Tag Archives: Holocaust

France and the Genocide

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France and the Genocide

An action in France for the recognition of the genocide of the Roma (and the participation of France in it.

Austria: Memorial

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Austria: Memorial

For National Council President Walter Rosenkranz (FPÖ), the erection of a memorial to the Roma and Sinti persecuted and murdered under National Socialism is “a long overdue step.” “I very much hope that the ongoing search for a location will soon lead to a positive outcome,” he said in his opening speech at the event marking International Roma Remembrance Day in Parliament.

Liberec: Vandals

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Liberec: Vandals

A vandal damaged a memorial of Roma children from the Czech city of Liberec who were murdered during the Holocaust. The memorial was only erected a year agao.

Shame!

Środa, Poland: Conference

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Środa, Poland: Conference

A special meeting dedicated to the memory of the victims of the Roma and Sinti Genocide during World War II will be held in the Środa Library Aprill 11th. The speaker will be Lucyna Matkowska, née Ondycz, a representative of the second generation of Holocaust survivors from Środa. She will share moving memories of her family, reflections on the memory and legacy of this tragedy, and the challenges facing future generations.

Łodz – Litzmannstadt Ghetto

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Łodz – Litzmannstadt Ghetto

The “Gypsy” camp in Łódź was the first ghetto intended exclusively for Roma and Sinti in occupied Polish lands. In the Łódź ghetto, it was located on Wojska Polskiego, Obrońców Westerplatte, Starosikawska and Głowackiego (in today’s street names). in November 1941 almost five thousand Roma and Sinti from Burgenland (the Austro-Hungarian border) were imprisoned.

A guided tour is organised on April 10th at 18:00.

Poland: Memorial

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Poland: Memorial

A new memorial for 77 Roma who were murdered in Karczew, Poland, in 1943 is planned. During the interwar period, travelling Roma would come to the village of Przewóz (now part of Karczew) for wintering and rented rooms from local farmers. From 1939, Roma lived in the village, as the Germans banned them from travelling. The life of the local Roma community ended tragically on January 2, 1943. Several German soldiers surrounded the village and began to drag Roma out of their homes onto the streets. Anyone who resisted was immediately shot; a total of 77 people were killed during the executions.

Czechia, Roma, and the Genocide

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Czechia, Roma, and the Genocide

March 11, 1943, 642 Roma men, women and children were deported to Auschwitz Birkenau from the Protectorate of Bohemia and Moravia. This was the beginning of the systematic extermination of Roma in that region.

For the majority of Czechoslovak society at the time, this remained on the fringes of interest. Although there were cases where local residents showed sympathy or tried to help, in general, there was little awareness of the fate of the Roma. And after the war, the tragedy of the Roma Holocaust was neglected for a long time. The participation of Czech gendarmes and camp commanders in the genocide of the Roma during World War II was denied for forty years under communism. The taboo was broken after the revolution by historian Ctibor Nečas and journalist Markus Pape, and courageous activists from among Roma also played their part. For example, Jan Hauer, Antonín Lagryn or Čeněk Růžička, all sons of Leti prisoners.

Kateřina Čapková

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Kateřina Čapková

Kateřina Čapková currently works at the Vienna Wiesenthal Institute for Holocaust Studies, where she researches the various political strategies towards Roma and Romnja during the Nazi era. In the future, Austria will also increasingly be a focus of her work. Her goal: to finally make historical findings accessible to the general public.

Čapková is a Czech historian and university professor specializing in the history of Roma. Her academic career began in the 1990s at Charles University in Prague. While still a student, she worked in the Department of Jewish Studies at the Institute of Contemporary History of the Academy of Sciences.

Slovakia and the Tiso Regime

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Slovakia and the Tiso Regime

Hana Kubátová (45) is a historian, she is dedicated to Holocaust research, and works at the Faculty of Social Sciences of Charles University in Prague. Her book “Where Foxes Say Good Night” about the relationship between Christian nationalism and the Holocaust in Slovakia is currently being published. She says: “When the Tiso regime wanted to create “new Slovaks”, it was easier to say who did not belong to them”. Roma and Jews were definitively part of the New Slovaks…

Czechia: Memorial

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Czechia: Memorial

On April 2, 2025, the gates of the Roma and Sinti Holocaust Memorial in Moravia in Hodonín near Kunštát will open again after the winter break. This will be the 7th visitor season overall. The exhibition “Stories of Survivors” remains from last year, which presents the fates of Holocaust survivors of Roma and Sinti who were internment in the camp in Lety u Písku in the form of biographical medallions.

Czech Memoirs

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Czech Memoirs

An article about the memoirs of Karolína Kozáková, née Růžičková, published under the title Journey through life in a gypsy wagon. It represent a unique testimony about the internment of Roma in the Ruzyně forced labour camp and their subsequent transport to the Auschwitz II-Birkenau extermination camp. It is from these memoirs published by the Museum of Romani Culture in the book Memoirs of Romani Women (2004) that the information leaflet prepared by the Prague Forum for Romani History at the Faculty of Arts, Charles University, for this year’s 82nd anniversary of this tragic event draws. It is the only known eyewitness testimony that captures the internment of Romani people in the Ruzyne forced labour camp.

Czechia: Commemoration

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Czechia: Commemoration

On Monday, March 10, 2025, dozens of people commemorated the 82nd anniversary of the mass deportation of Roma and Sinti from Prague to the Auschwitz concentration and extermination camp with a memorial service in Ruzyne, Prague. The participants, most of whom wore black clothing, laid floral wreaths at the wooden statue. The event, which has been held at this location for the third year and was initiated by the Roma and Sinti Center, is organized by the Prague 6 district in cooperation with the Museum of Roma Culture and the Prague Forum for Roma History at the Faculty of Arts, Charles University.

Prague: Memorial Service

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Prague: Memorial Service

The Prague Forum for Roma History at the Faculty of Arts, Charles University invites you to a memorial service to honour the memory of the Roma and Sinti victims of the Holocaust

On Monday, March 10, 2025 at 3 p.m., a memorial service will be held in the park near the Old Square in Prague Ruzyne to mark the 82nd anniversary of the mass transport of Roma and Sinti from Ruzyne to the Auschwitz concentration and extermination camp.

Auschwitz: Commemoration

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Auschwitz: Commemoration

A commemoration was held on February 26th in Auschwitz on the 82nd anniversary of the first Roma transport to the camp.

Slovakia: Commemoration

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Slovakia: Commemoration

80 years ago, in the small locality of Dubnica nad Váhom in Western Slovakia, 26 Roma were murdered by Nazis. 6 women who were ill and 20 men were transported from the detention camp and murdered on the site of an arm factory.

There was a commemoration of this event in Dubnica nad Váhom.

Germany: Unku

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Germany: Unku
Erna Lauenburger (1920-1943), a Sintiza from Berlin, became known under the name Unku. In 1931, the children’s book “Ede and Unku” by the author Alex Wedding (1905-1966) was published. The story is set in the Berlin working-class milieu and deals with poverty and labour disputes in the Weimar Republic. At the centre of the story is the friendship between the two children of the title.

Together with descendants of Erna Lauenburger, Margitta and Manolito Steinbach from the Menda Yek e.V. association and the Memorial to the Murdered Jews of Europe Foundation as well as the Documentation and Cultural Center of German Sinti and Roma, the Berlin City Museum has expanded the BERLIN GLOBAL exhibition to include the biography of Erna Lauenburger.

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