FOR REMEMBRANCE OF THE ROMA GENOCIDE

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Andrej Umansky and Costel Nastasie
As we reached the camp, we settled down in the tents, although there were
also bunkers. The camp was watched over by the Romanian gendarmes.
Later, we were placed in the kolkhoz building. I remember at that moment
our cart was taken. After a while, we moved to Triduby, where we
first slept in the tents and then in bunkers. For winter, we went sleeping
in huts made in the forest.
Photo 3. Vergina, born 1934 and Tasia, born 1921 [copyrights: Yahad-in Unum and
Roma Dignity]
What emerges from this research is that there were several
types of camps: the Roma were settled placed into buildings resembling
bunkers, into holes dug into the ground, into tents in
open fields or into kolkhoz buildings. Some Roma were placed in
villages and houses where the Ukrainians used to live but were
driven out. Once there, most Roma belongings and the official
register were taken away. Alexandrina, a sedentary Roma born in
1929, who was deported from Gulia with all her family, remembered
that they were almost shot by the German settlers as they
passed by their colony:
The Germans thought that we would take their houses. As we approached,
they were armed and on horses. Being scared, we rushed in different
directions to save ourselves. A lot of children were run over by the horses.
Luckily, I could take my little brother by the hand and we survived.