Deportations of Roma from Hungary and the Mass Killing at Kamianets-Podilskyi in 1941

Abstract

At the end of August 1941, the Nazi German Einsatzgruppe, together with the German Police Battalion 320 and Ukrainian auxiliaries, killed roughly 23,600 persons (mainly Jews) at Kamianets-Podilskyi, according to a report by SS Commander Friedrich Jeckeln, the Higher SS and Police Leader (HSSPF) of the southern front, including the occupied territories of Ukraine. Victims included both local Jews from Kamianets-Podilskyi (four thousand to five thousand) and Jews deported from Hungary (around sixteen thousand) and Romania (around three thousand mainly from Bucovina).¹ Some researchers, such as János Bársony, Ágnes Daróczi, and Raz Segal, have claimed that Hungarian authorities deported Roma from Hungarian-occupied Transcarpathia (present-day Ukraine) to Kamianets-Podilskyi, even though no official German reports mention these deportations.² Other researchers have claimed that the Commissioner of Transcarpathia, Miklós Kozma, planned to deport Roma, but that the Hungarian authorities never implemented this plan—thus, no Roma were deported or killed.³

Bársony and Daróczi have claimed that because Roma were among the victims, the Nazis committed a Roma Holocaust, or Roma genocide parallel to the Jewish Holocaust. Most killings and deportations of Roma in Hungary took place after the German occupation in March 1944, or under the fascist Hungarian Arrow-Cross regime at the end of 1944 and 1945. Determining whether the alleged mass killing of Roma at Kamianets-Podilskyi in 1941 in fact occurred is crucial for establishing the culpability of the Hungarian government under Miklós Horthy. In addition, researchers regard the massacre at Kamianets-Podilskyi as a rehearsal and the beginning of an intensive phase of the Holocaust, as this was the first large-scale mass killing in the tens of thousands and included a total systematical murder of men, women, and children.⁴ Approximately one month after the mass killing, at the end of September 1941, the same Friedrich Jeckeln ordered another massacre at Babi Yar, near Kyiv, involving roughly thirty-four thousand victims, mainly Jews. Researchers have also claimed that Roma were among the victims at Babi Yar.⁵ Whether or not Roma were targeted is central to understanding the origin and intentions of a combined genocide of both Roma and Jews. In addition, the potential massacre of Roma at Kamianets-Podilskyi could impact research and commemoration of Roma victims in present-day Ukraine. Both massacres are inadvertently connected through acts of memorialization. When Anatoly Ignaschenko built a memorial monument for the Roma victims of Babi Yar in 1996, the local authorities in Kyiv rejected it. The monument instead went to Kamianets-Podilskyi.⁶ Memorialization, however coincidental, connects these two alleged massacres, but from the scarce sources that remain, the question of whether or not a stronger connection remains still persists.

This article’s purpose is to analyze arguments about the most essential questions surrounding the massacre at Kamianets-Podilskyi: Did the Hungarian authorities deport Roma from Transcarpathia to Kamianets-Podilskyi in Summer 1941? Was the German leadership responsible for ordering Roma to be killed there in 1941, or did this occur only later in 1942? Even though the aforementioned researchers have discussed the fate of Roma at Kamianets-Podilskyi, no previous study is specifically dedicated to the 1941 massacre. This article builds on newly found primary evidence from Ukrainian archives and Hungarian sources, and combines source analysis with a review of the circumstantial evidence. I approach both questions openly, and evaluate plausible evidence that both supports and refutes the theory that Roma were massacred. With respect to the second question, sources are contradictory and rare. Much of my analysis is based on circumstantial evidence and theories, rather than facts supported by multiple sources. One central issue is the reliability of oral testimonies; another is the actual significance of the lack of sources. Did authorities intentionally hide the fate of Roma, or were they not among the victims?

Research on Roma in contested regions

Scholars working on the history of Roma in Hungary and Ukraine during the Second World War have focused mainly on their core national territory, respectively, and largely neglected contested border regions like Transcarpathia (Zakarpats’ka oblast’, Ukrainian), in southwestern Ukraine.⁷ Hungary took over and governed Transcarpathia (Kárpátalja, Hungarian) in 1939, and in March 1944, Nazi Germany occupied Hungary and shortly after this, by May and June 1944, the Nazis had deported and killed most of the Jews in Transcarpathia.

Roma survivors from the region have claimed that authorities forced them to destroy documentation, which later undermined their ability to narrate their history and receive compensation for their slave labor.⁸ Thus, in the postwar period various nations refused to recognize the suffering of many Roma, which reinforced distrust between Roma and the authorities. Unlike Jewish survivors, Roma lacked the resources and support of an international organization or state that could represent or express concern for their fate and history.⁹

During the last twenty years, however, interest in the persecution and genocide of the Roma has increased. Local research on the topic began in the 1990s, especially after 1999, when Roma could apply for compensation from German and Swiss funds for their slave labor during the Second World War. Due to the compensation applications, the topic received attention in Ukraine, and Roma survivors testified about their persecution and suffering during the war.¹⁰ One local Transcarpathian paper, published in Ukrainian and Hungarian, Romani Yag, included the testimonies of Roma survivors, and a memorial book of the Roma Holocaust in Transcarpathia was published in 2006.¹¹ Evheniya Navrotska published an article in 2009 in which Roma survivors claimed that the Hungarian gendarmes, military, and police, as well as German soldiers, harassed and beat Roma.¹² None of these local publications, however, support the claim that Roma were deported to Kamianets-Podilskyi in 1941 or massacred there.¹³

