The NGO “Koračite sa nama – Phiren Amenca” opened the exhibition “Racial diagnosis: “Gypsy” – the Nazi genocide of the Roma and Sinti and the long struggle for recognition” paid a special tribute to the victims of the Roma and Sinti victims of the Holocaust during the Second World War.
A new book by Ari Joskovicz, a historian, examines the relationship between Jews and Roma in the struggle for recognition and justice for the Holocaust.
82 years ago today, the massacre of Babyn Yar started. It had been preceded by the execution two days earlier of some Jewish and mentally ill patients two days earlier.
The Nazis killed mostly Jews, but also Roma, Russian POWs and many others. The Mayor of Kyiv, Vitaliy Klyshko and the Ukranian President Volodymyr Zelensky paid homage to the victims.
Alfreda ‘Nońcia’ Markowska with her daughter, Maria Majewska in Gorzów Wielkopolski, in April 2016 when she was turning 87 years old. She collected babies whose mothers had been slaughtered by Germans. She was still a teenager at that time and saved dozen of children.
Almost five years ago, the Dresden city council decided to create a monument to the Sinti boxing legend Johann Wilhelm Trollmann so that it would receive more attention. He was killed by the Nazis.
To this date ,nothing has happened.
Surprised?
Slovakia commemorated one of the most important events in its modern history – the beginning of the partisan rebellion against the Nazi regime. At least 130,000 Slovaks and, according to historical sources, another 8,400 foreign fighters of thirty different nationalities fought in the Slovak mountains from August 29, 1944 until the end of the war.
In addition to Czechs, Spaniards, Italians and/or Ruthenians, the Roma also joined the resistance, explains ethnographer and historian Zuzana Kumanová.
“In 1940, a military law was passed, on the basis of which Roma boys did not become soldiers and performed substitute military service only in the 6th unarmed work battalion. That is where labelling, marking people unsuitable for the defence of the homeland, appeared for the first time. And other regulations, which were related to displacement outside the villages, in turn created space for the support of partisans,” the ethnographer and historian points out.
In January 1945, for example, the German Wehrmacht herded 60 Roma, including women and children, into huts in Čierno Balog and set fire to the houses. All died on the spot. However, historian and ethnographer Kumanová reminds us that Roma victims of World War II are not often talked about. The Ma bisteren project is therefore trying to raise awareness of the Roma Holocaust.
“Historians are still trying to estimate the exact number of victims of the crime in Ponary, which was committed by the German occupiers together with Lithuanian auxiliary troops, the Shaulis. Estimates say at least 80,000. victims” said Deputy Minister of Culture and National Heritage Dr. Jarosław Sellin during the opening of the exhibition “Victims of crime in Ponary near Vilnius 1941-1944”, which took place today at Targ Węglowy in Gdańsk . The exhibition can be visited until September 29, 2023.
The victims were mostly Jewish but there were also Roma and Poles who were killed there.
The OĽaNO chairman and former prime minister Igor Matovič and the president of the Republic Milan Uhrík discussed in the program O 5 minut 12 on RTVS. He admitted that he “doesn’t go much” to his job as an MEP, but despite this, he earned more than 400,000 euros in the European Parliament.
At the beginning of the show, the moderator confronted Milan Uhrík with his past statements about the Holocaust. Uhrík did not directly condemn the Holocaust of Jews, Roma, LGBTI+ people, etc. “Certainly none of us wishes, neither now, nor in the past, nor in the future, that anyone, be it Igor Matovič, Milan Uhrík, your children, our children, anyone, would be taken to some concentration camp because he is small, fat big, white, black or whatever, we don’t even have to debate it.’
A reportage of the mass murder committed by German tropps on Roma during World War Two in the Ukraine.
A long article on the Genocide of the Roma during the Holocaust and a new database “Testimony of Roma and Sinti,” devoted to an expanded understanding of the Roma genocide of World War II.
1942 a key year in the history of the ghetto, mostly due to camps operating within it, intended for Roma and Polish children. In January, the Germans liquidated the so-called gypsy camp (Zigeunerlager). In December, in the area separated from the ghetto, the Preventive Security Police Camp for Polish Youth in Łódź (Polen-Jugendverwahrlager der Sicherheitspolizei in Litzmannstadt) was established.
A walk in the footsteps of both camps will focus on their history, the fate of the victims and the relations between the camps and the surrounding ghetto.
Two articles on the relations between Jews and Roma after World War Two.
A new Internet project in the Czech Republic collects and presents eyewitness accounts of the persecution of the Roma during the German occupation of the country in World War II.
The touching individual fates have been available for a few days at www.romanestimonies.com – both in Czech and in English translation. They are supplemented by historical notes and an extensive glossary.
Zuzana Kumanová, PhD., is one of the most prominent experts in ethnology and history of the 20th century, especially in the topic of the Roma Holocaust. In addition to the academic sphere, she is also active in the field of Roma and women’s activism and in public and state administration. She says that as a society, we don’t know what we actually want to do with the Roma.
The monument commemorating the Roma victims of the Holocaust on the site of the camp of Maxglan will be reopened this coming Wednesday. It was heavily damaged in February.
An article on the Genocide of the Roma in Croatia, a Genocide that didn’t leave anyone alive. The historian Danijel Vojak explains.
In fact, if one wants to meet Croatian Roma, the only place is Milan, where a few of them fled in 1944. The Roma currently in Croatia come from other parts of former Yugoslavia.
Peter Pollák, Slovak MEP during the commemoration of the Genocide of the Roma in Banská Bystrica that “The pernicious ideology of Nazism and fascism caused millions of victims, including hundreds of thousands of Roma in Europe. Even the Roma bought today’s peace. However, we must keep in mind that if we don’t remember these atrocities, what our ancestors went through, we can also go through.”
August 2nd is celebrated at the commemoration of the genocide of the Roma during the Holocaust since 2015. But Roma have long been second-class victims. The interest of the public in this commemoration and this part of the suppressed history is not least thanks to people like Čeija Stojka, who broke the silence. A major show is now being dedicated to Stojka at the Austrian Cultural Forum in New York.
Some articles from Eastern Europe on the commemoration of the Genocide of the Roma.
Recordings of Czech and Slovak Roma victims of the Holocaust are now available in a new database.
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