How many Romani people were killed during the Holocaust?
Executive summary
The best-supported estimate is that between roughly 200,000 and 500,000 Romani (Roma and Sinti) people were murdered during the Nazi era; many leading institutions and scholars commonly cite a central range of about 220,000–500,000 or 250,000–500,000 while acknowledging deep uncertainty due to poor prewar population data and unrecorded killings [1] [2] [3]. Precise counting is impossible with current evidence, so historians report ranges rather than a single definitive figure [3] [4].
1. A direct, evidence-grounded tally
Authoritative institutions and multiple historians present the death toll as a wide range: the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum and several major studies cite estimates between about 220,000 and 500,000 Romani victims [1] [2] [3], while other reputable sources state “up to 500,000” or “as many as a half‑million” killed [5] [3] [4].
2. Why scholars give a range rather than one number
Estimates vary because pre‑war Roma population figures were unreliable, many murders were never recorded, killings occurred in dispersed mass shootings as well as camps, and archival destruction erased evidence—factors that force scholars to bracket the death toll rather than assert a single count [3] [6] [7].
3. The main published ranges and institutional positions
Different respected bodies present overlapping but not identical ranges: the USHMM suggests roughly 250,000–500,000 or 220,000–500,000 in various summaries [2] [3], the Holocaust Memorial Day Trust and Wiener Holocaust Library emphasize “up to 500,000” [5] [4], some museum and national histories give figures above 250,000 [8], while specific historians such as Martin Gilbert and organizations like the Society for Threatened Peoples have offered estimates in the lower hundreds of thousands [1] [7].
4. Geographic patterns that shape the totals
The Romani genocide did not occur only in camps; mass shootings by Einsatzgruppen on the Eastern Front, deportations to places like Transnistria, and near‑annihilation in some countries (for example, large proportions of Croatia’s Roma) contributed to the large but hard‑to‑trace death toll, and Auschwitz’s liquidation of the “Gypsy Family Camp” (several thousand killed in a single operation) is emblematic but represents only part of the overall losses [2] [9] [10] [11].
5. Memory, data gaps and competing narratives
The Romani genocide has long been called a “forgotten” or “silenced” history because postwar recognition, documentation, and compensation lagged behind that for other victim groups; this neglect, together with communities’ marginalization and destroyed records, both reflects and reinforces the uncertainty in death‑toll estimates [3] [4] [6].
6. Alternative viewpoints and interpretive stakes
Some researchers and advocacy groups argue for higher figures—up to about 500,000—citing demographic reconstructions and survivor testimony [3] [12], while other scholars give somewhat lower minimum estimates (around 220,000–250,000) based on surviving Nazi records and partial registries [1] [8]; these differences are substantive because the estimated proportion of Europe’s Roma population lost ranges from roughly a quarter to nearly half depending on the baseline used [6] [13].
7. Bottom line for historians and the public
The responsible answer is a range: historians and institutions most commonly report that between roughly 200,000 and 500,000 Romani people were murdered under Nazi regimes and their collaborators, with many authorities centering estimates around 250,000–500,000 while stressing that the true toll may never be known because of unrecorded killings and incomplete demographic data [1] [2] [3] [4].