Romani (commonly but incorrectly called Gypsies) were considered by the Nazis to be social outcasts. Under the Weimar Republic--the German government from 1918 to 1933--anti-Romani laws became widespread. These laws required them to register with officials, prohibited them from traveling freely, and sent them to forced-labor camps. When the Nazis came to power, those laws remained in effect--and were expanded. Under the July 1933 sterilization law, many Romani were sterilized against their will.

In November 1933, the "Law Against Dangerous Habitual Criminals" was passed. Under this law, the police began arresting Romani along with others labeled "asocial." Beggars, vagrants, the homeless, and alcoholics were arrested and sent to concentration camps.

For two years, from 1939 to the summer of 1941, the resistance movements of Europe had found it hard to make much of an impression on the might of the German military. However, they had been useful in gathering intelligence for the Allies. The devastating Blitzkrieg attacks of 1939 to 1941, taking in Poland, Norway, Western Europe and Russia had given little time for each country to prepare any semblance of a secret army to undermine the invaders. Reports from commanders in the field to the German Army’s headquarters (OKW), indicate that the resistance movements were an irritant but no more than this. The savage repression of local populations usually did enough to put people off of joining any local resistance force.

* Per Anger, Swedish diplomat in Budapest who originated the idea of issuing provisional passports to Hungarian Jews to protect them from arrest and deportation. Anger collaborated with Raoul Wallenberg to save the lives of thousands of Jews.
* Władysław Bartoszewski - Polish Żegota activist.
* Count Folke Bernadotte of Wisborg - Swedish diplomat, who negotiated the release of 27,000 people (a significant number of which were Jews) to hospitals in Sweden.
* Jacob (Jack) Benardout - British diplomat to Dominican Republic before and during World War Two. Issued numerous Dominican Republic visas to Jews in Germany. Only 16 Jewish families arrived in the Dominican Republic (the other Jews dispersed into countries along the way e.g. Britain, America) and so created the Jewish community of The Dominican Republic
* Hiram Bingham IV, American Vice Consul in Marseilles, France 1940-1941.
* José Castellanos Contreras - a Salvadoran army colonel and diplomat who, while working as El Salvador's Consul General for Geneva from 1942-45, and in conjunction with George Mantello, helped save at least 13,000 Central European Jews from Nazi persecution by providing them with false papers of Salvadoran nationality.
* Georg Ferdinand Duckwitz, German diplomatic attaché in Denmark. Alerted Danish politician Hans Hedtoft about the imminent German plans deport to Denmark's Jewish community, thus enabling the following rescue of the Danish Jews.
* Frank Foley - British MI6 agent undercover as a passport officer in Berlin, saved around 10,000 people by issuing forged passports to Britain and the British Mandate of Palestine.
* Varian Fry - American journalist who saved 2,000 - 4,000 Jews, including many prominent artists and intellectuals.
* Albert Göring - German businessman (and younger brother of leading Nazi Hermann Göring) who helped Jews and dissidents survive in Germany
* Paul Grüninger - Swiss commander of police who provided falsely dated papers to over 3,000 refugees so they could escape Austria following the Anschluss.
* Kiichiro Higuchi - lieutenant general in the Imperial Japanese Army
* Wilm Hosenfeld - German officer who helped pianist Wladyslaw Szpilman, a Polish Jew, among many others.
* Prince Constantin Karadja - Romanian diplomat, who saved over 51,000 Jews from deportation and extermination, as credited by Yad Vashem in 2005.[18]
* Jan Karski - Polish emissary of Armia Krajowa to Western Allies and eye-witness of the Holocaust.
* Necdet Kent - Turkish Consul General at Marseille, who granted Turkish citizenship to hundreds of Jews. At one point he entered an Auschwitz-bound train at enormous personal risk to save 70 Jews, to whom he had granted Turkish citizenship, from deportation.
* Zofia Kossak-Szczucka - Polish founder of Zegota.
* Carl Lutz - Swiss consul in Budapest, managed to provide safe-conducts for emigration to Palestine to many thousands of Hungarian Jews.
* Luis Martins de Souza Dantas - Brazilian in charge of the Brazilian diplomatic mission in France. He granted Brazilian visas to several Jews and other minorities persecuted by the Nazis. He was proclaimed as Righteous among the Nations in 2003.[19]
* George Mantello (b. George Mandl) - El Salvador's honorary consul for Hungary, Romania, and Czechoslovakia - provided fictive Salvadoran citizenship papers for thousands of Jews and spearheaded a publicity campaign that eventually ended the deportation of Jews from Hungary to Auschwitz.[20][21]
* Paul V. McNutt - United States High Commissioner of the Philippines, 1937-1939, who facilitated the entry of Jewish refugees into the Philippines.[22]
* Helmuth James Graf von Moltke - adviser to the Third Reich on international law; active in Kreisau Circle resistance group, sent Jews to safe haven countries.
* Delia Murphy - wife of Dr. Thomas J. Kiernan, Irish minister in Rome 1941-1946, who worked with Hugh O'Flaherty and was part of the network that saved the lives POWs and Jews from the hands of the Gestapo.[23]
* Giovanni Palatucci - Italian police official who saved several thousand.
* Giorgio Perlasca - Italian. When Ángel Sanz Briz was ordered to leave Hungary, he falsely claimed to be his substitute and continued saving some thousands more Jews.

Originally posted by scottsquared
Are we now blaming Jews for having the wherewithal, the social cohesiveness, the resources, the education, and the tenacity displayed in the events leading up to the partition and settlement of Israel?

Has any organized group of "Romani", post WWII or present, attempted to secure a homeland for themselves?