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Roma Extermination Remembrance Day Marked
August 2, Birkenau (PAP – Polish Press Agency) – Roman Kwiatkowski, President of the Association of Roma in Poland, made an appeal for the victims of the Roma Holocaust to be remembered and for the survivors to be treated with respect. The call came during Roma Extermination Remembrance Day ceremonies at the site of the former German Auschwitz II-Birkenau camp. Over 200 persons, including former Auschwitz prisoners, took part in the commemoration.
It was the 62nd anniversary of the liquidation by the Germans of the so-called Gypsy family camp (Zigeunerfamilienlager) in the Auschwitz II-Birkenau camp. The Germans exterminated 2,897 men, women, and children in the gas chamber during the night of August 2-3, 1944. For the last ten years, the date has been marked as Roma Extermination Remembrance Day.
Roman Kwiatkowski recalled that Auschwitz was "not the only place where the Germans murdered Roma. We must remember," he said, "that the ashes of many of our fellow Roma lie in places like Sobibór, Bełżec, Hodonin, and Lety. They were the victims of Nazi genocide. There remains much to do in those places, in order to commemorate the murdered Roma in a dignified way."
Kwiatkowski also called on the Polish president and prime minister to intervene on behalf of former Roma prisoners of the German camps, who claim to be suffering discrimination in rulings by the Polish social insurance authority, ZUS. "It is unthinkable," he said, "that former concentration camp and ghetto prisoners, who enjoy war veteran status, are being discriminated against. ZUS has failed to honor the results of examinations by acknowledged medical experts, and as a result has made it impossible for these people to obtain disability benefits."
The head of the Roma organization cited a case in which a camp survivor had to pay out of his own pocket for medicine at a sanatorium where non-Roma veterans received medication free of charge.
Luise Bäcker (camp number Z-2800), a former Roma prisoner of Auschwitz, called on Germany to begin erecting a monument to the memory of Sinti and Roma holocaust victims. She noted with regret that the German government has not yet begun construction. "It is a scandal that the Federal [German] government keeps coming up with new excuses to postpone building the monument. I am 75 years old," she said, "and I want to be there in person when they dedicate the monument in Berlin. As someone who survived Auschwitz, I think I have a right to this." The Roma have been campaigning for the monument for 17 years.
Bäcker also recalled her wartime experiences. She then lived in Biedenkopf, in the German region of Hesse. "The life we had been leading came to an abrupt end on March 8, 1943," she remembered. "A detachment of SS surrounded our house that morning and arrested us—myself, my parents, and my 12 brothers and sisters. At five o'clock in the morning, they herded us like animals through the town and to the train station. They shipped us from Biedenkopf, by way of a camp in Frankfurt, to Birkenau. There, they broke our family up. They sent my older siblings to other camps as slave laborers. They placed my parents, myself, and five of my brothers and sisters in that sector of the camp [the Birkenau Zigeunerfamilienlager]. I survived there for 16 months. I was mistreated by the SS, I came down with typhus, I lived in constant, horrible fear and, like the others, suffered from starvation. Before the atrocity of the liquidation of the so-called Gypsy family camp, I was transferred as a slave laborer to Ravensbrück, Mauthausen, and Bergen-Belsen. I never saw my parents or any of my brothers and sisters again. They murdered them in Auschwitz II-Birkenau. Their remains lie somewhere here, in this enormous cemetery."
Polish President Lech Kaczyński and Prime Minister Jarosław Kaczyński sent letters to the participants in the commemorations. President Lech Kaczyński paid tribute to all the murdered Roma, "whose ashes, whose remains, rest here in Auschwitz-Birkenau, and are also scattered at other atrocity sites." He remarked that the victims' suffering and deaths in martyrdom will eternally remain a living and painful memory, and are a great warning to present and future generations about where hatred and the drive for dominance can lead.
Prime Minister Jarosław Kaczyński mentioned in his letter that the Roma people had lost a large portion of their population during the war. "The important thing is for us all to be mindful of this seldom-remembered dimension of the Holocaust."
Those in attendance laid wreaths and paid homage to the victims at the monument, on the site of the Zigeunerfamilienlager, commemorating the extermination of the Roma. Wreaths were also laid at the site of Crematorium V, where the prisoners were killed on the night of August 2-3, 1944.
Following the ceremony, an exhibition titled Roma Rising, by the American photographer Chad Evans Wyatt, was opened at the International Youth Meeting House in Oswiecim. The exhibition consists of forty black-and-white portraits of personalities from the Roma community in the Czech Republic, accompanied by short biographical notes and a catalogue devoted to their lives and accomplishments. The intention is to highlight the numerous members of the Roma minority for whom, stereotypes notwithstanding, family and education hold enormous significance.
The first Roma reached Auschwitz in 1941. The "Gypsy family camp" was established in Auschwitz II-Birkenau in late February, 1943. The Germans deported Roma there from 14 countries. Sickness and starvation decimated the Roma in the camp. The suffering of the children on whom Josef Mengele experimented was particularly acute.
On orders from Reichsfuehrer SS Heinrich Himmler, the Roma camp was liquidated on the night of August 2-3, 1944. 2,897 people—all those remaining alive at that point—were liquidated overnight. There were a total of approximately 23 thousand Roma in Auschwitz; approximately 21 thousand of them died in the camp. (PAP)
