Tag Archives: Holocaust

Czech Republic News Eastern Europe

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.

News Eastern Europe Poland

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.

News Eastern Europe Slovakia

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 News Western Europe

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.

Italy News Western Europe

Sardinia: Students on the Genocide

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Sardinia: Students on the Genocide

A group of students from class 5I of the De Sanctis Deledda High School of Human Sciences (Martina Camplani, Martina Vacca, Martina Stefani, Benedetta Garau, Serena Sailis, Alessandro Spanu and Edoardo Fa), coordinated by teacher Franca Rita Porcu (teacher of Philosophy and Human Sciences), created an educational project, based precisely on the podcast tool, to reflect and reason on some of the genocides of history.

Besides the Shoah, the Tutsi, and the Native Americans, one of the episodes is devoted to Roma.

Europe Germany News Western Europe

Philomena Franz

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Philomena Franz

The Nazis would never have imagined that she would outlive them. The almost centenarian Philomena Franz, who escaped certain death several times, in an extermination camp and four concentration camps, delivers these words to the director, producer and film actor Detlev Buck, who meets her in her Berlin home to arrange an interview. It was 2020, Buck had decided to shoot a documentary on the Holocaust for the Arte TV network. Until then he had never dared to make a film about the Nazi persecutions. It was the survivors who encouraged him. They feared that future generations would forget what happened. Among them Philomena Franz, a Sinti, born in 1922 and died a hundred years later, on December 28, 2022.

Italy News Eastern Europe News Western Europe Slovenia

Slovenia, Fascists, and Roma

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Slovenia, Fascists, and Roma

In Lonjer, a then entirely Slovenian village on the outskirts of Trieste, the fascist authorities interned six Roma and Sinti between September 1940 and September 1943. The fascists confined them there after the Italian Ministry of the Interior ordered all prefects on September 11, 1940, to register Roma who were citizens of Italy and to confine those without permanent residence.

This fact as well as others were presented by Paola Trevisan in the Gopčević Palace. The historian and anthropologist dedicated her first scientific monograph to the persecution of Roma and Sinti in fascist Italy, which she presented in Trieste as part of the events marking Holocaust Remembrance Day. The author was interviewed by historian Michele Sarfatti.

News Eastern Europe Slovakia

Slovakia, Tiso, and Holocaust

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Slovakia, Tiso, and Holocaust

In the Northern Slovakian Town of Varin, there was still a street named after Dr. Josef Tiso. A catholic priest, he served as president of the Nazi client state of Slovakia and was executed in 1947. Under his presidency, Jews but also Roma were deported and executed.

Now that the street is being renamed, locals object. Maybe some history lesson would be appropriate here?

News Eastern Europe Slovenia

Slovenia on the Genocide

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Slovenia on the Genocide

An article in the Slovene press about German historian Karola Fings from Heidelberg University mwho  is working on the first encyclopedia on the genocide of the Roma during World War II. In an interview with the French news agency AFP, she said that in many countries the full extent of the persecution of the Roma during World War II is still unknown.

However, Fings cited the example of Estonia, where the Roma community was virtually wiped out, so that its dialect does not even exist. She added that some countries, such as Belgium, the Netherlands and Croatia, were particularly affected.

France News Western Europe

French Chronicle …

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French Chronicle …

Very little this week. Only three articles, all on the same topic, terh genocide of the Roma during the Holocaust. At least they speak about it. This is new.

News Eastern Europe Poland

Łodź – Litzmannstadt Ghetto

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Łodź – Litzmannstadt Ghetto

Another article on the liquidation of the Roma camp in the Litzmannstadt Ghetto on January 12th, 1942.

News Eastern Europe Slovakia

Klenovec, Slovakia

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Klenovec, Slovakia

A small town in the centre of Slovakia has a few prominent Roma. Ian Cibula, a doctor, was born there and then moved to Switzerland, where he was instrumental in the creation of the International Romani Union.

Ján Déme is a successful eye surgeon today, but the path to his dream as a Roma boy was not always easy. Some people still don’t want to believe that their top surgeon is a Roma man.

Other famous native from this town are for example the “Klenovský Oskar Schindler” Karol Paje who joined the French resistance during World War Two. He built a centre for the rescue of women and children from several countries with Czech professor Josef Fischer in the town of Vence. Helping rescue over five hundred children, and finally tragically died at the age of 25 in the fight against the fascists.

News Eastern Europe Poland

Poland: Memorial

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Poland: Memorial

In 1944, the Germans murdered a group of escaping Roma in the forest between Zasów, Dąbrówka Wisłocka and Nagoszyn. Today, the place where the Roma died is commemorated by a memorial stone and a cross. It is still unknown how many people are buried in this grave. Photo.

This tragic story took place in the winter of 1943 in Dębica. A group of Roma who had been living in the town for several years were informed in March 1943 by an unknown resistance group that the Germans were planning to murder them. They were advised to leave Dębice for their own safety and move to the Mielec district. Unfortunately, that year the winter was very frosty and the Gypsies postponed their departure. In the first days of April, a sudden warming came, the snow began to melt quickly and the roads began to become impassable. Despite these unfavourable conditions, the Gypsies, fearing for their own lives, decided not to wait any longer. They prepared their camps, carriages and horses for the journey. Entire families set off – men, women, the elderly and small children. Everyone left the city with the hope of saving their lives. They were unfortunately caught and slaughtered.

News Eastern Europe Poland

Litzmannstadt Ghetto: 83rd Anniversary

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Litzmannstadt Ghetto: 83rd Anniversary

On Thursday (9 January) a commemoration for the 83rd  anniversary of the liquidation of the Roma camp in 1942, ceremonies were held in front of the so-called Roma Forge on Wojska Polskiego Street in Łódź. 5,000 Roma and Sinti from Austria were sent to the camp established in November 1941 in the Litzmannstadt Ghetto. They all died.

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