Known as “Porajmos”, the Roma holocaust, one of the greatest crimes against humanity witnessed in history is commemorated every year on 2 August. The word of “Porajmos” which means “suppression, destruction” in Roma language is used to define systematic holocaust Roma exposed by Nazi Germany.
The Jews are not the only society who seemed as an important danger to Germany as a result of Nazi regime’s policies based on the ideology of “racial superiority”, Roma have also been target of this racism. In 1930’s legislations effecting Roma, Sinti and Jews put into action by Nazis. Roma seemed not only as a nomadic society but also as a threat to “racial purity” of German race. Nuremberg laws regulated in the manner officially including the Roma and Sinti society to labeled ones as “racially inferior”, many Roma were sterilized without their consent.
The place founded in Auschwitz during the Holocaust named as “Gypsy Camp” (Zigeunerlager) is one of the places where Roma were used as slave workers and tortured. Between the years 1933 and 1945 Roma and Sinti in Europe have been target of Nazi persecution. It is a known fact that in the Europe under the rule of Nazi, the majority of the Roma society is imprisoned in concentration camps and used as medical subjects there and lost their lives during the World War II. So that, during World War II, the Nazis and their collaborators killed hundreds of thousands of Roma men, women and children in German occupied Europe. It is known that Nazis and their collaborators caused death of Roma in total number between 220.000 and 880.000 by “human experimentations”, mass killing and gaseous deaths in the concentration camp.
On the date 26 February 1943 Roma and Sinti men, women and children were sent to Auschwitz-Birkenau. It is estimated that more than 20.000 of the ones imprisoned in the camp were killed. Despite the massacre of a significant part of the Roma population in Europe, the genocide has been denied for years. In the trials held at the Nuremberg Trials, the massacre did not take much place and it was asserted that the killing of the Roma was not based on racial reasons. Since on 2 August 1944, 4.300 Roma and Sinti of all ages and genders were sent to the gas chamber in Auschwitz, in 2015 the European Parliament recognized 2 August as the Day of Remembrance of the Roma and Sinti Genocide. Herewith, we respectfully commemorate the victims of the genocide against the Roma and wish that such atrocities will not happen again.