Persecutions of Roma, Roma genocide, or Roma Holocaust/Pharrajimos

General research on the persecution of Roma varies depending on several factors, including whether or not one classifies the persecution and murder of Roma as genocide or as a Roma Holocaust (Pharrajimos, literally “the devouring” or “the destruction”); whether the Jewish and Roma genocides were essentially similar or fundamentally different; and finally, how one views the importance, relevance, and reliability of survivor testimonies—both written and oral accounts. Guenther Lewy, for example, concludes that “the various deportations of Gypsies¹⁴ to the East and their deadly consequences do not constitute acts of genocide” because they “were not intended to destroy the Gypsies ‘as such.’”¹⁵ Lewy argues that the Jewish Holocaust was unique not because of the number of victims, but because the intent of the Nazi leaders was to annihilate all Jews, which was not the case for the Roma.¹⁶ Historian László Karsai also supports Lewy’s findings through his research on the Holocaust in Hungary, arguing that Nazi leaders did not aim to eradicate the Roma completely as they did with the Jews. According to Karsai, while most Jews in Hungary were deported, “the overwhelming majority of Gypsies survived the war undisturbed.”¹⁷ His research, however, focuses on present-day Hungary, excluding Transcarpathia, and is based exclusively on archival records rather than oral testimonies. Karsai asserts that “Gypsy society was not in serious danger” before the German occupation of Hungary in 1944.¹⁸ Furthermore, he claims that even though authorities deported Roma, there was no intention of “[deporting] all Gypsies without selection.”¹⁹

Ian Hancock, Angus Fraser, János Bársony, and Ágnes Daróczi challenge Lewy and Karsai, recognizing the Roma Holocaust or Pharrajimos as equal to the Shoah. The term is controversial because in some Romani dialects, it connotes sexual violence, which is regarded as taboo; however, this is the title of Bársony’s and Daróczi’s major work.²⁰ Fraser concludes, “Jews and Gypsies were, in fact, the only two ethnic groups which would be designated for annihilation by National Socialist ideology.”²¹ Bársony and Daróczi assert that both Roma and Jewish communities “experienced the industrial and bureaucratic specific task-orientated organization of the annihilation,” and thereby stress that the Pharrajimos was not only another genocide but also a Roma Holocaust.²² Hancock argues that Roma and Jews were annihilated to the same extent, as over 80 percent of Roma living in Nazi-occupied territories lost their lives.²³

Bársony and Daróczi focus almost exclusively on Hungary’s present-day borders, except for the mass murder of Roma at Kamianets-Podilskyi in 1941. This exception is fundamental to their argument about Pharrajimos. They assert: “The Commissioner of Transcarpathia ordered all Roma [in July 1941] who could not prove their Hungarian citizenship with proper documents to be driven across the border into areas of German military operations, where most of them, along with Jewish victims, were murdered at Kamenec-Podolsk.”²⁴ Thus, they claim that the Hungarian authorities deported an unknown number of Roma who were massacred together with Jews, in total around 23,600 victims, under the leadership of the Nazi Einsatzgruppen in the first massacre of tens of thousands of individuals during the Second World War, serving as the start of a period of intense violence. They argue that the deportation is fundamental proof of the Roma Holocaust.

Rejecting this claim, historians Kinga Frojimovics and Mária Ormos have denied that Hungarian authorities deported any Roma.²⁵ Frojimovis claims that the “mass expulsion of Ukrainians and Gypsies were not carried out in the end.”²⁶ While Ormos asserts that even though the Regent’s Commissioner of the Transcarpathian Territory, Miklós Kozma, initially intended and received support from Prime Minister László Bárdossy and Regent Miklós Horthy to include Roma in the deportations, Kozma never implemented these plans. Ormos explains in a footnote that “according to our knowledge, but not definitely … Gypsies and Ruthenians” were never included on the list. Finally, she remarks that it is not known who or why someone intervened.²⁷ In the same vein, Ádám Gellért and János Gellért mention Kozma’s plan to deport “Gypsies” in their article, but they do not conclude that the Hungarian authorities deported the Roma.²⁸

Finally, Anton Weiss-Wendt, claims that the “archival evidence … confirms the earlier findings that placed the victimization of the Roma within the definition of genocide.” Weiss-Wendt asserts that “the ultimate fate of the Roma usually rested with local agencies” and that “the lack of centralized decision making with regard to the Roma rarely ameliorated their situation, but rather aggravated it.”²⁹ Thus, this group of researchers asserts that there is enough circumstantial evidence to deduce intent, arguing that “some Roma survived because of loopholes in legislation and the chain of command, [but] many more perished for that very reason.”³⁰

Mikhail Tyalgyy has researched what he calls the Roma genocide in Ukraine and claims that its implementation depended on chronological, geographical, administrative, and circumstantial factors.³¹ According to Tyalgyy, the fate of the Roma and the different dynamics and magnitude of the genocide depended on the various military zones. Tyalgyy supports the conclusion made by such scholars as Martin Holler that the deteriorating situation in the Soviet Union made Nazi policy more radical, and that the Nazis murdered all Roma in the occupied Soviet territories irrespective of their social status.³² Mainly building on Navrotska and the memorial book, Tyalgyy concludes, regarding Transcarpathia, that the authorities were foremost interested in the exploitation of Romani labor, but that there was an absence of a methodological program of extermination. Tyalgyy does not explicitly address the question of Roma victims at Kamianets-Podilskyi or the alleged deportation. He only implicitly denied it.³³

Raz Segal frames the persecution of Roma alongside that of Jews and others as part of the Hungarian project of creating a “Greater Hungary.”³⁴ Segal’s work was based on both archival studies and oral testimonies. He asserts that the rationale for the persecution of Roma “emanated from an acute impulse, beyond the threat of disloyalty: the urge to remove a group perceived as foreign, unreliable, and inherently diseased and dirty.”³⁵ He claimed, in line with Bársony, that Roma were indeed deported in July 1941 to Kamianets-Podilskyi, and by using mainly one report (the Siménfalvy report), he confirms that the deportations of Roma occurred in mid-July.³⁶ Segal assumes that proving that the deportations of Roma took place is enough to claim that they were killed together with the Jews at Kamianets-Podilskyi at the end of August 1941; however, Segal does not include sources confirming the alleged killings.

