Although the Jews were their primary targets, the Nazis and their collaborators also persecuted other groups for racial or ideological reasons. Among the earliest victims of Nazi discrimination in Germany were political opponents -- primarily Communists, Socialists, Social Democrats, and trade union leaders. In 1933, the SS established the first concentration camp, Dachau, as a detention center for thousands of German political prisoners. The Nazis also persecuted authors and artists whose works they considered subversive or who were Jewish, subjecting them to arrest, economic restrictions, and other forms of discrimination.

The Nazis targeted Roma (Gypsies) on racial grounds. The legal interpretations of the 1935 Nuremberg Laws (German laws which defined Jews by blood according to racist theories) were later adapted to include Roma. The Nazis termed Roma "work-shy" and "asocial"—in the Nazi framework, unproductive and socially unfit. Roma deported to the Lodz ghetto were among the first to be killed in mobile gas vans at the Chelmno extermination camp in Poland. The Nazis also deported more than 20,000 Roma to the Auschwitz-Birkenau camp, where most of them were murdered in the gas chambers.