The scholar Guenter Lewy died on March 24, at the age of 102. But despite the adage that one should not speak ill of the dead, the damage he did to the historiography of the Romani genocide cannot be ignored.

In 2000, Lewy published a book, The Nazi Persecution of the Gypsies, which made extensive use of archival sources to support his central thesis that the mass killing of the Roma was not actually a genocide because there was – at least according to him – no central plan of extermination as there was with the Jews. But although the book got positive reviews from media outlets like The Wall Street Journal, and respected scholars have continued citing from it, my own research using some of the same documents Lewy used shows that there are crucial sections of them missing from his analysis.

In a section of Chapter 11 about the Nazis’ “extermination through labor” policy, Lewy excerpted an Oct. 13, 1942, letter from Otto Thierack, the minister of justice, to the head of the Party Chancellery, Martin Bormann, in which Thierack suggested handing Roma, along with Jews, Poles and Russians, over to Heinrich Himmler in order to aid their extermination. But Lewy did not include the last few paragraphs of the letter, wherein Thierack told Bormann that Himmler agreed with his proposal and requested he inform him of “whether the Führer approves of this view.” Also missing from Lewy’s analysis was Bormann’s reply five days later: “I presented your letter of 13 October of this year to the Führer today; he entirely shares your opinion.”

While it is possible Lewy simply did not see Bormann’s reply, the fact that he left out the latter portion of Thierack’s letter is critical because it would have undermined his thesis by showing genocidal intent toward Roma at the highest levels of the Nazi leadership, particularly Himmler, one of the chief architects of the Holocaust. Bormann’s response is even more damning, as it shows Adolf Hitler himself approved of the extermination of the Roma.

Also detrimental to Lewy’s thesis were the recollections of Pery Broad, an SS officer who worked in the political department of Auschwitz. Broad wrote that “Berlin wanted to exterminate the Gypsies,” with Himmler ordering forced labor for those considered fit and death by gassing for the rest. Broad added that “[The Reich Central Office for Combating the Gypsy Menace] was well aware of the determination of [Himmler] to make all Gypsies disappear from the face of the........

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