Final Reflections

The case study of Julia Lentini supports the idea that Nazi’s looked at physical attributes as basis for discrimination. For the most part, Nazi propaganda and messaging diluted target group’s identities to specific stereotypes. Most Europeans thought all Gypsies were nomadic wanderers when some held steady jobs, as seen with Lentini’s family, and “just as Nazi ideologues invented the category of “the Jew”, as if all Jews were somehow the same, they created the stereotypical, deformed “life unworthy of living” and the monolithic “Gypsie” (16 Bergen). “The European officials who introduced restrictions of Gypsies and the police who enforced them were often unclear about who exactly was a Gypsy,” partially due to the fact that they assumed they could tell Roma and Sinti apart from ‘aryans’ based on physical attributes (15 Bergen). It must have become clear that this method allowed some, like the Backers, to fall through the cracks, therefore they began looking through family lineage. This idea of sorting through a family tree to figure out who was ‘aryan’ or ‘nonaryan’   remains consistent with what was covered in lecture and assigned readings, relating to what was taught on how the Nazi party based Jewishness on how many Jewish grandparents one had, no matter if they had converted to Catholicism or not. 

Interestingly, a quote I found in the Holocaust Encyclopedia relates to Lintini’s narrative:

 “[Hienrich] Himmler toyed with the idea of keeping a small group of “pure” Gypsies alive on reservation for the ethnic study of these racial “enemies of the state,” but the regime rejected this idea. In a decree dated December 16, 1942, Himmler ordered the deportation of Gypsies and part-Gypsies to Auschwitz. Birkenau. At least 23,000 Gypsies were brought there, the first group arriving from Germany in February 1943.”

 (United States [Sinti], 9) 

It seems likely, due to Lentini’s blue eyes and light skin, that the Backer family could have been what Himmler considered ‘pure Gypsies’ or ‘part-Gypsies’. Especially given the timeline, her family is most likely part of the group described as being deported to Auschwitz.