European Roma and Sinti Holocaust Remembrance Day, 2 August 2024

On 2 August 2024, the European Roma and Sinti Holocaust Remembrance Day is commemorated on the occasion of the 80th anniversary of the tragic episode that cost the lives of 4,300 people. On the night between 2 and 3 August 1944, a group of Roma and Sinti, composed mainly of women and children, was brutally murdered by the SS in the Auschwitz-Birkenau extermination camp during an operation aimed at the definitive liquidation of the zigeunerlager, literally "lager for gypsy families”. 

In memory of all 500,000 members of the minority killed in Nazi-occupied Europe, in 2015 the European Parliament established the European Roma and Sinti Holocaust Remembrance Day on this date.

This year's anniversary will be celebrated with the last survivors in an international commemoration organized by the Central Council of German Sinti and Roma and the Association of Roma in Poland in cooperation with the State Museum Auschwitz-Birkenau and hosted by the place that was the scene of this crime against humanity. While remembering history is fundamental, we cannot ignore how Roma communities are still victims of anti-gypsyism today, a specific form of racism, driven by an ideology based on racial superiority that expresses itself in different and insidious ways.

Remembering the Porrajmos, literally "Great Devouring" or "Destruction", the name given by the Roma to the years of extermination during the Second World War, must therefore constitute a useful opportunity to take responsibility for the present by reflecting on the past. This day is also a call to the states of the world to do justice to the legacy of Auschwitz and to oppose rampant contemporary discrimination. 

For further information, please visit the site:

https://www.roma-sinti-holocaust-memorial-day.eu/

Last update

28/7/2024