When August 1 comes around, I wish the next day would disappear or that we could skip directly to August 3. It is not that I want to forget such a painful and shameful chapter in human history, but it is incredibly difficult to even imagine the suffering endured by around 500,000 Roma men, women, elderly and children who were brutally killed by the Nazi regime from around September 1939 until May 1945, the end of World War II in Europe. Roma were among the ethnicities with the highest number of people killed by the Nazis and their collaborators.

During the night of August 2 and the early morning of August 3, 1944, thousands of Roma and Sinti were killed in gas chambers at Auschwitz II-Birkenau. Due to this, August 2 has officially been commemorated by the European Parliament as Roma Genocide Day; in Romani it known as samudaripen, meaning mass murder.

Even if I want to forget what happened, the mountains, hills, seas and oceans would not let me, because they witnessed the inhumanity of the Nazis in the death camps in Poland and beyond. Amid the frustration, pain and bitterness, there is also a moment of pride. In this place where they tried to exterminate us, today walk those, who, 80 years ago were marked for extinction.

There is pride because millions of Roma around the world remember this day in the rich Romani language, with the words: “Amara mule na merna” [Our dead do not die].

As our late poet Kujtim Paçaku said, this language, though hurt, torn, tortured, despised, belittled, humbled, mocked, burned, trampled, remains alive.

August 2, 1944

In the Auschwitz II–Birkenau extermination camp, section BIIe was pejoratively called “Zigeunerlager”  or “Gypsy Camp.” This is where the Roma were housed after being transferred to Auschwitz II-Birkenau, following the decision, shortly after the start of the war in 1939, to remove all Roma from the territory of the Third Reich. BIIe was a mixed camp, where children, men and women were imprisoned together. Roma prisoners were enslaved and subjected to torturous experiments by the Nazi doctor Josef Mengele, who was known as “The Angel of Death.”

On May 15, 1944, the Roma in Blle were warned that the Nazis planned to execute them. The next morning, on May 16, the Roma prisoners did not show up for the usual morning roll call and resisted the guards of the Schutzstaffel (SS), the Nazi paramilitary organization. The Roma armed themselves with hammers, axes and shovels, using the wood from their beds to make makeshift weapons, while the children collected stones. When SS guards entered the camp late at night to send the Roma to the gas chambers, the Roma resisted.

The Roma fought to the death. Children, men and women, all fought. No Roma died in the gas chambers that day, marking May 16 as the Day of Roma Resistance. It commemorates the Roma who postponed their deaths. Many of them survived for at least a few more months, until August 2 when they were killed en masse. 

Just as they resisted during the war, we must now peacefully resist against all forms of racism and denial of what happened. We must resist against oblivion. The term porajmos, meaning destruction, refers to the genocide against the Roma, also known as samudaripen. This tragedy is rarely discussed. There are only a few books and little historical research about this tragedy. With the widespread political underrepresentation and violation of Roma rights, not documenting their experiences is even more dangerous.

For this reason, those who visit the place where thousands of Roma were killed should raise their voice by sharing what they saw, having conversations with Holocaust survivors and much more, to ensure that such a thing never happens again.

In an organized visit in 2017, we, a group from Kosovo, visited Auschwitz. We talked with the survivors, we heard them share their stories and they called us to continue telling our story, forever.

Raymond Gurême

One of these survivors was the 95-year-old Frenchman Raymond Gurême who escaped the Nazis 11 times. Raymond Gurême was born in 1925 in France and died at the age of 95.

In our visit, I had the chance to meet Gurême and ask him about his experiences during World War II. Despite more than 70 years having passed since the war, he still had vivid memories of what he experienced. He told me that his parents owned a circus and a traveling cinema. He was the third child out of eight siblings.

In October 1940, Gurême’s family was arrested by the French gendarmerie and sent to the Linas-Montlhéry internment camp. Gurêmen managed to escape from the camp in 1941, but his family was deported to the Muslane and Montreuil-Bellay camps. These camps were designated for Roma, or as they were called at the time “nomads,” who were considered non-residents in France and were ordered to leave the country. He managed to escape from the French camp, but his parents were trapped there until the end of the war.

In August 1943, Gurêmen was arrested and sent to a concentration camp in Heddernheim Hesse, Germany. There he was forced to work for the Nazi regime.

“Thanks to my acrobatic hands, I managed to escape from the Nazi handcuffs,” said Gurêmen. He told me that during his escape he hid in a forest for more than a month, sleeping on the branches of an oak tree, because the Nazis controlled the forests.

He told me that he survived by eating leaves.

“Fight for your rights. Don’t be silent. Raise your voice. Do not give up. Even though we faced death, we never stopped resisting. A long time has passed since the Holocaust, but unfortunately, Roma people all over the world still face racism today. This is terrible, as racism can lead to another genocide. For this reason, please don’t be silent,” said Gurêmen in a message to the Roma youth during my interview with him for Radio Kosova.

Peter Höllenreiner

Peter Höllenreiner was born in Munich on March 17, 1939 and died at the age of 81 in 2020.

In March 1943, he and his family were interned in the Auschwitz II-Birkenau camp. He arrived there a day before his fourth birthday and was registered in the Zigeunerlager Camp with the number Z 3531.

He was one of the survivors. After the war, he removed the number tattooed on his forearm to erase the painful memories of World War II. But a few years later, he had the number re-tattooed as a protest. “Discrimination against me and my family continued even after the war. Looking at my tattoo with that identification number, I recall the pain I felt as a child in the concentration camp. Seeing the identification number after the war not only brought pain, but also gave me the strength to resist the forces that tried to eradicate my ethnicity and identity,” said Höllenreiner on August 2, 2017, speaking as a representative of the survivors at the international memorial at Auschwitz-Birkenau.

“Raise your voice, fight for your rights,” he told us.

Roma from Kosovo visiting the Auschwitz-Birkenau museum

In 2019, I organized a memorial march for Roma victims of the Holocaust in Prishtina’s main square. Together with Roma and non-Roma students and activists, we commemorated January 27, World Holocaust Remembrance Day. We raised our voice for the Roma victims of World War II. We also staged an artistic performance on the steps of the National Theater featuring the number 27, conveying a message of peace.

Everyone who considers themselves Roma should become a one-person educational institute in order to research more about our history and share more orally and in writing. Too little is written about us.

I want our children and our students to be interested in their history classes when learning about World War II, and to ask their professors how much they know about the Roma, their compatriots. I want our children to proudly talk about their past and look forward to a brighter future by not assimilating, but integrating with the Romani language and culture. As our late poet Kujtim Paçaku said, I want our children to correct their professors when they refer to the Roma as “others.” Tell them about Raymond Gurême, about Peter Höllenreiner, about all those who are not with us today. The resistance of those who survived and the memory of those who are no longer with us. Those who make us Roma proud.

Feature Image: Majlinda Hoxha / K2.0.