In summary, regarding the Roma deportations and killing at Kamianets-Podilskyi in 1941, Segal, Bársony, and Daróczi claim that the Hungarian authorities deported Roma and killed them in 1941. This claim reinforces the notion that this massacre was a Roma genocide and that the Hungarian government and its officials were responsible for the deportations. Ormos and Frojimovics explicitly claim that the Hungarians did not deport them. Karsai does not explicitly address the plans of deporting Roma to Kamianets-Podilskyi, but denies that the persecution of Roma constituted genocide. Segal argues that Roma were deported and killed in 1941, and provides some evidence that they were deported, but lacks evidence that they were killed in 1941.

Hungarian intention to ethnically “cleanse” Roma

To discern whether the Hungarian authorities deported Roma, it is necessary to understand and elaborate on the historical context regarding the expansion of Hungarian territories, and perceptions of the Roma as unwanted elements in Hungary. The general staff of the Hungarian army, led by Henrik Werth, knew of German plans to “cleanse” the Jews. Werth argued in a memorandum to the Minister of Interior in the beginning of 1941 that deportations would fulfill a great dream: “The Carpathian Basin would be the Lebensraum of Hungarians only, which would be filled by the Hungarian race.”³⁷ By connecting the proposed ethnic “cleansing” to the reannexation of the Transylvanian territories, Werth argues that this genocide’s victims were not only Jews. He suggests that “the prevention of the infiltration of non-desirable elements (Jews, Gypsies) should be finally regulated.”³⁸ The Hungarian military also implemented a similar policy of “cleansing” unwanted elements, including Roma, during the military occupation of Vojvodina (Delvidék, Hungarian), posting orders that all: “Serbs, Montenegrin, Jewish, and Gypsy inhabitants who settled after 31 October 1918, immediately have to leave the region.”³⁹ Germans authorities, however, stopped these orders and forced the Hungarians to rescind all such announcements. Still, we can conclude that the Roma, together with the Jews, belonged to this category of undesirable elements, and that high-ranking Hungarian leaders nurtured dreams of ethnic “cleansing” to re-Magyarize newly annexed territories, including Transcarpathia.⁴⁰

Radical solutions, police raids, and deportation

One important piece of circumstantial evidence is the fact that the local leaders in Transcarpathia were prepared to implement radical solutions to solve the “Gypsy problem” by rounding up wandering Roma and placing them into forced labor camps. In addition, the Municipal Committee of Ung County (part of Transcarpathia) decided in an April 16, 1940, meeting, to give its formal support to the initiative from Fejér County to the Ministry of Interior to solve the “Gypsy Question” by collecting wandering Roma (kóbor cigányok, Hungarian) into forced labor camps.⁴¹

Another fundamental motivation for excluding and deporting Roma was that they were regarded as criminals and inherently unreliable. Authorities, in general, and the police and gendarmerie, in particular, divided the Roma into three categories: first, wandering Roma, whom they regarded as the prime suspects for crimes, and generally viewed as “evil” or “bad”; second, settled Roma, treated somewhat better, but still marked by socioeconomic and ethnic exclusion—mainly living separately on the outskirts of the village or the city in the so-called “Gypsy camp”; and third, Roma musicians, whom the police and the Hungarian public in general appreciated and regarded as decent citizens.⁴² Most of the regulations in Hungary related to wandering Roma, and the police conducted regular raids against Roma throughout the interwar period.

On December 20, 1940, the Kassa (Košice, Slovakian) gendarmerie district, which Transcarpathia was part of, sent out strict orders to investigate Roma in Máramaros County because “there are numerous Gypsy bands committing crimes arriving from the former Romanian territories, now operating in the [Northern] Transylvanian counties, which most probably will come to Máramaros and Transcarpathia.”⁴³ The order included the various legal acts the police and gendarmerie could and should use to legitimize their actions against Roma. Most concerned the requirements of wandering Roma to present valid documentation, including a permanent address and occupation, or the so-called “Gypsy wandering handicraft license” (cigány vándoripari igazolvány, Hungarian). The order instructed the local authorities to create lists of Roma.

The Hungarian decrees gave the police the right to deport the Roma or, under certain circumstances, to force them to conduct public work.⁴⁴ On May 29, 1941, the Kassa district gendarmerie, to which Transcarpathia belonged, issued an order for a “raid against Gypsies, foreigners, and suspicious elements” to be carried out between June 9 and 11.⁴⁵ On May 19, 1941, the office of the head of the Máramaros Administrative District confidentially ordered the “organization of raids to check Gypsies, foreigners and other suspects.”⁴⁶ The authorities equated “Gypsies” with “foreigners and suspicious elements.” The decrees are new evidence and prove, together with the Siménfalvy report (see section “Deportation: the Siménfalvy report”), that these raids targeted wandering Roma. Thus, these orders permitted the rounding up and deportation of wandering Roma in July and August 1941.

Kozma’s plan to deport Roma

Miklós Kozma, the Regent’s Commissioner for the Transcarpathian Territory, was informed well in advance of Germany’s planned attack on the Soviet Union in June 1941. Kozma developed a plan to use this attack as an opportunity to “cleanse” non-Hungarian and unwanted elements from the region. He received approval to implement his plan from the highest political levels in Hungary, including the Prime Minister (Bárdossy), the Minister of Interior (Keresztes-Fischer), and the Regent (Horthy).⁴⁷ Major-general István Ujszászy later confirmed that this plan involved the expulsion of “all individuals with dubious citizenship,” including the Roma, from Transcarpathia.⁴⁸

Hungary declared war against the Soviet Union on June 27, 1941. By July 10, Commissioner Kozma already wanted to take advantage of the state of war and wrote a letter to Prime Minister Bárdossy: “At the beginning of next week, I will push all the non-Hungarian citizens who escaped here from Galicia, the exposed Ukrainian agitators, and the Gypsies across the border. I have already spoken with Bartha, Szombathelyi, and the army officers in Debrecen about the details.”⁴⁹ Thus, he explicitly planned to deport non-Hungarian citizens, including Roma, from Transcarpathia. Kozma’s diary notes from July 11 confirm that he had the support from the top-Hungarian leaders, as he proudly wrote: “support from the top-Hungarian leaders was confirmed by his diary’s notes on 11 July, in which he proudly wrote, Pest [Budapest, i.e. the Prime Minister and Regent of Hungary] has started to follow me in this new situation. 1. Foreign citizens; 2. military area; 3. Ukrainian agitators; 4. Gypsies.”⁵⁰

