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Roma Commemorate the Anniversary of the First Deportation to Auschwitz
Feb 26, Bielsko-Biała (PAP-Polish Press Agency) – On Sunday, February 26, officials from the Association of Roma in Poland commemorated the 63rd anniversary of the first deportation of Gypsies to Auschwitz and the creation of the so-called Zigeunerfamilienlager (Roma family camp) in Auschwitz II-Birkenau. They lighted candles and placed flowers at the monument at the site of the Birkenau Gypsy camp, and at the ruins of gas chamber no. V.
Numerically, the Roma were the third-largest group of deportees to Auschwitz.
A transport made up of several men, women, and children arrived from Germany on February 26, 1943. The deportees were placed in an unfinished sector of the Auschwitz II-Birkenau camp.
A total of 20,967 men, women, and children were imprisoned in the Gypsy camp between February 26, 1943 and July 21, 1944. This figure does not include about 1,700 Roma from Białystok, who were not entered in the camp records. The Germans suspected that they were infected with typhus and exterminated all of them as soon as they arrived. Transports of Roma reached Auschwitz from 14 countries.
The majority of the almost 21,000 Roma prisoners died as a result of sickness, typhus, and starvation diarrhea. Children deported to or born in Auschwitz suffered especially badly. Diseases spread among them, and some became experimental subjects in camp physician Josef Mengele’s criminal experiments. All of those who had not died earlier were exterminated.
The extermination of the Roma in Birkenau took place on the night of August 2/3, 1944. A ban on going outside the barracks was imposed on the Gypsy camp on the evening of September 2 and, despite resistance, 2,897 men, women, and children were loaded on trucks, taken to gas chamber no. V, and exterminated. Their bodies were burned in the adjacent pits.
For the Roma people, Auschwitz is a symbol of destruction. Roma meet at the site of the Birkenau family camp each August 2 to pay homage to the victims of the Holocaust. Since 1997, Roma Holocaust Memorial Day has been observed on that date.
The Association of Roma in Poland was founded in 1992, and established as its goal the creation of conditions for the full participation of Roma in the life of the Polish community, of which they consider themselves a part. Tens of thousands of Roma live in Poland today, with the largest numbers in Tarnów, Olsztyn, Wrocław, Andrychów, and Ciechanów. (PAP)
