Pavee Point Traveller & Roma Centre today marks Roma Genocide Memorial Day: remembering the Roma victims of the Holocaust persecuted and murdered by the Nazi regime simply for who they were.
This day – 2 August – calls us to remember the particular night of 2–3 August 1944, when more than 3,000 Roma men, women and children were murdered at Auschwitz-Birkenau. Amid the atrocities of the Roma genocide — known as ‘O Porajmos’ or ‘the devouring’ — over 500,000 men, women, and children across Europe would be killed by the Nazis and their collaborators.
We honour and give heed to the words of Mr Dumitru Miclescu: a survivor of the Roma genocide who died earlier this year. In an address given to the United Nations shortly before his death, he recalled the decades of suffering in those years after genocide: in communist Romania, in Germany during the 1990s, and in post-communist Romania after deportation from Germany.
Only a few of us returned home and, when we did, we had nothing left.
No one helped us: return or recover. No one acknowledged our suffering.
Our homes; our land; our dignity. Everything was taken from us and nothing was given back.”
At Pavee Point, we see a very worrying escalation of anti-Roma sentiment in Ireland. Scapegoating and crude stereotyping, vile and inflammatory rhetoric, and open hostility become more casualised and commonplace. Today reminds us of the dangers of silence, the cost of prejudice, and the importance of standing up against injustice in all its forms.
We commit to a future where Roma voices are heard, rights are respected, and where equality is a reality. We too give close attention the words of Mr Dumitru Miclescu:
“Allow me to say to all the young people listening to my story; I ask you to learn about your history. I hope you will build a world without racism.”