The National Day of Commemorating the “Holocaust against Roma – Samudaripen” on 2 August was established by Law No. 124 of 10 July 2020 (following the terminology used in this Romanian law: “Holocaustului împotriva romilor – Samudaripen”). It defines the Romani term ‘Samudaripen’ as “mass murder” and calls for the annual organisation of cultural activities, symposia, roundtables, and other actions meant to commemorate this day. These activities are to be undertaken by the Ministry of Culture and national and local administrative authorities.
The National Day of Commemorating the Holocaust (Ziua Naţională de Comemorare a Holocaustului in Romanian), is a national event held on 9 October in Romania. It is dedicated to the remembrance of the victims of the Holocaust and particularly to reflecting on Romania's role in the Holocaust. Various commemoration events and ceremonies take place throughout Romania in order to remember the Jews and Roma who died in the Holocaust. The first National Day of Commemorating the Holocaust was held in 2004. 9 October was chosen as a date for this event because it marks the beginning of Romanian deportations of Jews to Transnistria, in 1942. However, the date is not directly connected to the Roma Holocaust, as Roma deportations to Transnistria started only in June 1942.
On 23 October 2007, Romanian President Traian Băsescu publicly apologized for his nation's role in the Roma Holocaust, the first time a Romanian leader has done so. He called for the Roma Genocide to be taught in schools, stating that, "We must tell our children that six decades ago children like them were sent by the Romanian state to die of hunger and cold". Part of his apology was expressed in the Romani language. Băsescu awarded three Roma Holocaust survivors with the Order for Faithful Services.
In addition, the International Day of Commemoration in Memory of the Victims of the Holocaust is observed on 27 January.
Data (camps locations, Remembrance places, measures etc.)
The deportation of the Roma to Transnistria was part of the Holocaust perpetrated by Marshal Ion Antonescu’s regime in Romania during the Second World War. Purportedly motivated by the authorities’ concern for public order, the deportation of more than 25,000 Roma to the former Soviet territory between the Dniester and the Bug, an area occupied after 1941 by the Romanian army, was in effect a racial measure. At the same time, the deportation was related to the broader policy of ethnic cleansing pursued by the Antonescu government. Even if the anti-Roma measures targeted only part of the Roma community (nomadic Roma and sedentary Roma with a criminal record or without a registered occupation), the deportation to Transnistria was in some respects similar to the anti-Roma policy applied in Germany and its allied states at the same time.
The Romanian government led by Ion Antonescu did not systematically exterminate Roma on its territory. Instead, resident Roma were deported to Romanian-run concentration camps in occupied Transnistria. Of the estimated 25,000 Roma inmates of these camps, 11,000 (44%, or almost half) died.
Specialised institution, commission, research centre etc., dealing with this issue
The International Commission for the Study of the Holocaust in Romania, led by Nobel Peace Prize laureate Elie Wiesel, himself a Holocaust survivor of Romanian Jewish origin, was set up in 2003 at the initiative of then-President Ion Iliescu. It concluded its work in 2004, presenting a Final Report of the International Commission for the Study of the Holocaust in Romania to the president. While the focus was predominantly on the mass murder of Jews, a separate chapter of the report deals with the deportation of the Roma to Transnistria, and the Roma genocide is also addressed in other chapters. The Report called for the establishment of a specialised institution, and the “Elie Wiesel” National Institute for the Study of the Holocaust in Romania was established by government decision in August 2005. Although the focus on Jewish victims remains dominant in its activities, the Institute is also tasked with researching and commemorating the Roma genocide, and has carried out projects on this topic.
Official initiatives (campaigns, actions, projects, commemoration days, museums)
According to the project’s initiators, the monument was built around the solar symbol of the twelve-spoked wheel that signifies the well-known Roma spiritual archetype of liberty.
