Remembrance – ERGO Network

Honouring Holocaust Remembrance Day: Introducing the Jekhipe Project

On 27th January, the international community comes together to commemorate Holocaust Remembrance Day, a solemn occasion that marks the liberation of the Nazi concentration camps, including Auschwitz, by the Red Army in 1945. This day serves as a poignant reminder of the millions of lives lost during the Holocaust, among them the Roma men, women, and children who perished in the shadows of history, subjected to the horrors of the “Forgotten Holocaust.”

Remembering the Roma Genocide

The Roma Genocide, overlooked for decades, saw its victims, particularly those in the “Gypsy Family Camp” at Auschwitz-Birkenau, facing a tragic end on 2nd August 1944. As we reflect on the past, it is crucial to acknowledge that the legacy of persecution endured by the Roma community did not conclude with the liberation of the camps. Antigypsyism persists, with its manifestations intensifying even in the face of global challenges, as noted by Gabriela Hrabanova, Director of ERGO Network.

Introducing the Jekhipe Project

In response to these persistent challenges, ERGO Network, in collaboration with partners from Czechia, Germany, Italy, Romania, Spain, and Sweden, proudly announces the Jekhipe Project. This initiative is a comprehensive effort to address structural and institutional obstacles hindering justice and equality for Roma communities. It seeks to rectify historical injustices, including slavery and the Holocaust while addressing contemporary issues such as limited access to services, inadequate representation, and the absence of Roma-focused cultural institutions.

Jekhipe’s Core Objectives

The Jekhipe Project operates on multiple levels, engaging in research, advocacy, networking, and capacity building to challenge existing paradigms and promote the inclusion and participation of Roma in society.

The project’s key objectives include:

Building transitional justice processes and mechanisms at the EU, national, regional/local levels, including expert and truth commissions on antigypsyism.
Developing policy recommendations for EU and national policymakers on transitional justice approaches to address antigypsyism.
Raising awareness of institutional antigypsyism and policy developments in the fight against antigypsyism.
Promoting Roma identity, history, and culture as tools to prevent and combat antigypsyism, including advocating for the inclusion of Roma history and culture in school curricula.
Empowering Roma communities and NGOs to recognise and combat antigypsyism.
Capacitating local Roma civil society and key stakeholders in countering antigypsyism.

Are you interested in working on this project?

Right now we have an open vacancy for the Jekhipe Project Coordinator, a crucial role in leading the project towards impactful change. Read more about it here.

Connecting the Dots: Romani Week Event

This 9-11 April, during Romani Week 2024, we will launch the Jekhipe Project officially. The event, titled “Reclaiming our past, rebuilding our future: New approaches to fighting antigypsyism against Roma,” will serve as a platform to initiate the project’s goals, bringing together experts, policymakers, activists, and the Roma community to foster dialogue and collaboration.

As we remember the Holocaust on this solemn day, let us also commit to challenging the persistence of antigypsyism and working towards a future where the dignity and humanity of the Roma community are fully recognised and respected. Together, we can build a more inclusive and just world.

Roma Holocaust Memorial Day 2022

“My testimony is for young people: Don’t leave your future in the hands of bloody fools! You must resist. You must resist the discrimination, racism, and violent evictions to which the Roma and Travellers are falling victim across all of Europe. We, the old ones, have lit the flame. Now, it is up to young people to feed it, make it grow, and so that we become stronger. Young people, stand up! Stay standing, and never fall to your knees!”

Speech of Raymond Gurême, Roma Holocaust survivor, to Roma youth in Auschwitz-Birkenau on August 2, 2016

Imagine a room filled with light somewhere in a quiet town in a peaceful and economically stable country in Europe. This room is full of young people, some of them Roma, some of them not – discussing history, arguing about some interpretations, and agreeing on others. Until someone utters: “I am afraid it can happen again” – and for a little while silence falls. The year is 2022.

Almost 80 years ago, on 16 May 1944, many of the 6,000 prisoners still alive in the “Gypsy camp” at Auschwitz-Birkenau resisted their murder. Around half of them were deported to other concentration camps for forced labour. The remaining 2,897 survivors – mostly children, women, and elderly people – were murdered in the gas chambers on the night of 2 August and the early morning of 3 August, 1944.

