Warsaw, Poland – Observances are being held at Auschwitz-Birkenau in memory of the Roma and Sinti victims of the camp, who, like the Jews, were condemned to destruction under Nazi Germany’s murderous ideology.
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Dozens of people, among them Roma representatives, gathered there on Tuesday for a remembrance ceremony.
Every year such observances are held on Aug. 2 because on that day in 1944 the last group of nearly 2,900 Roma and the closely related Sinti at the death camp — mostly elderly people, women and children — were killed in the gas chambers.
In total some 23,000 Roma and Sinti died in the so-called “Zigeunerlager” (Gypsy camp) at Auschwitz-Birkenau or in the gas chambers. In total, hundreds of thousands of Roma and Sinti were killed in the Holocaust.