Switzerland deported Sinto refugee later shot by Nazis

Switzerland deported Anton Reinhardt, a 17-year-old Sinto who had fled Nazi Germany, to German-occupied Alsace in 1944. He was later captured and executed. SRF reports that a commemorative Stolperstein was placed in Koblenz, in the canton of Aargau, in his memory.

Reinhardt was shot in the neck on March 31, 1945, after a brief trial. He had been mistreated and forced to dig his own grave. He was accused of refusing military service, but a 1960 ruling by Germany’s Federal Court of Justice said he was likely killed for racial reasons.

Born in 1927 in Weiden, in what is now Baden-Württemberg, Reinhardt grew up in southern Germany. After criticising the war, he came under scrutiny from Nazi authorities and faced the threat of forced sterilisation. In August 1944, he pretended to have appendicitis, escaped from hospital and swam across the Rhine to Switzerland, hoping to find asylum.

Swiss authorities arrested him. Aargau police described him as a “dubious person” and noted that his parents had been part of the itinerant community before the war. After consulting the police department in Bern, they deported him to German-occupied Alsace, where he was immediately arrested. He was held in several camps and forced to work. After escaping, he was caught and executed.

About 100 people attended the ceremony in Koblenz. Reinhardt’s is the 61st Stolperstein placed in Switzerland and the first dedicated to a Sinto. The memorial project commemorates people persecuted, murdered, deported, expelled or driven to suicide during the Nazi era. Sinti, Roma and Yenish people were classified by Nazi ideology as morally and biologically inferior.

Reinhardt’s final letter to his mother was never sent. It is held in the state archive in Freiburg, Germany.