A conference on the representation of Sinti and Roma in Holocaust films will be held November 12-14, 2025.
https://www.fsa.uni-heidelberg.de/en/filmhub/holocaust-film/conference2025
A conference on the representation of Sinti and Roma in Holocaust films will be held November 12-14, 2025.
https://www.fsa.uni-heidelberg.de/en/filmhub/holocaust-film/conference2025
Orhan Galjus, a North Macedonian Rom and journalist on the genocide of the Roma during the Holocaust.
Preserving the memories of the survivors and survivors of the genocide of the Roma during Holocaust and passing them on to future generations was the main topic of the three-day Czech-German conference, which took place at the Straka Academy and was dedicated to the memory of the murdered Roma and Sinti during World War II. The conference was organized by the Institute for Contemporary History of the Academy of Sciences of the Czech Republic on the occasion of the 80th anniversary of the end of the war.
Towards the end of the war, at least 47 people including at least 37 Roma were brutally murdered by Hungarian Nyilas soldiers near Dunajská Streda on the Klátovský branch of the Little Danube at the end of World War II. They do not have their own grave.
More than forty years ago, Dr. Spomenka Hribar warned the public about the post-war massacres of people and secret graves in Slovenia and about the urgent burials of these deceased.
The article whitewashes this issue saying that in other countries, much worse massacres were committed, and anyhow, Roma were killed by Partisans as they collaborated with Germans…
Andres Veiel’s rich investigative documentary “Riefenstahl” states the obvious: The infamous German filmmaker Leni Riefenstahl was an outright Nazi. But as with any good film, the key isn’t what it’s about but how it’s about it. Given full access to the personal archive of the director who made “Olympia” and “Triumph of the Will,” Veiel builds an overwhelming, indisputable case that not only was Riefenstahl a Nazi, but you also can’t separate the art from this artist’s politics.
One of the earliest activists who fought for the recognition of the Genocide of the Roma was born 100 years ago.
In early 1965, the popular Eastern German (GDR) newspaper Wochenpost published a letter from a Sintiza from Leipzig. In it, she described the persecution during the Nazi era, but also the discrimination in the GDR. “They see us as idlers, call us scumbags […] But no one considers that we too suffered bitter hardship, that the earth at Auschwitz and other camps was stained red with our blood. […] I would be grateful for an article.”
The editor who received these letters was Reimar Gilsenbach. He researched, found other Sinti, and wrote an article – which, however, was never published. In it, he mentioned the Marzahn forced labour camp for the first time. In connection with the preparations for the 1936 Olympic Games, police units interned Sinti and Roma there.
An article about the legacy in today’s Germany of the 1935 Nurenberg racial laws. And a warning of things ahead.
The three day conference entitles “the Legacy of Surviving Roma and Sinti Across Generations” opened on Thursday evening at Prague’s Ponrepo cinema.
In Naples, Chi Roma e… chi non guided young Roma and non-Roma people on a journey of education and testimony, culminating in a trip to Auschwitz. There they discovered the story of the Sinti boxer Johann Trollmann, known as Rukeli, a symbol of resistance and identity. The story of Rukeli (which means “tree” in the Sinti language), persecuted by the Nazis, became for the young people involved in the project a symbol of resistance against all forms of discrimination. After their trip to Auschwitz, their daily experiences of anti-Gypsyism intertwined with that of Rukeli, who died in a camp in 1944. The association Chi Rom e… chi no chose to tell his story in an ensemble film, directed by Alessandro Rak. The film, born from artistic workshops with young Roma and Neapolitan students from the Galileo Ferraris Technical Institute in Scampia, denounces marginalization and affirms dignity and memory.
Archive material on the persecution of Roma, Sinti, Yenish and other people defined as “Gypsies” under National Socialism has been released.
https://www.bundesarchiv.de/themen-entdecken/online-entdecken/geschichtsgalerien/archivgut-zur-verfolgung-von-roma-sinti-jenischen-und-anderen-im-nationalsozialismus-als-zigeuner-definierten-menschen/
Watch the documentary about forgotten heroes. The film captures the story of Roma who joined the resistance and fought for freedom, but despite this, their actions were almost completely forgotten, as if they had survived a second death. The documentary is personally important to director Vera Lacková because it is closely related to the stories of her own family.
In mid-September, a 3 days Czech-German conference on the current challenges facing genocide research will be held in Lety. Entitled “The legacy of Romani and Sinti survivors across the generations”, the conference will bring together activists, the descendants of such survivors, historians, researchers, and representatives of public institutions to discuss current forms of commemorating this tragedy, the ethical challenges connected to researching the genocide of the Roma and Sinti, the intergenerational transmission of trauma, and memory policy.
Edward Dębicki, a renowned Polsko Rom musician and Holocaust survivor is at the centre of a controversy in Gorzów Wiełkopolski. This is not his hometown, as he comes from former Eastern Poland, and was resettled when Poland was shifted 300 km westward.
The controversy was whether he could be granted a municipal apartment at a significant discount. Ultimately, the resolution was rejected. The vast majority of councillors voted against it.
So much for survivors …
News in France are dominated with the relocation of Roma in one neighbourhood of Nantes. Locals are fighting against this, and Roma who are being expelled of one camp went to court, claiming that the expulsions are illegal. In brief, chaos.
Other than that, an article about the forgotten (in France) genocide of the Roma.
Yesterday, a commemoration for the Romane victims of the Genocide of the Roma during the Holocaust was held at the Hodonín u Kunštátu Memorial.
According to the article, early in the morning on Sunday, July 19, 1942, partisans from the Bela Kranjska Detachment surrounded the Roma settlement of Kanižarica pri Črnomelj. They woke up the still sleeping residents and ordered them to gather on the road, while at the same time they began to burn down their homes. Only a few managed to escape, and all the rest were driven past Dragovanje vas towards Doblička Gora and Mavrlen on a rainy Sunday morning.
Two days later, all these prisoners, including women and children, including babies, were killed in the forest near Mavrlen. According to an Italian report, 61 Roma were taken away at that time, but some reports believe that there were many more.
A chilling report on a German researcher in Auschwitz.
On August 2, artists symbolically named one of the nameless streets in Česká Bříza “Serinkova”. It was named after the Romano partisan Josef Serinek. The artists are reacting to the decision of the Liberec city council, which refused to officially rename part of Kunratická Street.
During the August 2nd commemoration of the genocide of the Roma during the Holocaust in Auschwitz, Romani Rose, chairman of the Central Council of German Sinti and Roma gave a speech in German in which he not only spoke about the genocide of the Roma but also of human right violations, and he specifically mentioned children starving in Gaza.
The issue: the Gaza mention was not translated in English, Polish, or Czech according to the people we spoke to right after the ceremony in Auschwitz.