On July 12, Sándor Siménfalvy, head of the National Central Alien Control Office, issued an order to the commanders of all primary police authorities to “register aliens who must leave the territory of the country.” The decree stated: “As a consequence of the circumstances of contemporary foreign policy, the opportunity has come to remove unwelcome foreigners soon staying in the territory of the country.”⁵¹ The terms “unwelcome foreigners” and “aliens” are dubious because they could have included not only non-Hungarian citizens, but also minorities with Hungarian citizenship. They could have included Roma, and perhaps Roma coming from northern Transylvania unable to prove their right of Hungarian citizenship, similar to many Jews. Eventually even Jews with Hungarian citizenship were included in the deportation, as Hungarian authorities “cleansed” whole communities in Transcarpathia of Jews. It is possible that Roma of Hungarian citizenship were also included in the deportation.⁵²

Deportation of Roma: the SimÉnfalvy report

Two official orders in July regarding deportation include the Roma. On July 14, the Minister of Interior ordered the police to “expel foreigners/foreign citizens” (külhonosok).⁵³ On July 15, Hungarian authorities ordered the deportation of “non-Hungarian citizens and citizens who cannot declare their citizenship.”⁵⁴ Some researchers, such as Kinga Frojimovics, have concluded that this order only concerned Jews because Jews were the only ethnic category explicitly mentioned in the documents; however, these terms do not exclude Roma, either as Hungarian citizens or as Roma unable to prove their right to obtain Hungarian citizenship. In addition, Kozma explicitly mentions “Gypsies.”

The most robust evidence that Hungarian authorities deported wandering Roma and Roma with non-Hungarian citizenship appears in the Siménfalvy report, which arrived at the Ministry of Interior on July 18. Prefect Siménfalvy reported by telephone the following:

It is a matter of common knowledge that His Excellency Kozma is removing Jews of non-Hungarian citizenship from Transcarpathia to the North and is using this occasion to cleanse Transcarpathia from wandering Gypsies, too. Yesterday his Excellency Kozma suggested to me [Siménfalvy] that I, too, should take such action, which is even more necessary, since it can be assumed that such Gypsy caravans will flee to the South of Transcarpathia. There are approx. 500 to a maximum of 1,000 such Gypsies in the Counties of Ung and Ugocsa, who we could get rid of at this moment; however, since I do not wish to take measures without the consent of superior authorities, I seek the permission of the Interior Minister to remove within the next few days in a similar way to Transcarpathia, the Gypsies of non-Hungarian citizenship not having a steady income and domicile and posing a security threat.⁵⁵

Siménfalvy’s report thus confirms that Kozma was “cleansing” wandering Roma from Transcarpathia because it clearly states, “it is a matter of common knowledge” that Kozma “is using the occasion to cleanse Transcarpathia from wandering Gypsies.” This was Kozma’s plan, for which he had received approval from the Hungarian leaders. Kozma was Commissioner of the Transcarpathian Territory, located in the very northeast of Hungary, at that time, and the term “to the North” together with “cleanse” most probably meant over the Hungarian border, that is, deportation of Roma to the areas in the north controlled by the German special troops.

The report also reveals that Siménfalvy understood that he had to seek approval to undertake a similar deportation of Roma in the counties under his jurisdiction. One reason for this was that the legal framework for the expulsions was directed by confidential decrees, which were in conflict with basic Hungarian laws.⁵⁶ It is difficult to tell if Siménfalvy received such support or not. There is a handwritten text on the back of the order, which previous researchers have overlooked, in which Councilor Kemény wrote, “Siménfalvy received the instructions from me”;⁵⁷ however, there is no information about the content of these instructions.

Reduction of Roma according to the 1941 census

Another essential new source that confirms that Hungarian authorities deported Roma is census data, which show the reduction of Roma between January and December 1941. In January 1941, the official Hungarian census recorded 3,312 Roma declaring “Gypsy” nationality in Transcarpathia (a larger territory defined as the Ung, Bereg, and Ugocsa counties and the area under the Regent’s Commissioner). For Hungary, the 1941 census recorded a total of 74,374 “Gypsies” according to nationality; however, in December 1941, physicians all over Hungary undertook a special “Gypsy” census in which they categorized 208,240 as “Gypsies.” The explanation as to why there were fewer individuals who self-identified as “Gypsies” than those who were ascribed the identity of “Gypsy” is likely connected to the Hungarian authorities’ discriminatory treatment of Roma. Most Roma preferred to identify as “Hungarian” rather than “Gypsy” because this term was associated with “suspicious elements and foreigners.” Thus, the ratio between the “Gypsy census” versus the official census was 2.80 to 1. Similarly, for Transcarpathia, the number of Roma in this “Gypsy census” reached 9,533, thus, the ratio of 2.88 to 1 was roughly similar overall.

In January 1941, there were 2,148 Roma in the Regent’s Commissioned Areas of Transcarpathia (Kárpátaljai Kormányzói Biztosság, a smaller territory next to the border), according to the official Hungarian census of self-declared nationality.⁵⁸ If we apply the above average ratio of 2.80, we find that the number, estimated by the physician or “Gypsy” census to be actually around 6,000 Roma (see Table 1).⁵⁹ When physicians conducted their special census in December 1941, however, they found only 1,371 “Gypsies,” thus a reduction of 777 in actual numbers, and a reduction of up to 4,643 compared with the estimated numbers of Roma from January 1941 (see Table 1). Even if we directly compare the figures from the official January 1941 census and the “Gypsy” census of December, there is a substantial decrease of Roma in the Regent’s Commissioned Areas of Transcarpathia, while all other areas of Transcarpathia, as well as in Hungary in general, saw increases. This supports Siménfalvy’s claim that Kozma was indeed “cleansing” the Regent’s Commissioned Areas of Transcarpathia of wandering Roma, or in other words was deporting them from the region.

