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Roma Extermination Day Ceremonies
Roman Kwiatkowski, president of the Association of Roma in Poland, appealed for the remembrance of the victims of the Roma Holocaust during Tuesday’s Roma Extermination Day ceremonies at the Auschwitz-II Birkenau site, marking the 61st anniversary of the liquidation of the Gypsy Camp.
Kwiatkowski stressed that, in some places today, the victims are not accorded the respect they deserve. An example of one such place, he said, was the site of the Roma camp in Lety, now in the Czech Republic. The site is now a pig farm. “This is outrageous and insulting, and not only to Roma but to the entire international community,” said Kwiatkowski. Roma in Poland and Germany have also appealed to the German government for the construction of a memorial to the victims of the Roma holocaust. The Roma have been proposing this monument for 16 years.
Deputy Prime Minister Izabela Jaruga-Nowacka, in attendance at the ceremony, said that everyone today should assume part of the responsibility for building a new world free of hatred, racism, xenophobia, and intolerance. “We owe at least this much to those who were murdered,” she said. In a letter to the participants, Prime Minister Marek Bełka wrote that the death of the Roma martyrs remains painful despite the decades that have passed, evokes an instinctive protest, and remains alive in the memory of succeeding generations.
A former Roma prisoner of Auschwitz, Edward Paćkowski, was imprisoned in the Auschwitz I Main Camp rather than the Zigeunerlager. He was imprisoned for collaborating with the resistance as a Boy Scout. In an interview with PAP, he recalled how the Germans beat him repeatedly. “I had a number. They always called me by my number, not my name. The block supervisor came looking for me and I was beaten. I did not even know why. I had to memorize that number.”
The participants laid wreaths at the monument to the extermination of the Roma on the site of the Zigeunerlager and paid tribute to the victims. Wreaths were also placed at the site of Crematorium V, where the prisoners were exterminated on the night of August 2/3, 1944. About 300 people attended; aside from former Roma and Polish prisoners, there were also representatives of the Roma communities across Europe and members of the diplomatic corps. The first Roma arrived in Auschwitz in 1941. The family camp for Gypsies was founded in Auschwitz II-Birkenau Concentration Camp at the end of February 1943. The Nazis deported Roma from 14 countries there. Disease and starvation decimated them in the camp. The children on whom Josef Mengele conducted experiments suffered particularly.
The Gypsy camp was liquidated on the night of August 2/3, 1944, on orders from Reichsfuehrer SS Heinrich Himmler. The 2,897 people still alive were murdered that night. A total of about 23,000 Roma were imprisoned in Auschwitz, and about 21,000 died there.
