Until the 18th century, most people in Europe were convinced that the Roma came from Egypt (therefore the word “Gypsy” in English). However, linguistic comparison has pointed to the fact that the Romany language belongs to the Indo-European language family and further research has shown that the country of Romany origin is India.
The most tragic part of the modern Romani history is the period of World War II. The 1935 Nuremberg laws about German citizenship, blood and honour and consequent Nazi decrees classified Gypsies, together with Jews and „Negroes“, as a threat to racial purity. Any marriage of “Gypsies, Negroes and their bastard offsprings” with Germans was forbidden, and any Gypsy person in such union was supposed to be sterilized. Consequently, all Gypsies were denied the Reich’s citizenship.
The Slovak State that was established in 1939 after the breakup of Czechoslovakia, followed the discriminatory racial laws of Nazi Germany in many ways. Following a 1940 defense decree (decree no. 20), all Roma, as well as the Jews, were denied the right to enter the regular army. They served their active military service in a special battalion -- the Sixth Battalion of the Work Division of the Ministry of National Defense. Within the batallion in particular, they were assigned into the 24th, so-called Gypsy, platoon (the Jews and unreliable “Arians” were put into separate platoons). The Jews and the Roma were in an inferior position within this Division, which could also be seen on their uniforms (for instance, while Arians had a cap with a peak, a neck shade, and the State’s coat of arms, the Jews and the Roma had navy hats without these elements). The type of their duties also reflected their position: while “Arians” were given infantry weapons in 1943 and served as guards of military premises, the Jews and the Roma worked as ground and construction workers.
One of the measures taken by the Slovak State that were aimed against the Roma was the establishment of persecution camps. At first, there were the so-called labour crews. During the existence of the Slovak State, they were spread across the whole Slovakian territory. Formally, they were established for asocial persons, but in most cases this only served as pretence for interning Roma, who constituted approximately half of all inmates. These crews were mostly composed of young Romani men, who were forced to do the most difficult manual labour, such as building dams, railroads and roads. The Roma in these crews worked eleven-hour work days for a minimal wage. It is possible to prove that these crews served a function in persecuting the Roma. The Romani men were accommodated separately and there was a double list of inmates -- a blue register listed the Roma, and a gray one listed all other inmates. However, the most important proof comes with the dissolution of these forced labour crews -- non-Roma inmates were allowed to leave, but the Roma were moved to other camps.
