Saturday, April 24, 2010

Zones 1, 2, and 3 of Nazi occupied Europe

I have been doing research for a paper at school and I found some very interesting information that I had heard someone had researched, but until yesterday, I had not seen it published before.

This chart breaks down the occupied countries of Europe by the extent of which the Nazis were involved in local governments. In countries like Poland and Austria, for example, the local governments ceased to exist and the Nazis ran everything. The second area is a little vague since the records of how many Roma living in the area are incomplete, but these governments had a little more freedom. Norway, for example. While there were more survivors, it is unknown how many Roma fled to Norway, so we have incomplete data in the second section. The third area is made of of countries who were either allies of Germany or governments who refused to send Jews and GYpsies to die. Italy, for example, preferred to exile Gypsies to small islands. This actually saved lives. Since Italy and Germany were the best of friends, the issue of deportation was not severely pressed. Other countries simply refused to obey the order and since the Nazis were not in direct countrol, there was little they could do about it.

So we know that the Nazis demanded Jews and Gypsies be handed over for extermination. We know that some nations refused. If the Nazis demanded both Jews and Gypsies be handed over, that both were considered a threat to Aryan blood, then we can say that the Gypsies were indeed a part of the Holocaust. The difference between the two is that more Jews died than Gypsies. Can we not simply celebrate the fact that both survived?

Saturday, April 3, 2010

Two papers!

This weekend I will be working on two research papers that I hope to publish here soon.

The first is for my History of Czechs and Slavs class and will have two topics: The stories of the saints as used in folktales and the history of the Roma in the Czech lands.

I found some very good sources for the second paper last night and hope to have an outline by the end of the day.

The other paper is about the debate on the arguement of whether or not there was an order given to destroy the Roma during WWII. There are many who claim the victims were merely "collateral damage", which is disgusting.