Address by the Mayor on the occasion of August 2 – Commemoration and remembrance of the Holocaust against the Roma

Today marks an important date in the history of the Roma – the Day of the Roma Holocaust on August 2nd. There is a lot of information about the Holocaust in history. However, among all of them, very few are focused on the way the Roma population is systematically killed during the Second World War. Where Roma victims deserve to be mentioned, this is usually no more than a remark: Roma are seen as one of the “additional groups” suffered at the time … Roma were not an “additional group” they were one of the key target groups for complete elimination from the Nazis. By the end of the war, the size of the Roma population was estimated to be as much as 80% of what it was at the beginning.

The human response to the pain and suffering of others is to acknowledge the suffering and try to repair the continuing harm. For Holocaust survivors, the families of survivors and the families of those who died, what society can at least do is not forget.

Today, despite frequent calls for “remembrance” of the Holocaust, the plight of Roma has all its predispositions, but they have been forgotten. In reality, they were never fully recognized. One indication of failure is a state of almost complete ignorance. The personal need to understand the specific past and history is of course more important in the case of a community like the Roma, whose history has been largely ignored and neglected throughout general history.