Roma Holocaust remembered on Wednesday

Ábel Ravasz, Government Plenipotentiary for Roma Communities, will lay a wreath in the village of Barca on Thursday as a symbolic reminder of all victims of the Roma Holocaust in Slovakia. As the Press Department of the Interior Ministry reported, August 2 is the anniversary of the murder of more than a thousand Roma at Auschwitz Concentration Camp. According to the International Roma Youth Project, Nazi SS soldiers planned to liquidate the "Gypsy camp" in May, 1944, however when SS guards tried to force the prisoners out of the barracks for execution, they faced a rebellion of Roma men, women and children, armed with nothing more but sticks, tools and stones. The SS withdrew and implemented the "Final Solution" on August 2. Despite resistance, 2,897 Roma men, women, and children were loaded on trucks and taken to the gas chamber to be murdered. Slovak Ombudswoman Mária Patakyová stated on Tuesday that recalling the Roma Holocaust as a historical event is particularly important considering the recent assault of Roma boys in Žilina. During a memorial in Banská Bystrica, Patakyová will read the names of the victims of the Roma Holocaust.