Rating: 
Summary: An absolutely indispensable contribution to Nazi history
Review: At last there is a reliable, scholarly treatment of the Nazi persecution of Gypsies ! Lewy's work distinguishes itself from previous writings in at least two ways: First, he has a good command of the sources, which he uses conscientiously and authoritatively. He is thus able to paint for us the murderous Nazi policies in regard to Gypsies, and the unspeakable suffering of the Gypsy people under Nazi rule. Second, and again on the basis of these sources, Lewy can tell us what the Nazi's Gypsy persecution was and what is was not. It was a crime of great magnitude, and probably amounted to the outright murder of more than half of all the Gypsies in Nazi-controlled areas. It was not a "Holocaust" in the sense of the Nazi killings of the Jews. The Holocaust sought to kill all Jews without distinction while the murder of Gypsies involved a Nazi policy of killing some and sparing others. There were of course still others who suffered greatly under the Nazis. There were Communists and Socialists, and Jehovah's Witnesses, among many other such groups. Whole nations were targeted, for instance the Poles. Lewy cannot deal with all such Nazi crimes, but he should have at least reminded us of them in order to provide perspective and comparison. This is a fault of the book. A second fault lies in Lewy's apparent ignorance of the ethnographic and linguistic literature concerning the Gypsy people. Some such acquaintance would have prevented some rather naïve observations. And it would also have made him more knowledgeable in his references to the many self-styled spokesmen for the Gypsies. Such faults, however, are heavily outweighed by the very substantial virtues. This book is an absolutely indispensable contribution to our knowledge of the Nazi dictatorship.
Rating:
Summary: An absolutely indispensable contribution to Nazi history
Review: At last there is a reliable, scholarly treatment of the Nazi persecution of Gypsies ! Lewy's work distinguishes itself from previous writings in at least two ways: First, he has a good command of the sources, which he uses conscientiously and authoritatively. He is thus able to paint for us the murderous Nazi policies in regard to Gypsies, and the unspeakable suffering of the Gypsy people under Nazi rule. Second, and again on the basis of these sources, Lewy can tell us what the Nazi's Gypsy persecution was and what is was not. It was a crime of great magnitude, and probably amounted to the outright murder of more than half of all the Gypsies in Nazi-controlled areas. It was not a "Holocaust" in the sense of the Nazi killings of the Jews. The Holocaust sought to kill all Jews without distinction while the murder of Gypsies involved a Nazi policy of killing some and sparing others. There were of course still others who suffered greatly under the Nazis. There were Communists and Socialists, and Jehovah's Witnesses, among many other such groups. Whole nations were targeted, for instance the Poles. Lewy cannot deal with all such Nazi crimes, but he should have at least reminded us of them in order to provide perspective and comparison. This is a fault of the book. A second fault lies in Lewy's apparent ignorance of the ethnographic and linguistic literature concerning the Gypsy people. Some such acquaintance would have prevented some rather naïve observations. And it would also have made him more knowledgeable in his references to the many self-styled spokesmen for the Gypsies. Such faults, however, are heavily outweighed by the very substantial virtues. This book is an absolutely indispensable contribution to our knowledge of the Nazi dictatorship.
Rating: 
Summary: URL mentioned below
Review: For some reason the URL I mention below has been expunged from my review. [URL] Additionally, the information there, re: the Holocaust and Roma and Sinti, bears much more of a relation to the human suffering imposed on these people than Lewy`s cold, insensitive book , with it`s "neutral" posturing at the expense of a people he himself professes to find reason to dislike. Nicholas
Rating: 
Summary: Lewy's persecution of the history of the persecuted
Review: Hi.
There already is a review of this book, recently used in court to deny Romani survivors compensation for the crimes of WWII, written by the Romani intellectual and activist Ian Hancock (university of Texas).This can be found at [URL}, under "The Nazi Persecution of the Gypsies", on the "Further Reading" page. Suffice to say that, using narrow interpretations of The Genocide Convention, coupled with a literal approach to Nazi sources, the book makes a determined effort to belittle what happened to Roma and Sinti in WWII.
