Roma Holocaust also commemorated in Murska Sobota
Murska Sobota, 3 August - Roma Holocaust Memorial Day was marked in Murska Sobota in the north-east on Thursday commemorating the Roma victims of genocide during WWII. Jožek Horvat Muc from the Slovenian Roma Association pointed to two messages the memorial day sends out - about the need to remember the victims and fight against hate speech and discrimination.
Murska Sobota
A Roma Holocaust Memorial Day commemoration at a memorial plaque to the Roma Holocaust victims, which was unveiled in 2016.
Photo: Murski Val/STA
Murska Sobota
A Roma Holocaust Memorial Day commemoration.
Photo: Murski Val/STA
Murska Sobota
A Roma Holocaust Memorial Day commemoration at a memorial plaque, with Jožko Horvat Muc (left) from the Slovenian Roma Association addressing the event.
Photo: Murski Val/STA
Oswiecim, Poland
Auschwitz-Birkenau concentration camp, now an in-site museum.
Photo: Xinhua/STA
File photo
The memory of the victims must be preserved "because the genocide against the Roma during WWII is the most horrible event in the history of the Roma community, and must be primarily remembered so that future generations will understand what happened to the Roma", stressed the association's president.
2 August is one of the most fateful dates in Roma and world history. On the night from 2 to 3 August 1944, the Nazis murdered more than 4,000 Roma and Sinti in the Auschwitz concentration camp, where some 23,000 Roma and Sinti were brought from the beginning of 1943 and subjected to various medical experiments, he said.
In what is now Slovenia, Roma were sent to concentration camps by the Nazis and Italian occupation authorities, while the Hungarian occupiers also sent them to forced labour. A total of 71 Roma from Slovenia were among those estimated to have been killed in Auschwitz, while six more were killed in other concentration camps.
During the war, mass killings of Roma also took place in the Croatian concentration camp Jasenovac under the Nazi-puppet state of Croatia. Killings were also executed by the Partisan anti-Nazi guerilla movement in Slovenia. 49 Roma and four Slovenians were killed in the Iška Gorge near Ljubljana, among them 24 children, in May 1942.
Horvat Muc cited the estimate of the US Holocaust Memorial Museum that the Nazis and their allies killed around 25% of the European Roma, but the exact number is not known.
Turning to the present, he said that hate speech and discrimination are again on the rise. "People are impatient and continue to put the Roma community in the worst position, as the most marginalised community. And that's not good."
It is his view that the Roma community should fight together with others to do everything in their power to prevent influences that could "lead to another genocide against Roma".
As part of the commemoration, part of a documentary on the genocide was screened and a wreath laid at a memorial plaque on the former business school. An event marking Roma Holocaust Memorial Day was also held in Maribor on Wednesday.