10Barrack for Sinti and Roma

Building no longer exists
today: Am Salzagraben 23
(Im Baggerloch)

Family photo of the Gerste family
1/2
The Gerste family, around 1938, from left to right: Anna and Rudolf Gerste, Jakob Gerste (standing), Hermann Gerste sitting below him, next to him his mother with Heinrich Gerste on her lap, Emma and Erwin Gerste (Documentation and Cultural Centre of German Sinti and Roma, Heidelberg)
Newspaper report on the planned construction of a barrack for Sinti and Roma
2/2
Report on the planned construction of a barrack for Sinti and Roma, Nordhäuser Allgemeiner Anzeiger, 10 March 1939 (Stadtarchiv Nordhausen)

At the end of 1938, SS chief Heinrich Himmler issued a decree creating the formal legal basis for the deportation of the Sinti and Roma. From October 1939, they were not allowed to leave their place of residence and were to be concentrated in collection camps "until their final deportation". The Gerste family, who lived in Niedersachswerfen, was also affected.

On 10 March 1939, the Nordhäuser Allgemeine Anzeiger newspaper reported on the planned construction of a barrack at Holungsbügel. 73 Sinti and Roma living in Nordhausen at the time were to be deported to this forced accommodation on the outskirts of the town. The collective accommodation, where the families had to live in cramped conditions, was surrounded by a barbed wire fence. The city made the residents work in cleaning the streets, tending the greenery and in a brickworks.

Among those who worked in the brick factory was the Sinto Jakob Gerste, born in 1926. He had lived in Nordhausen with his five siblings and parents since the early 1930s. In 1940, the National Socialists deported his father to Neuengamme via the Buchenwald concentration camp and his mother to the Ravensbrück concentration camp. Three years later, the Gestapo deported Jakob Gerste and his siblings to the Auschwitz concentration camp. There, the SS murdered his younger brothers Hermann, Rudolf and Heinrich. Jakob Gerste was forced to work as a bricklayer in Auschwitz. In May 1944, the SS transferred him via Buchenwald to the Dora subcamp near Nordhausen. Here he had to work in underground rocket production within sight of his home town until the camp was evacuated. At the beginning of April 1945, Jakob Gerste was driven on a death march to the Bergen-Belsen concentration camp, where he was liberated by British troops on 15 April 1945. Jakob and his sister Emma were the only survivors of the Gerste family. Their mother was liberated in the Ravensbrück concentration camp, but died a short time later as a result of her imprisonment.

var _paq = window._paq = window._paq || []; /* tracker methods like "setCustomDimension" should be called before "trackPageView" */ _paq.push(['trackPageView']); _paq.push(['enableLinkTracking']); (function() { var u="https://matomo.buchenwald.de/"; _paq.push(['setTrackerUrl', u+'matomo.php']); _paq.push(['setSiteId', '16']); var d=document, g=d.createElement('script'), s=d.getElementsByTagName('script')[0]; g.async=true; g.src=u+'matomo.js'; s.parentNode.insertBefore(g,s); })();