By Anna Mirga-Kruszelnicka
On this day, we feel the pain of our ancestors who suffered horrific fate at the hands of the Nazis and their allies during the World War II. We remember our dead and pay our respect to those who survived, but we mostly do it alone because our wartime history remains largely forgotten or ignored by the rest of the world.
TARGETED FOR COMPLETE EXTERMINATION: The date of August 2, established as the day of Roma Holocaust remembrance, is symbolic. It is on the night of August 2 1944 that the remaining prisoners of the so-called “Gypsy family camp” (Zigeunerfamilienlager) of the Auschwitz-Birkenau concentration camp – over 4300 Roma men, women and children – were exterminated in the gas chambers. This tragic event represents a peak of the suffering of Roma which begun even before WWII broke out.
In fact, the state-sponsored persecution of Roma by German authorities started much earlier – already in late XIX institutions and laws were introduced which gradually stripped Roma from their rights and freedoms. When Hitler came to power in 1933, anti-Roma practices expanded; already then Roma were being placed in concentration camps. Racial purity laws introduced by the Nazis, in particular the 1935 Nuremberg Laws, targeted equally Jews and Roma. Once the WWII started and the Nazis begun their reign of terror over Europe, the Roma were consistently targeted for complete extermination. From France to Ukraine, from the Netherlands to the Balkans, Roma were being rounded up in ghetto and deported to camps. In some countries, the extermination did not come at the hands of the Nazis but of their allies, like in the case of Ustaše-controlled Croatia where thousands of Roma were murdered alongside of Serbs, Jews, and Croatian and Bosnian dissidents. Particularity in southern and eastern Europe, Roma were hunted down by the so-called Einsatzgruppen – mobile killing squads responsible for mass executions, which often took place in forests, outskirts of villages or fields, leaving little or no records of the names and numbers of the victims. This is also why we still do not know exactly how many Roma were killed during this period. However, it is estimated that by the end of WWII, at least 500.000 Roma were murdered, maybe as much as 50% of the entire Roma population in Europe at the time. In some countries, like in Germany, Austria or the Czech Republic, the vast majority of local Roma population was effectively wiped out.
As we recall this dark period of history, it is important to remember Roma not only as anonymous victims who faced their horrific fate passively. Roma often resisted, engaged in diverse acts of disobedience and sabotage, and fought the Nazis side by side of their non-Roma compatriots as members of the army or as partisans. One of the best examples is the uprising which took place in the Zigenuerfamilienlager in Auschwitz-Birkenau on May 16 1944. On this day, the Roma prisoners armed themselves with tools, bricks and stones to face the SS guard. Ultimately, this act of resistance extended their lives by a few months – the liquidation of the camp eventually took place on August 2. This event is one of the very few documented revolts in Nazi concentration camps and is now celebrated annually on May 16 as the “Roma Resistance Day”. New research continues to reveal examples of heroism which until recently remained invisible or untold. Stories of Raymond Gureme, Roma member of the French Resistance or Alfrenda “Noncia” Markowska, who miraculously survived a mass execution in Poland to later save Roma and Jewish children, continue to inspire generations of young Roma and help us reframe the way in which we understand our role during the war.
THE FIGHT FOR A “WORTHY PLACE AMONG THE VICTIMS”: For decades after the war’s end, it was as if the Roma Holocaust had never happened. In fact, for years the horrors experienced by Roma during the WWII were referred to as the “forgotten Holocaust”. Indeed, for decades it was. In the years after the war, little attention has been paid to the fate of Roma under the Nazi rule. There was not a single Roma witness during the Nuremberg trials and Roma victims were mentioned only marginally. Only in 1962, the crimes against Roma were for the first time explicitly mentioned, proven and judged during the trial of Adolf Eichmann. Yet still, as the perpetrators were kept accountable and other victims of the Holocaust were remembered, received compensations and had memorials erected to their tribute, the destruction of Roma lives (both of those murdered but also survivors whose entire lives were shattered) received no attention, moral, financial or institutional support at all.