From Table 1 we can also conclude that Siménfalvy most probably did not receive approval for his request to ethnically “cleanse” the counties of Ung and Ugocsa as the number of Roma increased. If we assume that Kozma implemented his plan and deported Roma, while Siménfalvy did not, this latter assumption might explain the lack of reports mentioning the deportation of Roma.

Still, Frojimovic concludes: “The mass expulsion of Ukrainians and Gypsies was not carried out in the end.”⁶⁰ This claim about a mass expulsion of “Gypsies” seems valid if we accept the data from the official census to be correct; however, the Siménfalvy report and the decline in numbers in the special December census prove the opposite, thus suggesting that Hungarian authorities deported Roma from the Regent’s Commissioned Areas of Transcarpathia.

Deported and expelled to Galicia

Other new sources that reinforce the conclusion that Kozma deported the Roma are the October and December 1941 police reports from Ungvár, which list deported and expelled foreigners separately from the Jews, indicating that not only Jews were deported or expelled, but also other ethnic categories. Though the Roma are not explicitly listed, one possible reason was that the Hungarian authorities did not receive approval to deport them. For example, the table on the border crossing of Aknaszlatina (Szolotvino, Ukrainian) states that “3,808 were expelled and 5,800 Jews were deported.”⁶¹ Thus, the category of “expelled” people differed from the category of “Jews being deported.” The expelled category most probably included non-Hungarian citizens. It is likely that among the 3,808 expelled, there were also wandering Roma unable to prove their Hungarian citizenship.

Mária Ormos concludes that despite Kozma’s diary note and the Siménfalvy orders,: “Along the way, the plan was chopped out because—according to our knowledge, but not definitely—Gypsies and Rusyns never ended up on the list, but it is not known who intervened or why.”⁶² Ormos thus asserts that the Hungarian authorities never implemented Kozma’s plans, because Roma were not mentioned in the subsequent reports. Frojimovic claims that the terms “non-Hungarian” or “aliens” should be understood as “Jews.”⁶³ Supporting this counterargument, I have not found any reports indicating that Roma were caught during the June 1941 police raids. Most reports, for example, from Rahó, Huszt, and others, from the beginning of 1941 indicate the contrary—that the police mainly found settled Roma.⁶⁴ This observation is also shared by Karsai in his research on other parts of Hungary.⁶⁵

One source supporting the notion that Roma from Hungary were present and were either deported or moved voluntarily to the Galizien district (the location of Kamianets-Podilskyi) is the decree from April 1942 demanding the identification of all foreign Roma in Galizien. German administrators found 536 foreign Roma, some of whom came from Hungary.⁶⁶ Thus, it seems that there was a certain inflow of Roma from the Hungarian territories to the Ukrainian regions under German administration, and it is possible that they arrived due to forced deportations or pressure to migrate.

I have checked oral sources, and no witnesses can confirm that Hungarian authorities deported Roma. On the other hand, these deported wandering Roma did not come from the Transcarpathian region. Rather, they originated from other parts of Hungary or the former Romanian territories, which may explain the lack of testimonies from the local Roma community in Transcarpathia. According to some reports, there was no community of Roma in Kamianets-Podilskyi after the war, which perhaps explains why there is little information that remains on the mass killing of Roma in the region.

All documents concerning deported non-Hungarian citizens including the lists stored in the archives speak only of Jews, never of “Gypsies.” When Minister Keresztes-Fischer forbade the further deportations of “non-Hungarian citizens” on August 9, 1941, he mentioned only Jews explicitly.⁶⁷ In addition, when Hungarian authorities were handling the problem of returning non-Hungarian citizens who had been deported, they only mention Jews, never Roma.⁶⁸

For example, in the middle of September, a report by the Foreign Minister states, “18,000 Jews have been resettled,” and demands that these “Jews should not be able to come back over the border,” but mentions nothing about Roma.⁶⁹ As discussed previously, however, Jews were the primary target, whereas Roma were marginal, as the authorities did not perceive Roma as a threat or significant problem. Therefore, reports about the Roma are scarce. Another explanation is that representatives of the Jewish community protested while the Roma did not because they lacked informed leaders representing them.

It is also possible that actions against the Jews are better documented because of economic factors. Leaders like Kozma sought to transfer seized Jewish assets and property to Hungarians. The mass expulsion of Jews was part of a plan to Magyarize the Jewish middle class and to take over Jewish shops and businesses. No such plan existed for the Roma.⁷⁰

Roma killed in Kamianets-Podilskyi in 1941 or later?

Regarding the second issue of whether Roma were mass-killed in Kamianets-Podilskyi, it is even more challenging to provide a definite answer as there is a lack of sources. Nazi Einsatzgruppen reports sent to the Chief of the Security Police in Berlin on September 11, 1941, state: “In Kamenets-Podolsk 23,600 Jews were shot in three days by a Commando of the Higher SS and Police Leaders.”⁷¹ Other researchers, such Tamás Kovács, George Eisen, and Tamás Stark, claim that a majority of the murdered were Jews, but not all.⁷² These researchers, however, do not explicitly mention Roma.

The reliability of German reports: Jews and Roma victims?

Klaus-Michael Mallmann has analyzed the report by SS Commander Jeckeln about Kamianets-Podilskyi. Though Mallmann did not focus on potential Roma victims, his analysis regarding the number of victims is important for gauging the reliability of Jeckeln’s reports. His findings show that Jeckeln reported that German troops killed 4,200 Jews on August 27, and 5,000 Jews on August 28, but afterward Jeckeln more than doubled the number of victims to 11,000 Jews for August 28. This later change is dubious.

