According to the Nazi ideology, Jews constituted the greatest threat to German society and racial purity. For this reason, their rights were gradually limited with isolation in designated areas after the war broke out. Then, they were murdered in death camps and other murder sites.
However, Jews were not the only group persecuted by the Nazis. Even before the Second World War had begun, they sought to ‘purify’ German society from all ‘racially different’ groups (to which Sinti and Roma belonged, alongside Jews), as well as persons with physical disabilities, mental health difficulties, and ones considered to be anti-social. The last-mentioned group included homosexuals and prostitutes and, given their nomadic lifestyle, Sinti and Roma. Political opponents (mainly socialists and communists as well as various union and social activists opposed to the Nazis) constituted a separate category. They were incarcerated and placed in concentration camps that were under construction as of 1933.