In the Crimea, invaded by [Axis] troops under the command of Erich von Manstein in the autumn of 1941, SS officials were puzzled when encountering the Turkic‐speaking Karaites (4000 to 5000 people) and Krymchaks (3000 to 5000 people).³⁰ Both were Jewish sects who had over the centuries lived closely with the Muslim Tatar population and were influenced by Islamic Tatar culture.

The [Axis] made extensive efforts to win the Crimean Tatars over as collaborators — as part of [its] efforts to pacify the peninsula and as part of Berlin’s more general policy towards the Islamic world — but they were not sure how to treat their Krymchak and Karaite neighbours.

After a meeting with Ohlendorf in Simferopol in late 1941, two Wehrmacht officers, Oberkriegsverwaltungsrat Fritz Donner and Major Ernst Seifert, reported that it was interesting to note that ‘a large part of these Jews on the Crimea is of the Mohammedan faith’, while there were also ‘Near Eastern racial groups of a non‐Semitic character, who, strangely, have adopted the Jewish faith’.³¹ The confusion among the [Axis] about the classification of Karaites and Krymchaks was striking.

In the end, the Karaites were classified as ethnically Turkic and spared, while the Krymchaks were considered ethnically Jewish and killed. According to Walter Groß, the Karaites were exempt from persecution because of their close social relations with the allied Muslim Tatars.³² A report by Einsatzgruppe D of May 1942 underlined this view, emphasizing the bonds between the Crimea’s Muslims and the Karaites, bonds which had been furthered by ‘their common anti‐Bolshevik stance’.³³

(Emphasis added.)

Backed by the Tatars, many Muslim Roma pretended to be Tatars to escape deportation and death. Some employed Islam. A remarkable example was the roundup of Roma in Simferopol in December 1941, when those captured tried to use religious symbols to convince the [Axis] that their arrest was a mistake. An eyewitness noted in his diary:

The [Roma and Sinti] arrived en masse on carriages at the Talmud‐Thora Building. For some reason, they raised a green flag, the symbol of Islam, high and put a mullah at the head of their procession. The [Roma and Sinti] tried to convince the Germans that they were not [Roma]; some claimed to be Tatars, others to be Turkmens. But their protests were disregarded and they were all put into the great building.⁴⁴

In the end, many Muslim Roma were murdered. Nevertheless, as the [Axis] had trouble distinguishing Muslim Roma from Muslim Tatars, some — most estimates suggest 30 per cent — survived and, as with the Karaites, a number of Muslim Roma were even recruited into [Axis] Tatar auxiliary units.

During his interrogation at the Nuremberg Einsatzgruppen Trial, when asked about the persecution of [Roma] in the Crimea, Otto Ohlendorf explained that the screening had been complicated by the fact that many Roma and the Crimean Tatars had shared the same religion: ‘That was the difficulty, because some of the [Roma] — if not all of them — were Moslems, and for that reason we attached a great amount of importance [to the issue] to not getting into difficulties with the Tartars and, therefore, people were employed in this task who knew the places and the people.’⁴⁵

The Axis exterminated two and a half thousand Roma and Sinti here:

[W]hen the killing units lingered in an area longer‐term, as in the case of Einsatzgruppe D in the Crimea, they also began systematic liquidation of the [Roma] population. In Crimea, more than 2,500 Roma fell victim to Einsatzgruppe D, concentrated especially in the capital city of Simferopol. This Crimean case also exemplifies the role played by the Eastern Army in this slaughter. Simferopol had a [Roma] quarter; in November and December 1941, a registry of its residents was prepared.

One December day, the Roma were dragged from their homes, guarded by 20–25 armed German members of the Order Police. They were herded onto trucks driven up at short intervals. These vehicles had been provided by the Wehrmacht. Their drivers, co‐drivers and armed escorts were likewise Wehrmacht personnel. The place of execution was sealed off by members of the Wehrmacht military police and Einsatzkommando 11 b.⁴⁸

Men from Einsatzgruppe D forced them to climb down from the trucks. Their coats, furs, money and valuables were confiscated. Assembled in groups, the Roma were led to the edge of an anti‐tank trench some two meters deep. It had been excavated by a Wehrmacht sapper using high explosives. Several firing squads, each commanded by an SS officer, rotated at the line. In this manner, over the course of a single day, Einsatzkommando 11 b executed several hundred persons.⁴⁹

The support provided the Einsatzgruppen by the military police and other Wehrmacht units in the shooting of the Simferopol Roma has numerous parallels in Wehrmacht complicity in the massacre of the Soviet Jews.⁵⁰

The Axis exterminated more than ten thousand Jews here as well:

Sonderkommando 11b, who settled in the city started with executions and by December 13, 1941, had murdered more than 10,000 Jews and about 2,500 Krymchaks. The [Axis] worked very systematically. Between December 11 and 13, 1941, the Krymchaks of Simferopol were shot near the nearby village of Mazanki. Of the estimated 6,500 Krymchaks on the eve of the War, at least 5,500 were exterminated⁴³.