Recognition of the Roma Genocide

Recognition, official texts

Belgium observes 27 January as the International Day of Commemoration in Memory of the Victims of the Holocaust (Journée internationale de la commémoration en mémoire des victimes de la Shoah).

Belgium has not yet established a memorial day for commemorating the Roma and Sinti genocide.

The decree of 13 March 2009 officially launched in the Wallonia-Brussels Federation a subject now referred to as “Memory transmission of Genocides, war crimes, crimes against humanity, resistance deeds and resistance movements”. This decree also led to the creation of the Conseil de la transmission de la mémoire (Council for the Transmission of Memory) and gave another role to Dob (see below)

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

In 1942, the Nazis set up their SS Sammellager at the Dossin barracks in Mechelen. Between July 1942 and September 1944, 25 482 Jews and 352 Gypsies were imprisoned there before being deported. The majority was sent to Auschwitz-Birkenau. Two thirds of the deportees were gassed upon their arrival. At the time of the Liberation, only 5% had survived. Today, Kazerne Dossin (the former Jewish Museum of Deportation and Resistance) is a memorial as well as a museum and a documentation centre on Holocaust and human rights.

The Nazi occupation of Belgium is mainly remembered in 3 places :

• Kazerne Dossin: a remembrance place was inaugurated at the Dossin barracks on 30 May 1948. Since 1956, a ceremony takes place there every year
• The Fortress of Breendonk, a former Auffanlager, where the political opponents were imprisoned. It is now also a museum which welcomes each year many school children
• The Fortress of Huy which served as a prison during the German occupation. About 7000 people were imprisoned here. It has also been converted to a museum.

The first 2 museums are the most visited and give each visitor, from schools to members of the public, comprehensive insight into the understanding of racial and political persecution in Belgium.

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

Belgium has several resource centres but none is specifically dedicated to the Genocide of the Roma:

• Kazerne Dossin
  Kazerne Dossin (the former Jewish Museum of Deportation and Resistance) is a memorial as well as a museum and a documentation centre on Holocaust and human rights. The main purpose of the archives centre is to collect, store and digitalize original documents and records on the Holocaust in Belgium and northern France.
• The National Memorial of the Fortress of Breendonk
  The Fortress of Breendonk is one of the best preserved camps in Europe and tells the story of the political victims of the Nazis. Every year, 35,000 to 40,000 schoolchildren visit the Memorial. Thanks to the wealth of information they will assimilate in the course of their visit, no child can go away without having formed a precise idea of its history, and of racial and political persecution in particular, thanks to a well structured cooperation with Kazerne Dossin in Mechelen. The Memorial also has an archive for further historical research. 
• CEGESOMA
  CEGESOMA, Centre for Historical Research and Documentation on War and Contemporary Society, is the Belgian centre of excellence for the history of 20th century conflicts. It carries out research, organises public events and holds document collections. As a federal institution it is, together with the State Archives and the Royal Library, part of the Documentation Pole. It is a platform for academic and public activities in Belgium and abroad, in particular with regard to the two World Wars.
• Auschwitz Foundation
  The non-profit organization Auschwitz Foundation - Auschwitz in Remembrance wants to keep the memory of Nazi crimes and genocides alive and to raise collective awareness among young people of today and tomorrow. Concretely, the Auschwitz Foundation develops a number of activities in the field of pedagogics, didactics and in-service training, based on documentation, archives and research.
• Centre Communautaire Laïc Juif
• Based on the principles of freedom of mind, tolerance towards other opinions and turning away from dogmatic laws, CCLJ honours the traditions of humanism and respects the Universal Declaration on Human Rights (1948). CCLJ offers activities and educational tools to participate in the struggle against racism, antisemitism, fascism.
• Les Territoires de la Mémoire
  Based in Liège, Territoires de la Mémoire presents itself as a centre of education to resistance and citizenship. Alongside a permanent exhibition called “Plus jamais ça” which attracts a school public, there are many other activities such as temporary exhibitions, film projections, animations…

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

The museum of Kazerne Dossin evokes the gypsies who were deported there in the permanent exhibition and shows related pictures and other elements in the Memorial. Their names are called, along with those of all the prisoners of Dossin.

Every year in September, there is a remembrance ceremony at the Breendonk fortress in honour of all prisoners.

 Teaching about the Roma Genocide

Inclusion of the topic in the school curriculum

In Belgium ‘remembrance education’ is addressed through the compulsory core curriculum. This curriculum contains a number of objectives (called final objectives) for certain levels of education (end of primary and end of each cycle in secondary), formulated per learning area, subject or cross-curricular theme. The objectives are determined by the education authorities. The general framework for remembrance education can mainly be found in developmental objectives for world orientation in primary education and in the final objectives concerning history and the cross-curricular final objectives in secondary education.

