A comprehensive assessment: the ‘Racial Hygiene Research Centre’

To define the Sinti and Roma in accordance with the ‘Nuremberg Laws’, the Nazis made use of racial research, a field already established before the start of the Nazi dictatorship that was hugely influential in terms of the public discourse. The ‘Rassenhygienische Forschungsstelle’ [‘Racial Hygiene Research Centre’] was establi­shed in Berlin in late 1936; its director was Dr Robert Ritter. Pur­suant to Himmler’s order of 8 December 1938, the ‘research centre’ was to assess all Sinti and Roma living in the Reich and classify them in terms of ‘racial biology’; it was to do so through close co-operation with the SS and police apparatus.

With the support of official state and church bodies, Dr Ritter and his staff conducted genealogical and anthropological examinations on Sinti and Roma. They compelled their test subjects to provide information about their family relationships and carried out elabo­rate measurements. Besides compiling detailed genealogical tables, they took thousands of anthropological photographs. Countless blood and hair samples were also taken.

By the time the war came to an end, Dr Ritter’s institute had drawn up some 24,000 assessments that used ‘racial diagnosis’ to classify the Sinti and Roma either as ‘gypsies’ or ‘gypsies of mixed blood’. These assessments were instrumental in the deportations to concentration and extermination camps.