Former victims of the Holocaust in Romania, including Roma, are the recipients of the rights provided by Law 189/2000, which stipulates that the persons persecuted by the Romanian regimes from the 6th of September 1940 to the 6th of March 1945 on ethnic grounds are granted the following rights:
free and priority medical assistance and medication, both in ambulatory and during the treatment in hospital;
free public urban transport - on means of transport belonging to the state-owned companies (bus, trolleybus, tramway, subway);
six free round trips by train, per year, using the Romanian state railways, 1st class;
six free round trips, per year, using the public means of auto transportation or, if it is the case, river transportation, from their place of residence to the county seat, for the persons who are not able to use the railway transport;
one free ticket per year for treatment in a balneological resort;
exemption from TV and radio licence costs;
priority for the installation of a phone line, as well as the exemption from the subscription;
allotment, on request, of a free cemetery plot.
However, as a petition from 2020 shows, even twenty years after the adoption of the law Roma survivors were not enjoying the rights it stipulated, due to the obstruction and delay of Romanian authorities. Moreover, few survivors are acquainted with these legal provisions, and therefore they would hardly be able to take all the necessary steps (which are often too complex for them as senior citizens who are not assisted by any specialised institution or organisation). The steps to follow in order to obtain compensation for Roma victims of the Holocaust in Romania can be found on the dedicated website implemented by the Community Resources Centre.
The online platform “The Holocaust in Romania” (https://roholocaust.com, available in Romanian and English) was launched in 2022 as a new interactive tool offering information about the Holocaust in Romania. The project was the result of a collaboration between the National Institute for the Study of the Holocaust in Romania Elie Wiesel and Friedrich-Ebert-Stiftung Romania. Through a non-exhaustive interactive map of places of significance for the Holocaust in Romania, the project places life stories and dramatic events on the map of public memory – important moments in the Holocaust. Micro-monographs, photographs, testimonies of survivors and archival documents briefly present the history of entire Romanian Jewish and Roma communities that fell victim to racism, xenophobia, and destructive chauvinism in Romania and in the territories under Romanian or Hungarian administration during the Second World War.
Three Romanian Roma NGOs (Romani CRISS-București; Christian Roma Centre, Sibiu; Romani ButiQ, București) contributed to the drafting of the resolution adopted by the European Parliament on 15 April 2015 on the occasion of International Roma Day, which led to the recognition of the European Holocaust Memorial Day for Sinti and Roma.
EEA Grants and Norway Grants supported the 2014 project “Providing Justice for Roma Holocaust Victims” in Romania. Despite the fact that Romanian authorities have officially recognised the Roma, alongside the Jews, as victims of the Holocaust in Romania, many Roma survivors are unaware of their rights and have not received any compensation for the horrors they went through. This is one of the reasons why the Community Resource Centre Association worked to identify Roma survivors so that they could receive the compensation they are entitled to. The project was funded by Iceland, Liechtenstein, and Norway through the NGO Fund in Romania. The project also included establishing a database with an overview of Roma Holocaust victims in Romania and the creation of an archive with pictures and audio and video testimonials. The project received €31,480 from Iceland, Liechtenstein, and Norway through the NGO Fund in Romania.
Since 2013, the Volunteering for Remembrance Seminar organised by Phiren Amenca has brought together more than 40 young current and former EVS interns coming from Germany, Spain, Hungary, Poland, Romania, Italy, Austria, Macedonia, Serbia and the USA in the village of Milcoveni, Romania, with the aim of exploring the issue of Roma Genocide remembrance and human rights. Materials have been produced through the seminar, such as “The European ‘Boogie Man’ Complex: challenging anti-Gypsyism through non-formal education, an educational toolkit”.
Organisations that are involved in Roma Holocaust activities in Romania:
Since the adoption by the European Parliament in 2015 of the European Roma Holocaust Memorial Day, commemorated every year on 2 August, this day has also been commemorated in Romania, especially in recent years following the adoption of the National Day of Commemorating the “Holocaust against Roma – Samudaripen” in 2020 (following the terminology used in Romanian Law No. 124/2020: “Holocaustului împotriva romilor – Samudaripen”). In 2025, Nicuşor Dan became the first acting President of Romania to attend the ceremony held in Bucharest on this occasion. As noted above, both the National Day of Commemorating the Holocaust, on 9 October, and the International Day of Commemoration in Memory of the Victims of the Holocaust, on 27 January, are also commemorated in Romania. While 2 August falls during the school holidays, both 9 October and 27 January are commemorated in Romanian schools, following guidelines issued by the Ministry of Education and Research, as well as local initiatives. However, both these commemorations tend to focus primarily on the Jewish victims of the Holocaust. Starting with the 2024-2025 school year, the Ministry of Education has called for activities and events commemorating the Holocaust against Roma – Samudaripen to be implemented in schools each September.
