Holocaust Memorial Day: 'Forgotten Holocaust' of Roma finally acknowledged in Germany

[pampango]

Source: The Telegraph

Europe's Roma will be represented for the first time at Germany's official Holocaust memorial ceremony, almost seven decades after up to half a million members of the community were exterminated in Nazi death camps.

Dutch born Zoni Weisz, a Roma Holocaust survivor, will address Germany's Bundestag on Thursday, the anniversary of the liberation of the Auschwitz concentration camp by Soviet troops on January 27, 1945. Germany marks the day with official memorial ceremonies for Holocaust victims. Berlin will also name a street and a gymnasium after Roma murdered by the Nazis.

"It is the first time that the fate of the Sinti and Roma of Europe has been placed at the centre of the commemorations," said Romani Rose, the head of the Council of Sinti and Roma in Germany. "Finally." The Bundestag said Mr Weisz was "surprised and honoured" to have been chosen to speak on the "forgotten Holocaust" – the extermination, historians have estimated, of between 220,000 and 500,000 of the around one million Roma in Europe.

The Nazis murdered six million Jews across Europe during World War II. The Roma and related Sinti, like the Jews deemed racially inferior by the Nazis, were also systematically persecuted, confined to ghettos and special camps, deported and killed.


A member of Roma community touches the names of Holocaust victims engraved
in metal plate at the Romanian Memorial for the Victims of Holocaust in Bucharest

Read more: http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/newstopics/world-war-2/8284274/Holocaust-Memorial-Day-Forgotten-Holocaust-of-Roma-finally-acknowledged-in-Germany.html

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Good on Germany for honoring the "forgotten Holcaust" perpetrated on the Roma. As much bad publicity as the Roma have been associated with in the past year, particularly in France, it is nice to see their historical suffering honored as well.