Petr Banda: Council of Europe and European Parliamentary Holocaust commemorations lacked Roma representation this year
The world has been commemorating the anniversary of the liberation of the Auschwitz-Birkenau Concentration Camp. At the United Nations in New York, for the first time ever, the Romani song "Aušvicate hi kher báro" (Auschwitz Has A Great Big Building), composed by Růžena Danielová, a Holocaust survivor, was interpreted by Petra and Patrik Gelbart.
Holocaust survivor Christian Pfeil, a Sinto, also spoke at the UN in New York. How was the Memorial Day for the Victims of the Holocaust and Prevention of Crimes against Humanity being commemorated here in Europe?
At the European Parliament a commemorative ceremony was held on 26 January, but Romani people have yet to be represented there on that occasion. Similarly, at the Council of Europe, a commemorative ceremony was held on 25 January with no Roma present.
How can we Roma expect you will involve us in solving problems, as partners, if you don’t count on us during these remembrances? In the Czech Republic a commemorative ceremony was held in the Senate where Michal Mižigár, who is Romani, also gave a speech.
Mižigár spoke, for example, about antigypsyism and said it must be taken seriously, like antisemitism is. The result of the many years of antigypsyism and antisemitism was the murder, during the Holocaust, of 500,000 Sinti and Roma.
“The end of the war did not mean an end to the exclusion, humiliation and persecution of us Sinti and Roma. Antigypsyism continued in Germany and in Europe without any transformation and led to the racist exclusion that was a form of apartheid in many European countries against this biggest minority. Thanks to the brave movement for the civil rights of the Sinti and Roma, involving many Holocaust survivors and the younger generations, our minority was able to fight for the recognition of Nazi crimes and our recognition as a national minority in the 1970s and 1980s. It took four decades before then-German Chancellor Helmut Schmidt recognized the genocide of the Sinti and Roma in accordance with international law in 1982. German Federal President Frank-Walter Steimeier said in 2022 that antigypsyism and the continuing wrongdoing against Sinti and Roma after 1945 constituted yet another persecution and asked the Sinti and Roma for their forgiveness,” Christian Pfeil told the United Nations.
I spent the morning with my aunt in Prague. During breakfast, we watched the video recording of the commemorative ceremony in the Czech Senate.
My aunt recalled what her mother-in-law, who spent four years in Auschwitz and survived, told her about the Holocaust. She told me what her mother-in-law experienced and that she had only saved herself because they chose her to work as a nurse there.
The Holocaust is not just a Jewish matter. Antigypsyism is like antisemitism.
As Michal Mižigar said in the Czech Senate on 26 January, “Once antigypsyism or racism against Romani people is taken as seriously as antisemitism is, I will be able to attend gatherings like this one today with the feeling that we have learned our lesson and politicians, when they lay wreaths with ribbons reading ‘Never Again’ will actually mean those words seriously.”
