AllMovie

One reason that most contemporary gypsies now trace their decent to just a few families is that the Nazis, in their quest for a chimerical "racial purity," rounded up and exterminated all the gypsies they could lay their hands on. This documentary explores that round-up and the propaganda associated with it, and includes footage of Nazi "scientists" carefully measuring the features of gypsy children immediately before they are sent to the gas chambers. With all the publicity accorded the far less thoroughgoing (though no less horrifying) extermination of Europe's Jews, the plight of the gypsies is far less well understood. This moving documentary attempts to correct that oversight and includes interviews with some of the (very few) survivors of those days. Sadly, despite postwar promises, the West German government afforded the survivors very little in the way of recognition or restitution.