Testimonies
Online testimonies of Roma Holocaust survivors can be found at:
‘Voices of the Victims’ archive provides testimonies of Roma Holocaust survivors from 20 countries in various formats.
The website Providing Justice for Roma Holocaust Victims (2014), a project funded by Iceland, Liechtenstein and Norway through the NGO Fund in Romania, includes the testimony of Gheorghe Manole, known as ‘Mocanu’.
Published collections of testimonies of Roma Holocaust survivors:
Ioanid, Radu, Kelso, Michelle, and Cioaba, Luminiţa (2009). Tragedia Romilor Deportaţi în Transnistria 1942-1945. Iaşi: Polirom.
Under communism, the official history in Romania taught was that Germans were the sole perpetrators of the Holocaust, thereby ignoring the role of the Romanian government in the deportation of hundreds of thousands of Jews and tens of thousands of Roma from the historical regions of Bessarabia, northern Bukovina, and Transnistria during the Second World War.
Following 15 years of setbacks, in November 2004, after the presentation of the Final Report of the International Commission on the Holocaust in Romania, led by Nobel Peace Prize laureate Elie Wiesel, to the Romanian President, Romania formally acknowledged the Holocaust in Romania. Since then, Romanian authorities have engaged in efforts to educate the public about the Holocaust, while also banning pro-fascist rhetoric and the cult of war criminals. The genocide of the Roma was explicitly included in the understanding of the Holocaust perpetrated by Romanian authorities in Romania and in other territories under their control.
Consequently, Holocaust education became part of the Romanian national curriculum. Its teaching starts in the 7th grade of secondary school as a component of the history of the Second World War, and the Holocaust is then taught as part of the history curriculum for grades 8, 11, and 12, when modern and contemporary history is covered. In 2004, following a ministerial order, an optional module covering the study of the Holocaust, together with an accompanying textbook, was approved for high schools. The contents of the module were modified in March 2005, when Holocaust history became an optional course in the Romanian curriculum, also covering the Roma Genocide. In 2016, an auxiliary didactic textbook entitled “Roma in Romania: Identity and Alterity” that is, meant to facilitate the teaching of Roma history and the Roma Genocide in Romania, was published.
Since the 2023-2024 school year, a new mandatory course entitled “History of the Jews. The Holocaust” has been introduced in the Romanian curriculum for grades 11-12. The curriculum for this course makes explicit reference to the deportation of Jews and Roma as part of the Holocaust in Transnistria under Romanian occupation and includes testimonies of Jewish and Roma survivors of Transnistria as a case study. All five manuals for this course include detailed accounts of the Roma Genocide.
Additionally, the optional discipline “History and Traditions of the Roma Community”, taught in grades 6-7 for one hour a week, includes the history of the Roma Genocide in grade 7. A manual supporting this discipline was published in 2021 and includes a unit on repressive actions taken against the Roma in Romania. Holocaust education is also included in the optional discipline “Oral History: Lived History, Told History” that can be taught at high school level, although the Roma Genocide is not explicitly mentioned in the curriculum, which refers to Holocaust survivors in general. There are plans to introduce a new optional discipline, “The History, Slavery, and Deportation of the Roma”, in the Romanian curriculum for high school starting with the school year 2025-2026.
Inclusion of the topic in the school textbooks
Most of the textbooks covering the general History curriculum for grades 7 and 8 (secondary school) and grades 11 and 12 (high school), where the modern and contemporary history of Romania is covered, make explicit references to the Roma Genocide, while some refer only to the Holocaust more generally. All 8th grade history school textbooks include a case study on the Holocaust in Romania explicitly covering Jews and Roma, as part of the lesson “Romania in the Second World War”, included in the unit “Romania in the 20th and 21st Centuries”. Despite this coverage, academic experts and representatives of civil society organisations, including Roma activists, remain critical of the textbooks, arguing that their content is not up to date, that information is often presented in a laconic and statistical manner, or that it reproduces the categories and the language of the perpetrators, and that the voices of Roma victims and survivors remain under-represented. In 2016, an auxiliary didactic textbook entitled “Roma in Romania: Identity and Alterity” that is, meant to facilitate the teaching of Roma history and the Roma Genocide in Romania, was published.
