive persecution of the Yeniche from the [Third Reich]. He believed that the post-World War II Yeniche could not have been the descendant of the Yeniche in the Third Reich because [of] the persecution [that] they suffered during that period. His supposition is definitely wrong. However Wolf, an expert on the travelling people, could very well have had a body of evidence which led him to such a conclusion.
More definite than Wolf’s supposition is Wim William’s (1997) discovery of a letter from Eva Justin, Ritter’s personal assistant [from] 1936–1945.¹⁵² The letter was dated Nov. 12, 1943 and addressed to the RKPA. According to Willems, Justin wrote about “the kind of people called the Jenischen”: ‘Under strong pressure from the state these people are today integrated into the work-process or were transferred to concentration camps as incorrigible asocials’. [Note: “under strong pressure from the state […] integrated into the work-process” could very well have meant “committed to forced labour” or “sent off to a concentration camp” — author]. Willems found, as well, an article in the periodical Ilustrierte Zeitung from 1943. According to Willems it was reported on page 34 that “the racially pure Gypsies […] and the incorrigible Jenischen” worked “in separate camps”.¹⁵³ Robert Ritter claimed in 1941 that the Jenische were “resocialized” and were subject to “compulsory labor”.¹⁵⁴
Moreover several authors, Lerch, Strunge and Kassenbrock, Kentick and Puxon, obtained oral information which testifies to the persecution of the Jenische by the [Third Reich].¹⁵⁵
Another indication for assuming the persecution of the Yeniche in the Third Reich is simply Robert Ritter’s position and professional activities in the Reich Health Department. For example, in December 1941 Ritter was appointed as the director of the newly formed Biological Criminal Institute of the Reich Main security Administration (RSHA) in the Security Police of Reich Criminal Police Department (RKPA) (Kriminalbiologisches Institut der Sicherheitspolizei im Reichskriminalpolizeiamt, RKPA) per decree of the [Third Reich]. From his position as head of the institute, Ritter had the privilege of defining inherited asocialness or inherited criminality and identifying those who suffer from it. The institute was a division of the Reich Criminal Police Department (Reichskriminlapolizeiamt, RKPA) which worked hand in hand with all other division of the RKPA as well as the Reich Health Department (Reichsgesundheitsamt, RGA). Ritter could, alone from this position, decide who was to be sterilized for mental deficiency or sent to a concentration camp as an asocial.¹⁵⁶
As reported above in the introduction, in 2009 Frau Elisabeth Spiss-Grosinger proved the persecution of the Yeniche alongside the Sinti & Roma in Nazi-Austria for the first time.¹⁵⁷ Also reported above in the introduction is the publication 2010 Arno Huth’s Documentation Verfolgung der Sinti, Roma und Jenischen im ländlichen Raum des Kraichgaus, des Neckartales, des Elztales und des Baulandes which confirmed the persecution of both groups of the Travelling People, the Sinti & Roma and the Jenischen in Nazi-Deutschland, in a rural area in the vicinity of Stuttgart.¹⁵⁸
Compelling is the body of evidence contained in texts of government documents, at times laying below the surface of the text, needing interpretation, and at times in the obvious wordings of the texts themselves. Administrative documents of the Reich Criminal Police Department (RKPA) and other government offices subordinated to the Reich Ministery of Interior (RMdI) articulated measures taken against the Yeniche and all belonging to the Travelling People. The Yeniche in the various administrative offices of the Reich Ministery of Interior (RMdI) fell under the generic term “Gypsy” at times — and other times under the term “those wandering about as Gypsies” (nach Zigeunerart umherziehende Personen). Occasionally the Yeniche were expressly referred to as “Yeniche”. Beyond these three terms encompassing the entire group, many Yeniche (probably the majority, as will be later shown in text below) were classified as “Gypsies of mixed blood” and treated accordingly by government offices.
(Emphasis added.)
It is certain that dozens of Yenish humans, if neither hundreds nor thousands, perished because of the Fascists, but this minimum is so low only because no scholars so far have attempted to formally calculate the number of victims.