Why is it important to remember? Should we not concern ourselves with the future instead? American historian George Santayana wrote in 1905: ‘Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it.’ This quote is inscribed on a plaque at the Auschwitz concentration camp, in Polish translation and English.
During the Second World War the Rroma people, which includes groups such as Rroma, Sinti, and Lalleri, and often collectively referred to as "Gypsies," suffered extreme persecution by the Nazis and their collaborators.
In the 1930s, the Nazis labeled Rroma as racially inferior. The eugenics-based ideology of Nazism led Hitler's government to sterilize parts of the Rroma population. Rroma were imprisoned in family encampments and concentration camps, and used as forced laborers. In the East, the Nazis' Einsatzgruppen (mobile killing squads) rounded up Rroma communities and shot them into mass graves, along with Jews. Once the war was underway, the Nazis and their collaborators deported Rroma people from across Europe into the vast system of Nazi camps where whole Rroma communities were murdered through systematic starvation or in gas chambers.
It's difficult to estimate the number of Rroma victims. According to the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum, 220,000 people of Rroma descent - or around 25% of Europe's Rroma population - were murdered in the Holocaust. Yet, the German government did not recognize the Rroma as victims of Nazism until 1982. Even today, the Rroma are often excluded from Holocaust commemoration and Holocaust education in Romania, and other European countries.
Block 13, where the Rroma and the Sinti were exterminated
Today, let us join together in prayer or meditation for our brothers and sisters. We grieve at the loss of so many Rroma people; people who lost their lives for no other reason than the culture they were born in, and that they cherished in their hearts. We also grieve for those Rroma people who are oppressed; oppressed for no other reason than the culture they were born in, and that they cherish in their hearts. We will remember those who have passed on, but we know in our hearts there is more that needs to be done for those alive today. We must reach out with our hands to help those in need, we must let them know that they are not alone, and there are those of us who will walk with them, who see them as people who deserve the universal human rights that all people deserve, who see them not as caricatures or as objects, or as the "Other", but as real people, with feelings of love, and hope, and sorrow, just like we have, with the same human frailties and pain that we all carry. They are no different than us, but they need us because there are some people in this world who treat them as the "Other" - to be shunned and banished and oppressed.
Let us remember that nothing can take the place of outstretched hands of human compassion, empathy and understanding, the spoken and silent assurance given by friends. Let us remember we have all walked the way of sorrow, of pain, of hopelessness in times past and felt loss. Let us assure them that when they find themselves feeling sorrow or loss, pain or oppression, that they do not walk alone.
Note: Photos taken in 2014, on my first visit to Auschwitz-Birkenau.