On August 29, 7,000 Jews were killed, according to the daily reports. The total number of Jewish victims should therefore be 20,200, but in the final report, Jeckeln reported 23,600 Jews. These inflated figures reveal that Jeckeln did not have complete firsthand knowledge of the massacre. The three-day of slaughter was “chaotic and messy,” and even though Jeckeln was there, he did not supervise the extermination of the four mass graves himself. Instead, three company commanders performed this duty.⁷³ On August 30/31, Jeckeln ordered the killing of Jews, including an unknown number of victims from Hungary, in the surrounding towns.⁷⁴ Witnesses from the massacre mention that “people” and “Hungarians” were killed (e.g., that not all of the victims were Jews), while others report that Jeckeln saved non-Jews—thus these reports are inconclusive.⁷⁵

My conclusion is that some Roma could have been included in the actual massacre without being included in the final or daily reports.⁷⁶ Apart from German Einsatzgruppen and the German Police Battalion 320, as well as Ukrainian auxiliaries, we know that Hungarian military units were stationed nearby.⁷⁷ Randolph Braham concludes, “the involvement of Hungarian troops in the massacres at Kamenets-Podolsk and elsewhere in Galicia is not fully established.”⁷⁸ Eisen asserts that sources “repeatedly placed Hungarian forces at the murder site in cordon duties” and that “Hungarian soldiers were able to loiter around the killing pits unhindered.”⁷⁹ Still, Eisen supports Braham’s conclusion that we do not know whether Hungarian soldiers participated in the extermination or not.⁸⁰ Authorities never interrogated Jeckeln about his role at Kamianets-Podilskyi. Jeckeln was executed in Riga in 1946 for crimes he committed while eradicating Latvian Jewry. At the time, the tribunal did not know about his role in the Kamianets-Podilskyi massacre.⁸¹

In general, Jews were the primary target of the Einsatzgruppen, and the Germans listed Jews separately, according to Ronald Headland. Headland asserts that these imprecise numbers indicate that the exact figures were not known, or the circumstances of the operations made it impossible to record detailed statistics. Thus, the uncertainty about the number of victims might also include uncertainty about the ethnic category of victims, especially given that the estimate of deported Roma was much smaller (around one thousand) compared to the larger proportion of Jews (about twenty thousand).⁸²

Another critical aspect is that Jeckeln reported that “[n]ear Kamenets-Podolsky the Hungarians have pushed 11,000 [sic] Jews over the border. In the negotiations up to the present, it has not been possible to arrive at any measure for the return of these Jews. The Higher SS and Police Leader hope, however, to have completed the liquidation of these Jews by 1 September 1941.”⁸³ In actuality, the number of deportees from Hungary was much higher. According to reports in the Hungarian archives, 17,306 Jews were rounded up, and of these, 15,567 were deported by August 9, 1941. Another 4,000 were expelled at the end of the month, for a rough total of 20,000, almost double the number Jeckeln asserted.⁸⁴ Even if this report only speaks about Jews, the numbers in this case are likely an undercount.

It is also possible that German troops did not kill Roma at the same time as the Jews, but rather killed the former either before August 1941 or, most likely, soon after. A report by the Einsatzgruppe C, which participated in the massacre at Kamianets-Podilskyi, seemingly supports this possibility. Their report claims they shot 44,125 “persons, mostly Jews” in August 1941, and they mentioned having killed six “asocial elements.”⁸⁵ Other sources on the Einsatzgruppen suggest that these units would typically first murder the Jews and then the Roma.⁸⁶

Jeckeln’s August reports with inflated figures differ significantly from a later report in which exact numbers are given. This discrepancy suggests that the number of dead reported was more accurate after September. Headland has found anomalies in the numbers of victims given in Sonderkommando 4a reports for August and September, which suggests a degree of unreliability.⁸⁷ If we compare later reports, they include mainly Jews and a smaller number of Roma. According to the official German reports, the number of murdered “Gypsies” was 167, out of which the majority were killed in 1942 and 1943.⁸⁸ Labels for Roma varied as they were also classified as “undesirable elements,” “asocial,” and so forth.⁸⁹ Thus, it is possible that initial reports lacked information about the relatively small number of Roma killed.

Holler has argued that it is necessary to combine German and Soviet materials because of these problems with the German sources;⁹⁰ however, in the Extraordinary State Commission’s report on Kamianets-Podilskyi from the Soviet Archives there is also no mention of Roma killed at Kamianets-Podilskyi, even though it is definite that Roma were killed there in 1942.⁹¹

German orders to kill Roma?

The earliest reports that the Sonderkommando of Einsatzgruppe D committed mass shootings of sedentary Roma come from the region of Nikolajev in mid-August 1941.⁹² Their origin might indicate that the German killing of Roma started then or that reports of such killings began at this time. Regardless, it proves that German commandos were indeed killing Roma at the time the Kamianets-Podilskyi massacre occurred. In September 1941, in the German-occupied territories that had previously belonged to the Soviet Union (present-day Ukraine), the Einsatzgruppen, murdered Roma en masse.⁹³ At the Nuremberg trial, Otto Ohlendorf stated that the leaders were ordered to kill “Gypsies,” as well as Jews and Communist functionaries. The Roma were to be “treated the same way as the Jews” because they were regarded as “antisocial elements” and “politically unreliable.”⁹⁴

According to Holler, “Gypsies” were not mentioned at all in the main written orders in Summer 1941, such as the Heydrich letter to the higher SS and police leaders, which included Jeckeln. Neither were Roma included in the July 17, 1941, guidelines for prisoner of war camps.⁹⁵ Holler discussed the possibility that Ohlendorf himself issued verbal orders to eradicate “Gypsies” in his operational zone in the summer of 1941, which would have included Kamianets-Podilskyi.

According to the testimony of Felix Rühl, instructions were given for Sonderkommando 10b to kill Jews in leading positions, Communists, political commissars, as well as “Gypsies” at the beginning of July 1941.⁹⁶  Sonderkommando 10b was stationed in Kamianets-Podilskyi from the end of July until the middle of August 1941. In late July 1941, deportees from Hungary arrived in the city (i.e., both Jews and Roma). Sonderkommando 10b may have encountered Roma from Hungary during this period. Regardless, they received orders to kill the Jews and it is possible that the Roma were killed at the end of July, or early to mid-August (before the murder of the Jews at the end of August).⁹⁷ The deportation from Hungary was already an ongoing operation, however, and Sonderkommando 10b may have encountered Roma from that country in Summer 1941. If so, then the German order for the extermination of all Roma was given earlier than the order to kill all Jews. Holler argues that this is less likely because it would have been a far-reaching decision.⁹⁸ Kamianets-Podilskyi, however, was the first mass murder where all Jews were killed, including women and children, not merely Jews in leading political positions. Thus, it is likely that verbal instructions were also issued to kill Roma. As Holler concludes, “with regard to Roma, Einsatzgruppe D was, in fact, the pioneer of the systematic genocide.”⁹⁹ None of the above circumstantial evidence proves conclusively either that Roma were killed or that they were not killed. Still, it points to the possibility that Roma deported from Hungary also fell victim to the Sonderkommando.