Note: The final objectives constitute the minimum expectations. Within the framework of these minimum objectives, the organizing authorities of the different educational networks have the right to establish the curriculum autonomously, with complete freedom regarding elaboration, deepening, enlargement and methodical incorporation. So there is no identical curriculum to be used by all schools.

In practice this means that the genocide of the Roma can be taught (and is taught) within the framework of the existing final objectives, adapted to school context and population, but without a global picture.

Teachers frequently visit memorial sites in Belgium and abroad, whilst Holocaust survivors are often asked to share their experiences with pupils in schools. It is safe to say that all Belgian schools do devote a considerable amount of time to the Holocaust. It is, however, very likely that in this context more attention is devoted to the Shoah than to the genocide of the Roma and Sinti.

In French-speaking Belgium

Founded in 1994, Democracy or Barbarism (DOB - http://www.democratieoubarbarie.cfwb.be) is an educational coordination unit of the Wallonia-Brussels Federation to support schools in the commemoration of the fiftieth anniversary of the end of the Second World War and the liberation of and from Nazi camps.

Throughout its actions since then, the specificity of its approach has been to innovate in the training of students to citizenship, while fostering teachers and animators to build up a relationship with remembrance, keeping the necessary critical distance with the event to enable a decent historical approach as always required.

Its missions are :

• Coordinating questions pertaining to education to citizenship through history and education to remembrance.
• Enabling the interface between institutional organs, the associative and school worlds.
• Providing coordination, follow-up and promoting activities supported by the Wallonia-Brussels Federation within the framework of the decree on the transmission of the memory of genocide crimes, crimes against humanity, war crimes, resistance feats, or movements resisting political systems that instigated those crimes.
• Exerting a support mission with in perspective the commemoration of the First World War.

DOB (Démocratie ou barbarie) works with 3 “resource” centres (The Auschwitz Foundation, the Centre communautaire Laïc Juif and les Territoires de la Mémoire) which are particularly active in the field and seven “certified” centres (The MERCi Foundation which organizes study trips to e.g. Yad Vashem and Terezin, La Fondation de la Mémoire contemporaine and l’Institut de la Mémoire audiovisuelle juive).

In Flemish-speaking Belgium

In 2008 the Special Committee for Remembrance Education (BCH - Bijzonder Comité voor Herinneringseducatie) was created in Flanders. This committee, coordinated by the non-profit organisation Kazerne Dossin (Dossin Barracks), consists of educationalists of a number of major actors in the field of remembrance education (Kazerne Dossin, the Fortress of Breendonk, the Auschwitz Foundation, In Flanders Fields Museum, the pedagogical advisory services of the various educational networks and the Ministry of Education and Training). The committee has as its task to support the teaching teams who are involved in remembrance education, by working on the transparency and the quality of remembrance education. The genocide of the Roma and Sinti is included in some of the materials, seminars,… developed by the BCH.

On January 27th 2015 the Flemish Minister of Education and representatives of the different educational networks signed a declaration of commitment concerning the genocides and crimes against humanity during WWII. With this declaration the educational networks commit themselves to explicitly integrate these topics in secondary education. The main aim is to stimulate critical thinking about the origin of conflicts and how to deal with them today. In the explanatory memorandum of the declaration of commitment the genocide of the Roma and Sinti is explicitly mentioned

Inclusion of the topic in the school textbooks

Belgian Ministries of Education are not involved in the development or distribution of didactic materials. Schools are free to choose the methods, materials,… they want to use. They can make use of manuals developed by educational publishers, they can develop materials themselves, and they can use the material or training developed by different organisations and nongovernmental organisations active in this field. The Holocaust is most certainly addressed in the curriculum and thus in the pedagogical tools used by teachers but systematic and specific information about the Roma genocide is not guaranteed.

Examples of pedagogical tools can be found at the end of this page.

Training of teachers and education professionals

Remembrance education is an integral part of initial teacher training. Several organisations and nongovernmental organizations offer in service training in the field of remembrance education (Yad Vashem…). Also, schools receive a yearly budget with which in-service training for teachers can be financed, but they decide completely autonomously how they want to spend this budget, taking into account the specific needs of the school.

Since 2008, schools in the French-speaking part of Belgium have been invited to organize and participate in activities related to Holocaust remembrance. Information materials and publications are distributed in schools, and training activities are organized for teachers. The DOB unit organizes various activities in schools and teacher training initiatives.

Particular activities undertaken at the level of education institutions

Belgium also reported that the Kazerne Dossin museum in Mechelen (Malines) plays an important role in Holocaust remembrance, offering visits, seminars and publications in French during school trips to the museum, and co-operating with the Democracy or Barbarism unit (DOB) (Démocratie ou Barbarie) of the Ministry of the Wallonia Brussels Federation.