POINT OF INTEREST

Zigeunerlager Steinfelder Weg

Steinfelder Weg 41-43, 24941 Flensburg

During the Nazi dictatorship, Roma and Sinti were also pursued and murdered. In Flensburg, they were forced to live in a camp in degrading conditions. At Norderstrasse 104, there is a plaque in memory of members of the Weiss family, who lived there before the camp was built.

It is not known when Sinti or Roma first lived in Flensburg. Address books include the Weiss family from 1889 and the Laubinger family from 1911. Plankemai, Oluf-Samson-Gang, Süderfischerstrasse, Mittelstrasse and Ballastbrücke are places where “gypsies” probably lived from 1889. The Weiss and Laubinger families lived for a time in degrading conditions in housing owned by the city at Norderstrasse 104, up to at least 1935. Following complaints from the public, local Nazi functionaries saw an opportunity to implement a plan to build a barracks camp, which had been drawn up even before the Nazis seized power. The city built an extremely primitive camp at Steinfelder Weg 41-43. In the barracks, each family had about 13 sqm of accommodation, with no connection to the water mains or electricity and no medical care. Two buckets were used as a “toilet” for up to 50 persons. The camp in Steinfelder Weg was a collection point for all Flensburg “gypsies”. In 1939, it was decided to “deport” all “gypsies” from the German Reich. On 16 May 1940, it was the turn of the “gypsies” in Flensburg. On 20 May, they left Hamburg in deportation trains that took them to camps in Belcec or Kielce in Poland. They were forced to work hard there under catastrophic conditions. As a result, nine of the 26 members of the Weiss family from Flensburg died in the first three months. From 1945, a Luise L. and members of the Weiss family demanded compensation. Both claims were rejected, among other things on the grounds that the “gypsies” had “not yet been pursued on the grounds of race at the date of deportation and imprisonment”. German Roma and Sinti became a recognised minority in Germany along with Danes, Frisians and Sorbs only in 1995.