After less than three months in the Buchenwald concentration camp, Paul Baranyai is dead. At the end of June 1939, he was among the first to be deported in one of the mass deportations of hundreds of Burgenland Roma, first to the Dachau concentration camp and then to Ettersberg. Like the others, the SS registered the 22-year-old farm laborer as a “Gypsy” upon arrival. In the camp, the men are subjected to the most severe harassment. In snow and ice, the SS forced them to work in thin prison garb on outdoor construction sites. Many did not survive the winter. Those who endured the hardships were transported in the spring of 1940 to the Mauthausen concentration camp. Paul Baranyai did not make it. The SS recorded “pneumonia” as the cause of death.