Each year on 2 August, we commemorate the Roma people who were murdered in Europe during WWII. This day is the official commemoration day in many European countries. Yet even now, 80 years later, the Holocaust remains an open wound, hurting throughout generations the young people today.

In most European countries, there was no official apology given to the survivors or their relatives by the state for the wrongdoings of the war. The reconciliation process was not started, because there was no official acknowledgement of the atrocities done to the Roma communities during the Holocaust, and therefore no promise to never ever do this again.

Moreover, the murders of 5-year-old Robika Csorba and his father in 2009 in Hungary and that of Stanislav Tomáš in the Czech Republic just recently in 2021, derogatory statements by high-level politicians, neglect during the COVID-19 pandemic and now the treatment of Roma refugees from Ukraine as second-class humans proves that the fears voiced by the young people are not completely ungrounded.

We welcome and applaud DIKH HE NA BISTER (“Look and don’t forget” in Romani) – the Roma Genocide Remembrance Initiative and other youth initiatives that offer a space and an opportunity for youngsters to learn about the past while strengthening their Roma identity. We welcome the resolution of the European Parliament in 2015 to officially recognise 2 August as European Roma Holocaust Memorial Day.

However, we also must understand that the mass killing on the 2nd of August or the Holocaust as a whole was not a stand-alone moment in history. It takes hundreds of years of antigypsyism, direct and indirect discrimination, and often actions which appear harmless – to lead and build up to this.

It is only by fighting antigypsyism in all its ugly forms today that can we prevent a tragedy of such scope from happening tomorrow.

It is by remembering our past, and teaching the children this part of history, that we can ensure the future we want.

It is by speaking up about what happened, questioning discriminatory practices, and making our inconvenient truth heard that we can avoid the atrocities committed against our communities.

Roma Holocaust Memorial Day

On 2 August, Roma people across all countries and communities remember their ancestors killed by the Nazi regime. Whether through official commemoration events or private moments of remembrance inside families, 2 August represents for Roma people everywhere a turning point in the acknowledgment of the Roma Holocaust.

On this day in 1944, over 4,300 Sinti and Roma were murdered in the concentration camp Auschwitz-Birkenau. They were taken during the night from their barracks to the gas chamber by SS guards, who only months earlier had been driven back by the fierce resistance of the Romani prisoners fighting with nothing but picks and shovels.

Although Roma, Sinti, Travellers and other related groups have been part of Europe’s history for centuries, our history and narratives remain ignored, neglected, and misrepresented. The lack of recognition of the genocide reflects the continued discrimination against Roma in Europe today.

While the European Parliament passed a resolution in 2015 to officially recognise 2 August as European Roma Holocaust Memorial Day, very little is done across the continent to fight the persisting antigypsyism in our societies. The adoption of the EU Roma Strategic Framework for equality, inclusion and participation 2020 -2030 and the corresponding European Council Recommendations ask EU Member States and Accession Countries to do more to ensure a better, more equal future for Roma across Europe. It remains to be seen if national decision-makers will take any serious steps in this direction.

The pandemic crisis of the last 15 months has drastically exposed the racism and hatred against our communities. Authorities on all levels once again proved that Roma are most likely to be forgotten and neglected, and that our wellbeing is not a priority. Hate speech is a daily reality, police brutality perseveres and many of our communities remain cut off from basic services. In schools, the young generation of survivors is deprived of knowledge about their own history.

We applaud DIKH HE NA BISTER (“Look and don’t forget” in Romani) – the Roma Genocide Remembrance Initiative and other youth initiatives that fills this gap and offer a space for young Roma and non-Roma from all over Europe to put together the scaffoldings of a stronger future through participation and human rights education. A sincere learning experience about the past and personal encounters with Holocaust survivors creates dialogue and recognition of Roma identity.

Acknowledging the past is crucial – not only for the justice and dignity of the Roma and Sinti victims of the Holocaust, but also for confronting antigypsyism today. We ask our friends and allies, colleagues, journalists and policymakers to walk the talk: publicly recognize the atrocities committed against our communities in the past and today, and act against antigypsyism and all forms of racism, every day!