The only reason it came as a surprise to me to read that Guenter Lewy was one of the foremost obscurantists of the atrocities committed by Nixon and Kissinger's army during the USs invasion of Vietnam, was the remarkable pattern in his writings this suggested. I give it two stars, because, despite the main thrust of the book (despite the author, almost), there are such things as photographs and isolated facts, which, if you've spent the money on the big volume, you might still find useful if you can identify them.
Rating:
Summary: A Book That Diminishes the Place Of the Roma .
Review: I find this book personally insulting and full of revisionist conclusions. As a Romani who lost Grandmother and many Aunts and Uncles in the Porrajmos (the devouring in Romany)I am outraged that once again we, the victims of this insanity are blamed for the crimes committed against us. That ANY victims of the Holocaust are essentially blamed for their own demise is cruel and unjustified. I also contest, and detest, Mr. Lewy's conclustion that the Roma people were not racially marked for extermination: this is both absurd and untrue as withnessed by the nazi's own words, we were "lives unworthy of life, we were criminals due to our genetics, Germany must be cleansed of the Gypsy plague" etc. An inaccurate book full of racial sterotypes, the gist of which was used by the nazi's as justification for the extermination of the Roma in the first place and is still being used to justify the persecution of Roma today. Horrid book.
Rating:
Summary: An Unfortunate Read
Review: I originally was excited to see this book come out and hoped that it would bring to greater attention the overlooked genocide of the Roma. However, investigation of the book itself proved not only disappointing, but even disturbing. Lewy _appears_ to present a very scholarly and thoroughly-researched work, and yet the many strange and significant gaps in his text can only suggest that he had an unspoken agenda: to actually deny the genocide of the Roma during the Holocaust . Further, at least as far as I could find, he does not seem to have made any effort whatsoever to include in his research the work of Romani scholars and historians. This would seem to have been an obvious place to start. And while apparently standing as a defender of the persecuted, he actually writes about the Roma in prejudicial and condescending ways. ... Instead, that description accurately belongs to "The Gypsies During the Second World War." For anyone who's truly interested, _this_ is the work that should "become the standard work on the subject." ... I hope that readers who came to this Amazon page with an interest in this subject will investigate The Gypsies During the Second World War, vol. 1 & 2, and the works of Ian Hancock.
Rating:
Summary: had to force myself to read
Review: I really wanted to read this book. I've read a lot about the Nazi persecution of Jews, as well as their persecution of Russians, Slavs, homosexuals, anarchists, Jehovah's Witnesses, and so on. But I hadn't read much about their persecution of the Roma, or Gypsies, and I wanted to learn about it. But the book is extraordinarily dry. The author did not bring the events to life at all. It's pretty hard to make a subject as inherently dramatic as the systematic persecution of an entire people not very interesting, but the author succeeded. What's worse, really, was that as other reviewers suggested, there was a powerful theme of underplaying the importance of what happened to the Roma. I was very disturbed by this. I give the book two stars instead of one because I did learn a few things. But I will be looking for another book on the subject, because I didn't learn enough.
Rating:
Summary: had to force myself to read
Review: I really wanted to read this book. I've read a lot about the Nazi persecution of Jews, as well as their persecution of Russians, Slavs, homosexuals, anarchists, Jehovah's Witnesses, and so on. But I hadn't read much about their persecution of the Roma, or Gypsies, and I wanted to learn about it. But the book is extraordinarily dry. The author did not bring the events to life at all. It's pretty hard to make a subject as inherently dramatic as the systematic persecution of an entire people not very interesting, but the author succeeded. What's worse, really, was that as other reviewers suggested, there was a powerful theme of underplaying the importance of what happened to the Roma. I was very disturbed by this. I give the book two stars instead of one because I did learn a few things. But I will be looking for another book on the subject, because I didn't learn enough.
