European Romo Information Office (ERIO) has declared August 2 (today!) a day of reflection for the European public and media about the dangers of anti-Gypsyism and racism in general.
On the night of August 2, 1944, 2898 Romani men, women, and children were gassed at Auschwitz as Soviet troops neared the camp. This is the night the Roma call Porrajmos, or the Devouring.
The Nazis considered Roma to be both racially inferior and anti-social. In the summer of 1941, the Nazi command issued an order to "kill all Jews, Gypsies and mental patients." Gypsy identity, like Jewish identity, was based on a genealogical evaluation going back three generations. On December 16th that same year, Himmler issued the order to have all Roma remaining in Europe deported to Auschwitz-Birkenau for extermination. On December 24th, the order was given that "The Gypsies should be given the same treatment as the Jews." At a party meeting on September 14th, 1942, Justice Minister Otto Thierack announced that "Jews and Gypsies must be unconditionally exterminated." On August 2-3, 1944, the Nazis decided to ‘clean out’ the separate barracks that had been established for Roma in Birkenau, section B-IIe. The 3,000 Roma living in the barracks were immediately exterminated, the largest single mass murder of Roma during the Holocaust.
Not long ago the European Parliament passed a resolution on Holocaust and racism, but they made no mention of the Gypsies.
Meanwhile, Dzeno Association reports the past few weeks have seen three incidents of violence involving Roma in Bulgaria, sparking speculation among government officials that racial intolerance towards Roma is rising. While the political party EuroRoma , a prominent Bulgarian Roma political party, denounced the violence as ethnically related, the Bulgarian Ministry of the Interior denied that the incidents were related to ethnic hatred.
EuroRoma issued a statement denouncing the incidents, and expressing concern over the rising levels of racially related violence in Bulgaria. The party warned that Volen Siderov’s Attack Coalition, an extreme nationalist party that took fourth in the last elections there, is helping to intensify ethnic tensions in Bulgaria. Volen Siderov, leader of the Attack group, is a former journalist who once edited a reformist newspaper, Demokratsia. He drifted into radical nationalism, publishing books that were attacked for racism, and was expelled from his post as a commentator on a national daily newspaper. His cable television program, Ataka, has drawn protests from most human rights organizations, often on account of its crude generalizations about the Roma or Turkish communities.
Siderov makes the obscene claim that gypsies were guilty of committing "genocide against Bulgarians".
Today, dozens gathered at Auschwitz concentration camp to remember the Gypsy victims of the Holocaust 61 years after the Nazis gassed the minority's remaining gypsy inmates at the death camp. Gypsies from around Europe were joined for the wreath-laying ceremony by Polish and international dignitaries, including Israeli Ambassador to Poland David Peleg and Poland's Deputy Prime Minister Izabela Jaruga-Nowacka. The commemoration was organized by The Museum of Romany Culture in Brno, south Moravia.
A similar commemorative event was held in Lety, south Bohemia, earlier this year, where a concentration camp had been as well. Several Romany as well as non-Romany organizations called on the state to remove a pig farm constructed on the site of the camp. Government human rights commissioner Svatopluk Karasek met representatives of the farm in June, but according to Dzeno Association no decision has been made on it so far.
Writes Dzeno Association, “August 2nd, is our chance to commemorate their lives (those lost the night of the Porrajmos), and the lives of all Roma people lost to racial hatred and violence going back for centuries. It is our chance to honor them, and, once more, to promise ourselves: ‘never again.’” Sources: Dzeno Association, Romano, ERIO, Combined Jewish Philothropies
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