In memory of Marcel Courthiade

In memory of Marcel Courthiade

Written by Saimir Mile, La Voix des Rroms

Marcel Courthiade passed away unexpectedly on March 4, 2021 in Tirana at 67. With him, the Roma lose an exceptional resource. His work remains a treasure that several generations will be able to use for the benefit of the emancipation of the Roma.

Born on August 2, 1953, on the 9th anniversary of the liquidation of the Zigeunerfamilienlager in Birkenau, it is as if he were destined to live for the renaissance of this people who had suffered so much. This probably explains why, after an exemplary school career, he abandoned his medical studies in the fifth year to devote himself to the study of languages. He managed to master countless numbers of them, but he especially chose to place Romani at the center of his interest. He dedicated his life to its defense and development, and through it to the defense of the identity and rights of the Roma.

His work always demonstrated a very high level of scientific expertise, exceptional humility and accessibility, and an especially unfailing devotion to the Roma cause. He was the architect of the development of a real linguistic policy with the principles of the unification of the Romani language adopted in 1990 in Warsaw by the 4th Congress of the International Romani Union, then chaired by Rajko Đurić, another recently deceased great personality of the international Roma movement of the time. It is on the basis of these principles that Romani is taught at the universities of Paris and Bucharest. It is also on this basis that he coordinated the drafting of the first European dictionary of the Romani language, aptly titled “From our elders, to our daughters and to our sons.”

Marcel, like other intellectuals and activists of his generation, was too far in advance to be fully understood. On February 28, 2021, on Albanian public television, he answered a journalist’s question regarding whether the Romani language was “made official”:

“It has been formalized by the Romani authorities, by the Romani institutions, but not by the States. But that’s normal […] the Romani authorities, that is to say the International Romani Union, the Commissioner for Language and Linguistic Rights etc., have formalized the Romani language very well. But the others do not recognize this formalization because it is about Romani instances. In fact, logically we must say that it is normal for a language to be formalized when it is formalized by its own institutions, not by others. But this is where there is a manipulation […], the others do not accept the existence of the Romani language. Maybe there will come a day, I don’t know; but for now, in the name of “diversity”, they say that there are several Romani languages, several dialects etc., which is not true. Italian or German for example have more dialects than Romani, but nobody says that Italian or German don’t exist. This is where the discrimination is located: the denial of the history of the Roma, the denial of their language, their literature, the alphabet, the “Kris” … It is really discrimination, which leads to the denial of the Roma nation, and when a nation does not exist, what rights can it claim? It is a very deep running and very cunning mechanism. “

These words sound like a testament today. It is up to current and future generations to grasp their full meaning in order to continue the fight for the dignity of the Roma, and therefore for their rights. We owe it to Marcel, and to all those who preceded us, and more or less trained us.

#WeRemember

International Holocaust Remembrance Day 2021 – ERGO Network statement

In 2005, the United Nations General Assembly designated 27 January as the international commemoration day in memory of the millions of victims of the Holocaust. On 27 January 1945 the Red Army liberated the Nazi concentration camps in Auschwitz, where millions of people were murdered. The Roma children, men and women from the so-called “Gypsy Family Camp” in Auschwitz-Birkenau did not live until this liberation day. The last of them, almost 3 000, had been sent to the gas chambers several months prior, on 2 August 1944, as part of the Nazis’ so-called “Final Solution to the Gypsy Question”. Sometimes known as the “Forgotten Holocaust,” the Roma Genocide was excluded from the history of World War II for decades after the end of the war.

Every year on the International Holocaust Remembrance Day, we remember all victims of the Holocaust and send a warning to today’s world: Let’s not forget that the Holocaust started with words – words that are still around us today. Gabriela Hrabanova, Director of ERGO Network states: “Antigypsyism has never stopped and even increased during the pandemic. We cannot allow that once again we and other minorities are scapegoated and our humanity is stripped away. Let us all work together to stop the hate and ensure that history will never be repeated”.