Rating: 
Summary: Writing is a Bit Bland
Review: This book covers the fate of the European Gypsies during the Nazi occupation of Europe. It came across as a comprehensive and accurate history of this piece of the holocaust. What stuck me in the reading was that the usual German thoroughness and efficiency did not seem to take hold with their treatment of the Gypsies. Don't get me wrong, they did a good job in decimating the ranks of the Gypsies, it is just that it always seemed to be an afterthought for the Germans. The very determined and methodical way the Nazis went after the Jewish population using the legal structure and government propaganda machine was not really used against the Gypsies to the same extent as it was against the Jews. It is interesting that what probably kept the Gypsies under the radar was the fact that they moved around so much. What is ironic is that this movement was one of the major issues the Germans had against the Gypsies, which in turn brought about the gypsies horrible treatment. The author tells us that the Gypsies in Europe had been a disliked and persecuted minority for many centuries. Overall the author details the methods the Nazis went after the Gypsies, which followed the same path as the Jews. First they started to harass them with laws which also raised the dislike of the Gypsies among the population. Then the Nazis started to gather the Gypsies into camps to control them and then sent them on to the Concentration Camps with all the horrors of medical experiments, starvation and gas chambers.
Overall the book is an interesting read and it seams to be a well-researched work. At times the writing can be a little dry, but overall it holds your attention. The average reader might not get a lot out of the book, but if you are interested in the holocaust or World War 2 then this will be a good addition to your collection.
Rating:
Summary: A Frightening Account of Germany's Extermination of Gypsies
Review: This is an absorbing, well-written and quite readable text book by a noted 20th century historian, Guenter Lewy, and it constitutes a disturbing, graphic and poignant overview of the Nazi campaign against the gypsy population of central Europe. The German national socialist regime, always in search for helpless, infirm and unwell sectors of the population to scapegoat and persecute, found in the gypsies an ideal target by way of a collection of powerless, rootless, and socio-politically unsavory groups of individuals to prey upon. Yet this persecution has not been widely publized or recognized until now largely because of the nature of the gypsy population, i.e. due to their own lack of social and political visibility, no one has paid a lot of attention to their plight or to the multitude of ways in which they were persecuted, along with Jews and other political groups by the Nazis. This book remedies that egregious oversight, painting a vivid, quite compassionate picture of the gypsies' dilemma, and at the same time marshaling a damning indictment of the general campaign of mistreatment, disenfranchisement, torture, and murder conducted by the Third Reich against all subjugated peoples both in greater Germany and also in the countries conquered as they pushed both east and west during the prosecution of the war. According to the author, the policy seemed to evolve as the Nazis encountered such groups in their conquests, and whatever policies as emerged did so more in relation to the local officials' negative views of the gypsies as being thieves, trouble-makers and undesirables than due to any overall pre-planned approach. Of course, this sort of insight shouldn't come as a total surprise to students of Third Reich social policies. Even Himmler's well-documented plan for the "Final Solution" is now considered by a number of noted historians to owe more to the requirements of exigent circumstance that evolved as the Wehrmacht rolled through Poland during Operation Barbarossa than from any long-term plan to systematically exterminate all European Jews. The Nazis realized they could not feed or shelter the Jews and maintain their schedule for populating the hinterlands, and the extermination program was conceived of as a way out of that dilemma. It should also be noted that the Nazi bureaucracy was rife with duplications and redundancies, and that this led to disorganization and confusion. As a result, it was exceedingly ineffective and inefficient. The history associated with the conduct of the army and its special branches toward extermination also reflects this disorganization and amateurish, rigid and unfocused leadership and direction. In spite of this lack of leadership or any clear and unambiguous policy, the local officials often improvised, with gruesome effect. As history shows, they were a deadly, murderous crew. The campaign as described in this well-documented and painstakingly researched book reflects that lack of coherent policy and disorganization in the actions taken against the gypsies. However, this lack of specific focus does not mean they were not massively and negatively affected by government policies. On the contrary, from the inception of programs against the gypsies began in 1938 to the bitter end, they suffered the fates of so many others; deportation to concentration camps, exclusion from school, work and social life, slave labor, involuntary sterilization, torture, medical experimentation, and extermination. This book fully documents the place of the gypsies as a class of victims in the Holocaust, and fills a void too long left vacant by scholarship and public recognition. This is an excellent book, carefully researched, well documented, and compassionate in its comprehensive consideration of the plight of European gypsies at the hands of the Third Reich.
| 