Since the 2023-2024 school year, a new mandatory course entitled “History of the Jews. The Holocaust” has been introduced in the Romanian curriculum for grades 11-12. All five textbooks available for this course include detailed accounts of the Roma Genocide, including survivor testimonies. The optional discipline “History and Traditions of the Roma Community”, taught in grades 6-7 for one hour a week, includes the history of the Roma Genocide in 7th grade. A textbook supporting this discipline was published in 2021 and includes a unit on repressive actions taken against the Roma in Romania. There are plans to introduce a new optional discipline, “The History, Slavery, and Deportation of the Roma”, into the Romanian curriculum for high school starting with the 2025-2026 school year, and school textbooks supporting its teaching are to be designed.
Training of teachers and education professionals
Most of the textbooks covering the general History curriculum for grades 7 and 8 (secondary school) and grades 11 and 12 (high school), where the modern and contemporary history of Romania is covered, make explicit references to the Roma Genocide, while some refer only to the Holocaust more generally. All 8th grade history school textbooks include a case study on the Holocaust in Romania explicitly covering Jews and Roma, as part of the lesson “Romania in the Second World War”, included in the unit “Romania in the 20th and 21st Centuries”. Despite this coverage, academic experts and representatives of civil society organisations, including Roma activists, remain critical of the textbooks, arguing that their content is not up to date, that information is often presented in a laconic and statistical manner, or that it reproduces the categories and the language of the perpetrators, and that the voices of Roma victims and survivors remain under-represented. In 2016, an auxiliary didactic textbook entitled “Roma in Romania: Identity and Alterity” that is, meant to facilitate the teaching of Roma history and the Roma Genocide in Romania, was published.
Since the 2023-2024 school year, a new mandatory course entitled “History of the Jews. The Holocaust” has been introduced in the Romanian curriculum for grades 11-12. All five textbooks available for this course include detailed accounts of the Roma Genocide, including survivor testimonies. The optional discipline “History and Traditions of the Roma Community”, taught in grades 6-7 for one hour a week, includes the history of the Roma Genocide in 7th grade. A textbook supporting this discipline was published in 2021 and includes a unit on repressive actions taken against the Roma in Romania. There are plans to introduce a new optional discipline, “The History, Slavery, and Deportation of the Roma”, into the Romanian curriculum for high school starting with the 2025-2026 school year, and school textbooks supporting its teaching are to be designed.
The "Elie Wiesel" National Institute for the Study of the Holocaust in Romania
E-mail: [email protected]
The “Elie Wiesel” National Institute for the Study of the Holocaust in Romania is the main institution that organises regular Holocaust education activities for teachers and students. Its seminars and teacher training include sessions on the Roma Genocide. Due to the fact that distortion and obfuscation of the crimes committed during the Holocaust in Romania were widespread during the communist and early transition periods, teachers, like the majority of Romanians, initially knew little about their country’s involvement in its perpetration. Yearly surveys conducted by the “Elie Wiesel” National Institute for the Study of the Holocaust in Romania show that knowledge about the topic has slowly but steadily increased over the years.
Casa Corpului Didactic / Inspectorat Şcolar Bacău (Centre for Teacher Development / School Inspectors’ Office)
The Centre for Teacher Development / School Inspectors’ Office of Bacău County has been very active in Holocaust education, establishing itself as a premier teacher training centre. Since 2005, the Centre has included the Roma Genocide in its training programmes, holding at least two special training sessions on the Roma Genocide in addition to incorporating it into its other pedagogical seminars. The first one was held in 2006, where historians Viorel Achim, from the Nicolae Iorga History Institute of the Romanian Academy, and Michelle Kelso, from George Washington University, USA, conducted teacher training sessions. The second, held in June 2006, was organized in Valea Budului, where Michelle Kelso addressed both history and Romani language teachers about the Roma Genocide after a screening of the 2005 documentary “Hidden Sorrows: The Persecution of Romanian Gypsies During WWII”, which she directed.
