The tragic events of 1944 were commemorated on Saturday, August 2, at a memorial event held at the SNP Museum in Banská Bystrica to mark Roma Holocaust Remembrance Day.
On the night of August 2–3, 1944, the so-called “Gypsy” section of the Auschwitz concentration camp was liquidated, and nearly 3,000 Roma were murdered in gas chambers. This date has been declared the official Roma Holocaust Memorial Day by the European Parliament. Eighty-one years have now passed since these horrific events.
During World War II, around 20,000 European Roma were imprisoned at the Auschwitz-Birkenau concentration camp. The total number of Roma Holocaust victims remains unknown but estimates across Europe range between 300,000 and 500,000 murdered Roma. In Slovakia, the estimated number of victims is between 11,000 and 16,000 citizens, while in the Czech Republic, over 6,000 Roma are believed to have been killed – representing approximately 90 percent of the total Roma population.
The genocide of the Roma is still often downplayed, ignored, denied, or treated as a taboo. Hatred merely takes on new forms and shapes, and global events continue to demonstrate how quickly society can descend from populism into extremism, and from hate speech to violence and murder.
Alexander Daško, the government’s plenipotentiary for Roma communities, stated that if we want to stop extremism and the dramatic spread of hatred around the world, we must actively work to improve the position of Roma in society and promote peaceful coexistence and mutual respect for all minorities.
He noted that most witnesses of the war have passed away, and those still alive were only children at the time. Therefore, it is now more than ever our duty to remember the victims of the Holocaust and to pass on the testimonies of World War II survivors to future generations.
Source: SITA
