Lessons For Today - Holocaust Education Trust of Ireland

Holocaust
MEMORIAL DAY
Even though Gypsies (Roma or Romani) were not
specifically mentioned in the Nuremberg Laws, they
became one of the largest victim groups after the Jews.
They were deprived of their civil rights, sent to ghettos
and concentration camps, used in medical experiments,
and injected with lethal substances.
Gypsies murdered 1939-1945 Because of the lack of
Western Russia 42,000 documentation, it is still
Roumania
Poland
36,000
35,000
difficult to estimate how
Croatia 28,000 many European Gypsies
Hungary
Germany
28,000
15,000 perished in the
France
Serbia
Austria
15,000
12,000
6,500
Holocaust. Most
observers believe that it
Bohemia
Latvia
6,500
2,500
could be as many as a
Lithuania 1,000 quarter of a million. In
Estonia
Slovakia
1,000
1,000 1939, they were no
Italy
Belgium
Holland
1,000
600
500
longer permitted to travel
freely and were forced
Luxembourg 200
into encampments which
Total 231,800
were later transformed
into fenced ghettos. Those not placed in concentration
camps were expelled from Germany in 1940 to the territories
of occupied Poland. In the camps, Roma were forced to wear
black triangular patches (asocials) or green triangles
(professional criminals.)
On 16 December 1942, the extermination of all Gypsies was
ordered. Vichy France deported 30,000 Roma to Nazi
concentration camps, the Croatian Ustashe government
killed tens of thousands of Roma, and the Romanians
page 18
The fate of Europe's Gypsies (Roma) in the Holocaust
deported thousands to Transnistria (then part of the
Ukraine, today a breakaway republic of Moldova) where
many died of hunger and disease. Stripped of all their
documents and identification papers, the Roma who
survived Transnistria and the Displaced Persons camp at
Baragan, were considered no longer to exist. Their lack of
formal identifications has exacerbated the problems of the
Roma people up to the present day.
In 2003, the Jewish community in Prague agreed to host
the first-ever conference on the genocide of the Roma
during the Second World War.
Two members of the Roma community living in Ireland
recall the impact of the Nazi Holocaust on their people:
In the Holocaust 1940-45, I lost my grandfather and
grandmother. It was a very tremendous loss for my
father at that time. I hope it never happens again.
Jon Zatreanu, Co-ordinator of Education, Roma
Support Group at Pavee Point Travellers’ Centre, Dublin
Starting in 1941, the Nazi regime in Romania
destroyed many Roma families. Among those
murdered were my grandmother and other family
members. All the atrocities that happened during
those years bear a horrendous impact and devastation
on my family right up to the present day. I do not
want this genocide to happen again, the killing that
destroyed children, parents and grandparents.
George Dancea, Director, Roma Support Group
at Pavee Point Travellers’ Centre, Dublin