Video
02 August 2020

FRA Director speaks about the Holocaust Memorial Day for Sinti and Roma

This video statement by FRA Director Michael O’Flaherty was recorded on the occasion of the Holocaust Memorial Day for Sinti and Roma on 2 August 2020.

“We must acknowledge, celebrate and build awareness of the extraordinary diversity of the Roma, Sinti and Travellers communities - and of their history. We must embed the Porajmos in the curricula in our schools, we must talk about it.”

On 2 August, we commemorate the last 4,300 Sinti and Roma in the German Nazi concentration camp Auschwitz-Birkenau, who were murdered by the SS on that night in 1944 despite their fierce resistance. In memory of all 500,000 Sinti and Roma murdered in Nazi-occupied Europe, the European Parliament declared this date the European Holocaust Memorial Day for Sinti and Roma in 2015.