The Olga Lengyel Institute for Holocaust Studies and Human Rights (TOLI)
Since 2012, The Olga Lengyel Institute for Holocaust Studies and Human Rights (TOLI) has organized yearly seminars in partnership with the “Elie Wiesel” National Institute for the Study of the Holocaust in Romania and with the Intercultural Institute Timişoara for groups of 30-35 teachers. The aim of the seminars is to contribute to increasing the quality of education regarding the Holocaust and human rights in Romania. The program provides a rich opportunity to integrate national and international approaches to teaching about these topics and understanding the contemporary relevance of this important part of modern history. Developing teachers’ knowledge of the Roma Genocide is an explicit objective of the seminars, which include multiple sessions on this topic.
Particular activities undertaken at the level of education institutions
The Action Plan for implementing the National Strategy for preventing and combatting antisemitism, xenophobia, radicalisation, and hate speech 2024-2027 calls for the implementation of the school project “The Holocaust against the Roma: Samudaripen” (following the terminology used in Romanian Law No. 124/2020: “Holocaustului împotriva romilor – Samudaripen”). A pilot project was run in 2023, and such activities are organised annually starting with the 2024-2025 school year. The programme includes:
Thematic lessons and debates about the historical context of the Roma Holocaust and its impact on Roma communities in Europe and in Romania;
Individual or team presentations by students on the fate of Roma victims, family stories, survivor testimonies, as well as personal reflections;
Research projects about the Samudaripen, materialising in the production of posters, articles, visual and digital materials;
Artistic creations and thematic exhibitions, including poems, essays, collages, photographs or visual works inspired by the Holocaust of the Roma;
Commemoration activities like minutes of silence, symbolic marches, the lighting of candles, singing traditional Roma songs or reading memorial texts;
Collaborations with local and regional museums, public authorities, Roma community organisations or cultural institutions with the purpose of undertaking public activities with an educational value;
Meetings with relevant persons, such as historians, researchers, members of Roma communities or Holocaust survivors, where possible.
Guides entitled “The Living Memory: The Commemoration of the Roma Holocaust in Contemporary Education” and “Samudaripen: The Untold Story of the Roma Holocaust”, as well as support packages including suggestions for activities and evaluation surveys for teachers and students, were issued to educational authorities by the Ministry of Education and Research. The activities are to be undertaken during the period between the start of the school year (typically on 15 September) and 30 September.
Activities in Romanian schools related to the commemoration of the Holocaust associated with the National Day of Commemorating the Holocaust, 9 October, and the International Day of Commemoration in Memory of the Victims of the Holocaust, 27 January, increasingly include sessions dedicated to the Roma Genocide. For example, on 27 January 2026, the National Center for Roma Culture Romano Kher, in partnership with the National Agency for the Roma and the Goethe-Institut Bucharest, organised a roundtable on “Teaching the Holocaust: a path to intergenerational and intercultural dialogue”, with interventions from representatives of the Romanian government. The event included a presentation of the educational material “The Living Memory: The Commemoration of the Roma Holocaust in Contemporary Education”, which is used by teachers as part of the commemoration activities for the National Day of Commemorating the “Holocaust against Roma – Samudaripen” (following the terminology used in Romanian Law No. 124/2020: “Holocaustului împotriva romilor – Samudaripen”) and for education about the Roma Genocide more generally.
The Romanian Ministry of Education and Research is also involved in exchanges with international partners, including Yad Vashem, the Holocaust Memorial in Berlin, the Shoah Memorial in Paris, the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum (USHMM), the Roma Museum in Tarnow, and the Holocaust Museum in Heidelberg, with the purpose of developing experience and good practices in the teaching of the Holocaust. Plans are in place to establish a National Museum of the History of the Jews and the Holocaust in Romania, and a National Museum of the History and Culture of the Roma in Romania, both meant to be inaugurated by 2027. The Action Plan 2024-2027 also includes a project aimed at digitising archival documents relevant to the history of the Jews and Roma in Romania, as well as Holocaust survivor testimonies.
Factsheet on the Roma Genocide in Romania
List of resources to download
