Victims of Roma Holocaust commemorated in Budapest

The Roma murdered during the second world war were commemorated in Budapest on the Roma Holocaust Memorial Day on Friday, at an event held at the Holocaust Memorial Centre.

Attila Sztojka, the government commissioner responsible for relations with the Roma minority, said that on August 2, 1944, 80 years ago, thousands of people became victims of Nazi ideology. He added that an unprecedented resistance started at the Auschwith-Birkenau concentration camp on May 16, a day which has been marked since 2007 as Romani Resistance Day.

Photo: MTI

“We must learn from historic tragedies. We are not obliged to be fashionable on this matter, but we do have an obligation to preserve the values of the created world,” he said.

“In real normality, there is no difference between Roma and non-Roma people,” Sztojka said.

Andor Grósz, the head of the board of the Holocaust Museum and leader of the Federation of Hungarian Jewish Communities (Mazsihisz), said more than 4,000 people were killed on this day in the Roma camp in Auschwitz. The date is also “a symbol when we remember all the other victims of the Roma holocaust, wherever they were killed,” he said.

The Council of Europe declared August 2 Roma Holocaust Memorial Day in 1972.

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• International Holocaust Remembrance Day marked in Budapest