01/08/2013
FSG
On 2 August, various NGOs and institutions across Europe, including the Fundación Secretariado Gitano (FSG) celebrated the “International Roma Holocaust (Porrajmos) Remembrance Day”, in commemoration of the slaughter of August 1944, when the Nazis exterminated the last Roma prisoners (some 3,000 people, mostly women and children) of the Auschwitz-Birkenau concentration camp.
Although several Members of the European Parliament (MEPs), including Roma MEP Livia Járóka, proposed last year that the 2nd of August be officially recognised by the European Parliament as the "European Porrajmos (Roma Holocaust) Remembrance Day”, this has not yet achieved official recognition.
In an article published on 1 August, Michael Privot, Director of the European Network Against Racism (ENAR, which is part, along with the FSG and other European NGOs, of the European Roma Policy Coalition) assures that it is “time to end the silence on the history of Roma suffering”.
Source: ERRC
