2019 – 75TH ANNIVERSARY OF 2 AUGUST
EUROPEAN ROMA
HOLOCAUST MEMORIAL DAY
Central Council of German Sinti and Roma
The international human rights icon and activist Rev. Jesse L. Jackson Sr., a representative of the US civil rights movement, stated in his key note speech:
“It is critically important that we are here today for the European Roma Holocaust Memorial Day. This day underscores the importance of educating people about the Roma holocaust during World War II - Not just to look back but to surge forward with a renewed urgency to combat the discrimination the Roma community continues to face.”
Jackson emphasized the common ground of the US civil rights movement and the Sinti and Roma civil rights struggle against oppression and called for political resistance also in the future: “It’s time to organize and fight back. If history has taught us anything, it is that where there is oppression, there will be resistance. People will go forward by hope and unity, not backwards by fear and division.”
Else Baker, Eva Fahidi and Nadir Dedic spoke for the survivors of the Holocaust. Else Baker was deported as a Sinti child from Hamburg to Auschwitz-Birkenau and later to Ravensbrück before her father succeeded to get her released. In her speech, she called for the continued remembrance of the Holocaust and stressed the resulting responsibility: "The fates of the murdered and the survivors of the extermination camps must never be forgotten. All of us - the survivors of the extermination camps as well as those born after them - must stand up for human rights and democracy".
Eva Fahidi, who had to observe the murder of the lastSinti and Roma in Auschwitz on August 2 1944, recalled the desperate resistance of the prisoners: "They resisted with stones, with sticks, with objects that fell into their hands, screaming, cursing, shouting or praying. The SS set the dogs barking loudly at the people, they attacked the people, the desperation was great, the noise was terrible, the children cried for their mothers, the mothers tried to calm the children down".
The survivor of the Jasenovac concentration camp, Nadir Dedic, called for a committed civil society in view of current developments in politics and society: "It is certainly not an easy life to look back on. But it is above all my view of the present and the future that causes me fear and worry. Whether Jasenovac or Auschwitz, we must never forget what happened! Stand up together for a life together based on mutual respect and not on hatred, contempt and exclusion".
The 75th anniversary of 2 August, the European Roma Holocaust Memorial Day 2019, was commemorated this year by the last Sinti and Roma Holocaust survivors together with thousands of members of Sinti and Roma communities from around Europe, as well as with representatives of governments, international organizations and civil society.