Roma victims of Holocaust to be remembered in Budapest, Auschwitz-Birkenau
The Council of Europe declared August 2 the Roma Holocaust Memorial Day in 1972. Some 3,000 Roma prisoners killed that night in Auschwitz in 1944 are commemorated on that day. About 500,000 Roma are estimated to have been killed in Nazi camps, 23,000 of them in Auschwitz-Birkenau.
Phiren Amenca, a network of Roma and non-Roma activists working against discrimination, has been holding a series of events connected to the memorial day in Krakow and Auschwitz each year for a decade, the statement said. This year, 24 young Hnugarian activists are participating in the event. Another 55 are travelling to southern Poland to participate at the commemoration on August 2, where the NGO will lay a wreath at the memorial of Roma holocaust in the erstwhile concentration camp, the statement said.
The commemoration in Budapest will be held at the organisation’s headquarters on August 2.