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“Voices of Memory” — “The Roma in Auschwitz”
The Center for Education about Auschwitz and the Holocaust has expanded the series “Voices of Memory” by releasing a further volume. It is dedicated to the Roma, who were murdered in Auschwitz.
On the night from the 2nd to the 3rd of August, the SS murdered 2897 Roma men, women, and children; those who were still clinging to life for several months behind the barbed wire fence of the concentration camp. In the decades following this tragedy, only family members of those murdered, the few survivors, as well as Museum staff commemorated this event. Only in the last twenty years, this date has become symbolic in memorializing all European Sinti and Roma who had been murdered throughout all of Nazi occupied Europe – dying of starvation, epidemics, exhaustion in concentration camps, shot in executions, and used in criminal medical experiments.
This publication helps in filling the historical gaps about the “forgotten Holocaust”, the name often given to the mass murder of European Sinti and Roma perpetrated by the Nazis, so that such a tragedy will never be repeated – which has been symbolized by Auschwitz.
In addition to research articles, excerpts of testimony given by survivors, photographs, and documents; for the first time ever, the Museum is publishing all seven portraits of Roma, which were created by Dinah Gottliebova under orders for the medical doctor Josef Mengele in Birkenau. She was chosen for this task to document the criminal, racist experiments that Dr. Mengele was conducting, among which, within the so-called Gypsy Camp. These portraits have – in addition to their artistic merit – an extraordinary historical value, because these pictures are the visual documentation of the murdered individuals and are evidence of the crime that has been perpetrated against them.
A fragment of testimony given by Władysław Szmyt, a Polish-Roma and former prisoner, camp number 150321, who was deported to Auschwitz, but not imprisoned in the so-called Zigeunerlager, instead held in the men’s sector, BIId.
“On September 14, 1943, I was brought to Auschwitz on a transport from Radom. At the camp I received the prisoner number 150321, and in the camp, after writing down, my first and last name, date and place of birth; the above-mentioned number was tattooed on my left arm, which I to this day. For about two weeks I did not work, as it was said – I was in the camp, but I was in quarantine. Then we were taught how to line up in fives, remove and put our caps back on when ordered to do so, and sing German songs. I also had to very quickly learn my camp number in German, that which I had been marked with in the Camp. In the quarantine, the SS and Kapos tormented prisoners with hours of aerobic exercise, so-called sport. Many times I was badly beaten up. Next, I was transferred to the men’s camp, section BIId in Birkenau. Soon, I started work in a commando that dismantled wrecked aircraft (Zerlegebetriebe Komando). There, the work was relatively good and we were not punished with beatings very often. As I mentioned before, they put me into sector BIId, next to the Zigeunerlager. In it were many members of my family, such as, my sister, daughter, brother-in-law, and several of my male and female cousins. Often, I managed to talk with my sister or brother-in-law through the barbed wires. However, this did not last long. Soon, along with my other brothers, they were murdered in the gas chamber.”
