Initiatives of the civil society

Private corporate bodies and associations periodically promote, especially on the Day of Remembrance, the memory of Roma Genocide; it is possible to highlight the activities undertaken by the group Osservazione and by the Istituto di Cultura Sinta di Mantova.

Other example:

Community of Sant’Egidio
Piazza S. Egidio 3A
00153 Roma. Italy
Telephone: + 39 06585661
Contact person: Dr. Paolo Ciani

The activities of the Community of Sant’Egidio regarding the Roma: since 1982, there are activities related to education issues, as well as to the mediation with the “Gadjo”. There are also activities in Genoa, Novara, Florence, Naples, Milan, Barcelona, Madrid, Würzburg, and Antwerp.

Several activities in the Comunità di Sant’Egidio. “Everyday friendship”: Learning how to live together (school of peace), services free of charge once a week (medical care, legal counselling, administrative orientation), visit to the Roma inmates, solidarity between Young and Elder (visit to hospital), common celebrations and festivities, defence of Roma rights in different institutions by volunteers. The curriculum of the Italian language course for immigrants and refugees run by the Community of Sant’Egidio includes specific lessons about the Roma Genocide. Almost 1,000 students are involved every year. On the occasion of the Day of Remembrance, the Community of Sant’Egidio organizes cultural activities addressed to students from every school level, focusing on the Genocide of the Jews and the Roma. In June 2007, the Community of Sant’Egidio organized a conference about Anti-Gypsyism in Italy. The proceedings of this conference have been published in a book, Il caso Zingari (Leonardo International, Milano, 2008). In 2008, Il caso Zingari has been presented in several Italian cities (Rome, Milan, Naples, Genoa, Padua) during conferences attended by many people. In October 2007, on the occasion of the interreligious international meeting “For a World Without Violence: Religions and Cultures in Dialogue”, organised by the Community of Sant’Egidio in Naples, Ceija Stokja, Roma survivor from Nazi Concentration camps of Auschwitz, Ravensbrück, and Bergen Belsen gave a speech about the Roma Genocide. The Community of Sant’Egidio works for raising awareness of the Roma Genocide in the new generations. In April 2008, 200 young people of the Community of Sant’Egidio visited the concentration camp of Auschwitz-Birkenau for a ceremony recalling the victims of the Shoah and the extermination of the Roma.

The project “MEMORS. The first virtual museum of Porrajmos in Italy. Persecution of Roma and Sinti during the Fascist era” is a joint initiative from the Archive Study Centre Gypsies of Rome- Foundation ex Campo Fossoli, in cooperation with the association Sucar Drom and the Federazione Rom e Sinti Insieme. It collects data and produces materials and information for the general public. It has created a virtual Museum of the Porrajmos. It is funded by EACEA’s Europe for citizens programme 2012-2013. The “MEMORS” project focuses on the aims of action 4, thus trying to preserve or recover the memory of the mass deportation of Sinti and Roma, as well as their presence in the Italian concentration camps. In order to do so, besides holding commemorative events, it begins by publishing all the existing documents online so that they can be accessed by a larger number of people. This way, it intends to spread the information both in the “new places of memory” and among the Roma and Sinti population, making them an active part of its initiatives. Furthermore, the project allows the creation of a network among the various actors of the civil society that deal with this issue in different ways: private research institutes, associations of victims of persecution, associations that promote memory.

“Roma Identity” is a campaign aimed at raising awareness on Roma culture and identity. It has been led by NGO Ricerca e Cooperazione and carried out by several NGOs and public organisations from Spain, Italy and Romania. It is funded by EU programme. Their website displays a glossary “Roma e Sinti glossary from A to Z” which defines “Porrajmos”. RomaIdentity has published an article on the Roma Genocide in which Maura de Bernart is interviewed. She is a professor of sociology at the University of Bologna and coordinator of ECOSMEG.

NGO Forum Campani Rom from Napoli has contributed to the draft resolution presented and voted by the European Parliament on 15th April 2015 urging the EU and its Member States to recognize 2 August as Roma Holocaust Remembrance day.

Project "Roma e Sinti in Italia e nel Mondo: Giving Memory a future"
The projet is led under the command of the USC Shoah Foundation. On 21st April 2015 Milena Santerini, professor and Member of Parliament who helped create the resource, presented it at the Council of Europe. Other speakers at the seminar were Santino Spinelli, professor of Romani language and culture at University of Chieti; author Ellie Keen; Ramon Flores, a young Roma activist; and Ulrich Bunjes, special representative of the Secretary General of the Council of Europe for Roma Issues. The idea of the project is to transfer the methods of teaching the Jewish experience of the Holocaust that have resulted in greater awareness of discrimination and exclusion to the Roma/Sinti, or “Gypsy,” persecution during the Holocaust, which is much less known. The Italian Ministry of Education recently passed a decree to make Giving Memory a Future available to all teachers and create an annual contest for students about the Roma Genocide also using the resource.

There are some laboratories and courses in the universities of Florence, Verona and Trieste related to the Roma Genocide.

ECOSMEG – European Cosmopolitanism and Sites of Memory through Generations is an initiative led by the University of Bologna: it is a historical research project based on five sites of remembrance, including places in Italy, in Croatia and in Albania. It aims at highlighting and documenting minor sites of remembrance of Shoah and the Second World War. Yet it is not specifically targeted at Roam victims.