Hidden from the history of the Holocaust
Holocaust Memorial Day gathering Tuesday 2nd August 2022
Most people don’t know that the Gypsies – Roma and Sinti people – were targeted to be wiped out by the Nazis. Hundreds of thousands were murdered in the death camps, ghettos and pogroms across Europe. There was a Gypsy concentration camp within Auschwitz where thousands were packed from which people were regularly removed and taken to the gas chambers. The Nazis decided to liquidate the camp on 16th May 1943 but were met with resistance from the Gypsies who armed themselves with shovels, spade and anything they could lay their hands on. The Nazis were forced to retreat.
But they came back during July massacring thousands before finally killing or sending them all of them to other death camps on 2nd August which is why 2nd August is the Roma Holocaust Memorial day.
It is important for the Jewish community to show our solidarity and understand that we were not in alone in the Holocaust. Gypsies, Travellers, Roma and Sinti still suffer discrimination, persecution and racism today so solidarity is vital.
Holocaust Memorial Day is this coming Tuesday and the Gypsy Council is encouraging people to gather at the Holocaust Memorial in Hyde Park at 11am. Nearest tube is Knightsbridge.
Well done, JVL, for highlighting this genocideal history, so often overlooked.
Several observations. I have mentioned before, the Mémorial de la Shoah in Paris mounted an exhibition on the plight of French gitans during the Occupation. If, under the Vichy régime, Roma were rounded up and placed in southern French camps, surrounded by barbed wire, the pretext for doing so was to coral those gypsies who had no permanent residence. In November 1942, the German occupation forces took over the Vichy-controlled area of France. The camps began to be emptied and the gitans were packed off to Germany in the same rail convoys that were deporting French Jews, one of whom was my grandfather.
The most startling revelation in the Mémorial exhibition was that though France was liberated by September 1944 and the war ended in May 1945, the last enclosed gypsy camp in southern France was not closed down until July 1946.
The significance of this needs to sink in. It continued to be permissible to discriminate agains the Roma. More important, it continues to be acceptable to discrimate against them. Antisemitism is no longer acceptable; racism is no longer acceptable; discrimination against the Roma community is not only acceptable, but under the present and new Tory regime, will be enhanced.
Progressive Jewish organisations need to ally themselves visibly and vocally with gypsy representatives, and to mount the barricades with them.
Good to know, thanks JVL — last year there were two memorial events in two different places , making it difficult to get a strong turnout. I will hope to attend on 2nd with an Indian-born friend. There are always Jewish activists there and it will be great if more can come this year.
Roma & Sinti do not have a written tradition (mainly oral) & write very little about themselves. My father’s family are Irish travellers but share only a few traditions, but most importantly is a love of freedom to travel when & whever they want; the other is a love of horses. It is this freedom that ‘the others’ are jealous of. Travellers are ‘outsiders’ who do not belong or want to stay in one place; always on the road. Education is not academic as everything must be practical & immediate.
In 1935 Romani were declared ‘enemies of the race based state’, to become victims of ethnic cleansing in Germany & then in all areas of occupied Europe victims of violence & genocide. The Romani holocaust is sometimes referred to as the Porrajmos, aka the devouring, but this is not a common term that is often used (to my knowledge) by Romani speakers. The Romani holocaust has few memorials & fewer references in literature; it has been appropriated elsewhere. There is a sense of pride in the resistance shown @ Auschwitz, but that too is slowly fading out of memory. Lest we forget or it never happened.
“It is important for the Jewish community to show our solidarity and understand that we were not in alone in the Holocaust. Gypsies, Travellers, Roma and Sinti still suffer discrimination, persecution and racism today so solidarity is vital.”
This is a very good statement.
But it is also very important to remember the corporations that made it possible such as IBM, IG Farben, Topf and Sohne etc.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Topf_and_Sons
We do not hear enough of that side of things.
Thank you Rene, Stephen and Tony for the history of others that suffered in the Holocaust. I only had vague information about those groups, we should talk to our friends and relatives and let them know these facts, apart from the horror of the Holocaust these facts are hardly talked about.
A Roma Holocaust Memorial Service has been held annually on 2nd August in Kingston Maurward College, Dorchester since 2017
We will no longer be ‘The Forgotten People’
http://www.kushtibokdorset.co.uk
I agree I’m 62 my impression is we were the last generation to be taught never to forget
Which is where a permanent memorial becomes very important
What we do have in this country is one of the largest gatherings of Gypsies and Travellers at Appleby Horse Fair in the first week of June each year
A memorial at Appleby would act as a permanent reminder for the community
Billy Welch is the Gypsy King and chief organiser of the fair, there is a steering committee comprising all the main agencies, the Travellers Times is a news service for the community, Tyson Fury is Heavyweight Champion of the World between all you good people its eminently doable
Good Luck