Roma killed later and in other places

Jews deported from Hungary were not only likely killed at Kamianets-Podilskyi at the end of August 1941, but also at Stanyslaviv (today Ivano-Frankivsk in Ukraine) in October 1941. At Stanyslaviv, the German forces killed approximately ten thousand Jews, including two thousand Jews from Hungary. In Belzec, there were six thousand Jewish victims including one thousand Jews from Hungary. On October 6, 1941, at Nadwórna, approximately two thousand victims, including several hundred Hungarian Jews, were killed. In Kosów, Delatyn, and Horodenka up to December 1941, the German troops massacred “Hungarian refugees” and “Hungarian victims.” These general figures and notion of “victims” could hide the fact that Roma were among those killed, though this fact cannot be firmly established from the available evidence.¹⁰⁰

According to Holler, Einsatzgruppe D did not distinguish between sedentary and itinerant Roma. The systematic obliteration of entire Romani communities did not start for certain until the beginning of 1942.¹⁰¹ Before then, German anti-Roma orders concentrated on alleged itinerants, which included Roma deported from Transcarpathia. It is possible that Sonderkommando 10b encountered Roma deported from Hungary even before the massacre at Kamianets-Podilskyi and killed them because they were suspicious elements and wandering, itinerant “Gypsies.” There are, however, no German or Soviet reports that can confirm this.

According to Tyaglyy, three caravans of Roma might have been killed at Babi Yar near Kyiv in September 1941, but stronger evidence based on oral testimonies suggests that Roma were massacred in 1942.¹⁰² The German report for Babi Yar wrote: “In collaboration with the group staff and two Commandos of Police Regiment South, on 29 and 30 September 1941 Sonderkommando 4a executed 33,771 Jews in Kyiv.” The report on Babi Yar resembles the report on Kamianets-Podilskyi, in that it only mentions Jewish victims.¹⁰³ Given that Jeckeln was responsible for the massacres at both Babi Yar and Kamianets-Podilskyi, Roma were likely included in both massacres if we trust that the oral testimonies are reliable. The killing of Roma increased in 1942.¹⁰⁴ Holler asserts that from Spring 1942, “in all militarily administered areas of occupation, the German Security Policy treated Soviet Roma de facto like Jews and tried to eradicate them completely.”¹⁰⁵

Reports on Kamianets-Podilskyi confirm that German troops killed Roma in 1942. In a letter from Fritz Jacob (Meister der Gendarmerie), written on June 21, 1942, he states: “We have to settle up with the war criminals once and for all so that we can build a more beautiful and eternal Germany for our children and our children’s children. We are certainly not being idle here: three or four Actions a week. First Gypsies then Jews, partisans, and other such riff-raff.”¹⁰⁶ Fritz Jacob even stresses Roma by writing “First Gypsies” indicating that his actions involved Roma, which could have included deported Roma from Transcarpathia.

Kozma’s confession, and survival of Hungarian Roma

One significant Hungarian source suggests that the massacre of Roma did occur. Before Miklós Kozma died in December 1941, he confessed—concerning the dead bodies found in Galicia—that there are “a million secrets out there … the murdered bodies litter the forest … the act itself is on our conscience … we are the ones who are killing them.”¹⁰⁷ The term “we” should be understood as the Hungarian leaders and “them” as Jews, but also potentially Roma. Notably, however, he did not explicitly use the term “Jews,” which makes it possible that other ethnic groups, including Roma were also killed. This confession, with the evidence that Kozma’s plan was implemented (as indicated by the Siménfalvy report), and the reduction in the census point to the possibility that Roma were also killed.

A confidential report to the Ministry of Interior dated September 5, 1941, about Jews deported to Galicia states, “It is common knowledge that Jews are shot dead in the occupied territories.”¹⁰⁸ Thus, Hungarian top leaders were well informed that the Nazi German special commandos were killing Jews, perhaps with the assistance of Hungarian soldiers. Most probably, they understood that deported Roma could face the same destiny.

Research based on court reports by Piotr Wawrzeniuk about Lemberg (Lviv) indicates that Roma could survive, and the German authorities would tolerate them. Their fate differed, therefore, substantially from Jews as almost all of the latter were annihilated. Some of the Roma smuggled between Hungary and Romania used legal papers.¹⁰⁹ The survival of Roma under certain circumstances, therefore, indicates that they could have been deported to Kamianets-Podilskyi or elsewhere in Galicia, but were not necessarily killed. According to oral sources, some of the Roma also survived and joined the Red Army.¹¹⁰

Conclusions

Hungarian leaders and authorities regarded Roma as unwanted elements. Local support among Hungarian authorities and leaders in Transcarpathia indicated a willingness to implement radical solutions against the Roma. The Regent’s Commissioner of the Transcarpathian Territory, Miklós Kozma, planned to ethnically “cleanse” the area of Roma. Kozma received support for his plans from the Hungarian government in Budapest. The goal was to deport “all individuals with dubious citizenship,” that is, Roma, who could not prove Hungarian citizenship. Kozma explicitly planned to deport the Roma population. The Hungarian police implemented raids against the Roma in June 1941, with the intention of deporting wandering Roma. The police gave orders to remove non-Hungarian citizens and those who would not declare their citizenship, which mainly included Jews but also Roma. Siménfalvy’s report from July 1941 discusses the ongoing “cleansing” of Roma by Kozma as “common knowledge.”