The struggle for recognition of the Roma Holocaust has been a driving force for Romani activism ever since the post-war times. In the 60’s, Roma intellectuals and organizations begun to fight for official acknowledgment of the Roma Holocaust and, over time, this plight became an essential aim of Roma ethnic mobilization. In particular, the role of German Roma organizations was key in mobilizing public attention through actions such as 1979 demonstrations in Bergen-Belsen or the famous hunger strike in 1980 at Dachau. Roma arts and culture were also important in raising awareness of the fate of Roma during the Holocaust – writings of Mateo Maximoff, poetry of Bronislawa “Papusza” Wajs or the powerful paintings of Ceija Stojka, among many others, conveyed compelling accounts of the wartime traumas the Roma communities experienced. The Roma Holocaust has also become a recurrent theme of World Romani Congresses. During the historic first World Romani Congress which took place in 1971 in London, the topic of war crimes was one of the central. The very text of the Romani anthem “Gelem, Gelem”, adopted during the Congress, makes explicit mentions to the “black legions which murdered the Roma”. The centrality of Roma Holocaust claims are not surprising; after all, many of the organizers of the First World Roma Congress were Holocaust survivors themselves: for example, Žarko Jovanović, the composer of the Romani anthem, was a Serbian Roma, after being imprisoned in three camps, joined the Yugoslav Partisans to fight for freedom. Subsequent World Roma Congresses, especially in 1981 in Gottingen (Germany) and 1990 in Serock (Poland) focused explicitly on elaborating claims for reparations and building a political project aiming at the Roma Holocaust recognition. Yet multiple demands on behalf of Romani organizations for years remained largely fruitless. The Roma Holocaust was denied recognition based on the conviction that Roma were not targeted by the Nazis based on racial grounds but due to their alleged “antisocial” and criminal nature. It wasn’t until 1982 that the German Chancellor Helmut Schmidt acknowledged that Roma as a people were targeted for complete extermination by the Nazis.
Since then, undeniably some progress has been made. Research on Roma Holocaust, increasingly developed by Romani scholars themselves, gradually fills the blind spots in our knowledge about what has happened. We also witness expanded practices of commemoration and memorialization. After years of advocacy, the unveiling of the Memorial to Sinti and Roma Holocaust Victims in Berlin in 2012 or the removal of the pig farm from the Roma Holocaust site in Lety u Pisku in the Czch Republic should be considered as both symbolic and tangible milestones. In 2015, the European Parliament declared 2 August as the annual “European Roma Holocaust Memorial Day” to commemorate the Roma victims. These are the achievements of decades of struggle of Romani civil society for recognition of the Roma Holocaust. Despite this, much still remains to be done.
Expanding historical knowledge on the Roma Holocaust seldom translates into greater awareness of the Roma Holocaust. Recent research developed by the Council of Europe, the Roma Education Fund and the George Eckert Institute, based on an analyses of school textbooks in 22 European countries, concluded that the Roma, and in particular the Roma history, is mentioned very sporadically, if at all. Moreover, there are still innumerable sites of the Roma Holocaust which remain profaned and countless mass graves which await proper commemoration. In most countries, there are no memorials or acts of institutional recognition which position the Roma Holocaust as central and inseparable from the mainstream narrative of national and European history.
RELEVANCE OF COMMEMORATING AUGUST 2 AND ITS IMPORTANCE FOR THE FUTURE OF EUROPE: Remembering the Roma Holocaust is essential for us, the Roma. History is a constitutive element of collective identity which allows us to understand who we are and where we come from as a people, reinforcing our understanding of collective belonging and shared fate. But unlike other nations, for decades we did not have institutions of our own which would safeguard our memory, elaborate textbooks or ensure respectfully preservation of sites of our history. This is also why the establishment of the European Roma Institute for Arts and Culture (ERIAC), and the recent opening of its first branch in Serbia, is of such tremendous importance.
But remembering the Roma Holocaust is equally, if not more important, for the non-Roma majority.
The history of the Roma Holocaust needs to be understood on the continuum of centuries of history of antigypsyism. Since the arrival of Roma to Europe, our ancestors have been the targets of diverse anti-Roma laws ranging from expulsions, deportations, forced imprisonment, assimilation, to over 500 years of slavery in the territories of contemporary Roma, which ended only in the second half of XIX century. It is this deeply rooted ideology which enabled the tragedies of the Holocaust to happen. What is even more tragic, is that the persecution of Roma did not end in 1945 but continues well into XIX century. In the period after the war, much of the discriminatory laws and institutional practices remained in place – over the past decades Roma have been victims of forced sterilization, segregation, expulsions and evictions, limited access to basic services and rights, and continue to be victims of hate crimes, including racially motivated murders. Rhetoric of hate, resembling the dehumanizing language of the Nazis, can be still heard in public and political discourse, even from high-ranking public officials in Italy, France, Bulgaria or the Czech Republic, to name a few.
For me, and for some many of us, commemorating August 2 is not only about remembering the victims and cherishing the survivors. It is a grim reminder that the past horrors have not ended completely. As we witness increasing radicalization of European societies, far-right and neo-Nazi parties making considerable political gains, and populist, racist and dehumanizing rhetoric becoming ever more acceptable in public and political discourses, we know we need to stay vigilant.
Remembering the Roma Holocaust is not only about historical justice. It is about taking a moral stance to oppose the very social and political processes that facilitated the Holocaust from ever happening in the first place. If Europe is to live up to the values of democracy and freedom it so proudly proclaims, and to ensure its future prosperity and peace, it needs to assertively oppose the increasing wave of anti-gypsyism, and more broadly, the toxic nationalism, chauvinism and racism creeping through Europe.