Recognition of the Roma Genocide

 Recognition, official texts

Following a declaration by the Parliament in 2005, 2 August is commemorated in Hungary as Roma and Sinti Genocide Remembrance Day. The date commemorates the liquidation of the “Gypsy family camp” in Auschwitz-Birkenau over the night of 2 to 3 August 1944. The commemoration has been held regularly since 1994. (See OSCE-ODIHR report “Holocaust Memorial Days in the OSCE Region: An overview of governmental practices”, page 53).

 Data (camps locations, Remembrance places, measures etc.)

The International Commemoration Day of the Roma Genocide was celebrated every year by the Roma Civil Rights’ Foundation in front of the Parliament of Hungary between 1996 and 2005. Since 2006 they bow before victims at the Roma monument - Roma Holocaust Memorial in the Nehru Part in Budapest. Similar events are held in Nagykanizsa, at the Roma Holocaust Memorial by the Várkapu. The National Roma Minority Self-Government organise their commemoration ceremony at the memorial plaque placed on the wall of their Dohány street headquarters in Budapest.

Every year there is a commemoration event at the Memorial for the Roma Genocide. There are commemoration events at the Holocaust Memorial Centre as well. The commemoration events include speeches, exhibitions and concerts. Events are organised by local governments, Holocaust commemorative organisations, non-governmental organisations and Roma organisations. Government representatives, sometimes even the President or ministers, attend the main memorial event.

There are different opinions concerning the number of the Hungarian Roma victims. Providing more accurate estimates is hindered by the fact that decrees of national validity regarding the deportation of Roma were only issued during the Arrow Cross era, and were not always carried out due to the resistance of the local public administration. In the opinion of historian László Karsai, the overall majority of the Roma population – 200 000 at that time - had a permanent residence and more or less a regular occupation, and the laws and regulations issued before March 1944 were aiming at the “regularisation” of the Roma travellers. As an official procedure against “stray Gypsies”, from 1929 onward, “Gypsy raids” were held twice a year and closed camps had been established in several settlements, such as Esztergom, where the Roma could only reside for the purpose of working. In 1944 the “solution of the problem of the Gypsies” started on the pattern of the “solution of the problem of Jews”: the Ministry of Warfare ordered the drafting of “stray” or “settled but unemployed” Roma men between the age of 18 and 52 for compulsory military labour service. In February 1945 the Minister of Interior from the arrow cross party announced: “I have initiated the terminal, and if necessary, merciless solution of the problem of Jews and Gypsies.” Fortunately the arrow cross regime had not had enough time to carry out the merciless solution (Gábor Bernáth, Roma Sajtóközpont (RSK)/RPC - Roma Press Centre).

 Specialised institution, commission, research centre etc., dealing with this issue

Holocaust Memorial Centre (Holokauszt Emlékközpont)
39 Páva St
Budapest H-1094. Hungary
Telephone: +36 1 455 33 33
E-mail: [email protected]

Roma Historical, Cultural, Educational and Holocaust Centre (Cigány Történeti, Kulturális, Oktatási és Holokauszt Központ) 
1212 Budapest,
Szent István út 71.
[email protected]
+36 20 253 3909

Tom Lantos Institute (Tom Lantos Intézet)
Bérc u. 13-15.,
1016 Budapest, Hungary
Tel: +36 1 209 0024
E-mail: [email protected]
 

 Official initiatives (campaigns, actions, projects, commemoration days, museums)

The Holokauszt Emlékközpont (Holocaust Memorial Center) in Budapest has a permanent exhibition about the Holocaust in Hungary titled “From Legal Deprivation to Genocide – In Memory of the Hungarian Holocaust”. Its aim is to recount and present the suffering, persecution and massacre of those Hungarian nationals – mainly Jews and the Roma – who were condemned to annihilation in the name of the racial ideology. The dominant motif of the exhibition is the relationship between state and its citizens. 1938 marks the beginning of the process where the Hungarian state deprived a specific group of its citizens from all that makes a man a man: from their rights, property, freedom, human dignity, and in the end, their very existence. This process accelerated fatally in 1944, after the German occupation. Accordingly, the exhibition does not present the events in a chronological order; it is based on units that present the different phases of the persecution: the deprivation of civil rights, property, freedom, human dignity, and existence. These topics are introduced and concluded by two adjacent rooms, the former presents the Hungarian Jewry and Roma people, and the latter discusses the liberation, the questions of responsibility, and the answers to the persecution.