The claim that this was a systematic deportation of Roma is supported by the fact that the January and December 1941 censuses show a significant decline in the number of Roma in Transcarpathia by at least 777 individuals. The actual figures might have even been as high as 4,600, though we can reasonably conclude that roughly 1,000 Roma were deported. Another piece of evidence is the list of expelled and deported, in which Jews were listed separately from other categories, indicating that other groups apart from the Jews were targeted, including most probably Roma.

One argument against the deportation of Roma in 1941 is that no reports mention Roma explicitly, and there are no oral witnesses apart from Siménfalvy’s report, and Kozma’s plans. Still, the overall conclusion is that the Hungarian authorities deported around one thousand wandering Roma in 1941. Kozma’s plan, the timing of the police raids, the Siménfalvy report, and the census reinforce this claim.

Regarding the massacre in Kamianets-Podilskyi at the end of August 1941, we lack reports that explicitly mention Roma. It is not until 1942 that they appear in reports about Kamianets-Podilskyi, even though the scholarship has established that Roma were killed in other locations even before August 1941. The report on the Kamianets-Podilskyi massacre of August 1941 only explicitly mentions the Jews as victims; however, statistical inconsistencies in Jeckeln’s daily reports indicate he did not have firsthand knowledge of the massacre, and therefore his understanding of what occurred was limited. Einsatzgruppe C reportedly killed 44,125 persons during August 1941, which included a small number of Roma. Another important piece of circumstantial evidence is that Sonderkommando 10b was stationed in Kamianets-Podilskyi in July and August 1941, and they received verbal orders to kill all Roma at this time. According to an oral testimony, it is likely that Sonderkommando 10b killed Roma at this point. In addition, one month later, a similar massacre took place at Babi Yar in which Roma were killed, according to oral sources. Evidence suggests that the killing of Roma increased in 1942. If we accept that Hungarian authorities deported Roma from Hungary in 1941, it is possible that German troops killed them in 1942 or later.

The main argument that Roma were not killed in the massacre at the end of August 1941 in Kamianets-Podilskyi is the absence of reports that explicitly mention them. Furthermore, the evidence that Roma were deported is stronger than the evidence that they were massacred in August 1941. Still, in 1942 we know that the Roma were killed in Kamianets-Podilskyi and in nearby regions under German control. The report to the Ministry of Interior that Jews deported to occupied territories from Hungary were shot indicates that the Hungarian leaders knew about the fate of deported Jews and perhaps the Roma. If Hungarian authorities deported Roma, it is likely they understood that the Germans could have also killed them as they had killed the Jews. Kozma confessed that he and other Hungarian leaders were responsible for the killing of “them,” which included Jews, but could have also included Roma.

This case shows the difficulties in assessing the fate of Roma during the Second World War as there is less documentation on the actions against this group. Still, there was a plan by Hungarian authorities to eliminate wandering Roma from Hungary. This plan did not include all Roma, but specifically targeted itinerant Roma from the newly occupied territories, as well as citizens who could not prove their citizenship. We cannot prove that the Hungarian authority’s intent was to hand over Roma to the Germans for execution, but it is one possible viewpoint. Judging from the evidence, it is probable that Roma were deported and thereby killed, even though we cannot prove that this was the case for the massacre at Kamianets-Podilskyi in August 1941.

What we can conclude from the written sources is that the Roma were explicitly not mentioned. One reason for this could have been a deliberate attempt to hide Roma victims among the many Jewish victims, or alternatively those reporting on these events were unaware that some of the victims were in fact Roma. In the case of Vojvodina, Hungarian authorities attempted to eliminate the Roma just as they intended to do with the Jews, but the Germans stopped their plans. Siménfalvy asked for permission to deport the Roma, which indicates that the German and Hungarian approaches to handling the Roma differed from those for the Jews.

Another possibility is that Roma were not included in written reports because they were simply not among the victims. Information from oral testimonies supports both possibilities. Some oral testimonies claim that Roma were victims in Babi Yar, while written sources do not confirm this. Potentially, Roma could have also been victims in Kamianets-Podilskyi given that both massacres were led by Jeckeln, yet other oral testimonies indicate that at least some Roma survived.

The overall conclusion is that Hungarian authorities deported Roma in 1941 from Hungary to German-occupied territories in Galicia. The German special commandos might have killed Roma in 1941 or (most likely) later, while some Roma survived. Given the evidence presented here, it is difficult to claim that the Nazis and/or Hungarians implemented a Roma Holocaust in parallel with the Jewish Holocaust. Instead, we can conclude that the Hungarian authorities persecuted and deported Roma, and that in 1941, German Einsatzgruppen, German Police Battalion 320, and Ukrainian auxiliaries potentially murdered Roma. We know for certain that they did massacre Roma in 1942. Kozma’s confession in 1941 that “we are the one who are killing them,” does not explicitly mention the Jews. Therefore “them,” may have included more than one ethnic group including the Roma. If this was the case, then he understood that the deportation of Roma was part of genocide.

From the available evidence, it is clear that deported Roma from Transcarpathia included mainly wandering Roma; that some Roma with Hungarian citizenship survived; and that different Roma categories experienced varying treatment. Furthermore, reports on massacres fail to explicitly mention Roma or “Gypsies”; Jews are the main focus of these reports. The authorities did not target all Roma, but they did attempt to annihilate all Jews thus indicating that the genocidal acts perpetrated against the Roma differed significantly from the total genocide against the Jews in Hungary.

Anders E. B. Blomqvist, holds a doctorate in history, and is a senior lecturer at Dalarna University and a researcher at Hugo Valentin Centre at Uppsala University. His research focuses on the Holocaust in Hungary and Romania. He is the author of Economic Nationalizing in the Ethnic Borderlands of Hungary and Romania (2014) and co-editor of Hungary and Romania beyond National Narratives (2013).

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

I would like to thank the Foundation for Baltic and East European Studies, Dalarna University, and the Marcus and Amalia Wallenberg Foundation for supporting my research for this article.

Footnotes