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August 2 Birkenau commemoration

Each year on August 2, Roma and Sinti communities, joined by historians, educators, descendants, and friends, pause to remember. They remember children who never got the chance to be adults. Parents who tried to protect their families. Grandparents who carried traditions across generations.

Artists, musicians, craftsmen, horse traders, teachers, laborers, and neighbors whose lives were cut short because the Nazi regime declared they did not belong.

August 2 has become the day on which these lives are honored. During the night of August 2–3, 1944, the remaining prisoners held in the Roma and Sinti family camp (aka the Gypsy camp) at Auschwitz-Birkenau were murdered. Nearly 4,000 people — mostly women, children, and elderly men — were lost in a single night. This night sits at the center of the lengthy Roma and Sinti Holocaust timeline of survival.

That loss has come to represent the broader genocide carried out against Roma and Sinti across Europe during the Holocaust.

They also remember the survivors, the ones who carry the tradition of remembering and building up a people devastated by the Holocaust, yet rarely considered when talking about history, or reparations for what was done to them.

Survivors carry memories often too painful to share, and protect their families by keeping that experience to themselves. While they may not talk, they listen closely. Some spoke publicly, others kept their experiences within their families.

Many returned to societies that had no way of dealing with what had happened to them. So they mostly kept quiet, and private. Their resilience preserves a culture that others tried to erase, for many years.

A new generation has now taken up the work of remembrance.

Beginning in 2010, the European Roma youth network ternYpe brought together young people from across Europe through its Roma Genocide Remembrance Initiative, Dikh He Na Bister.

They created opportunities for education, dialogue, and leadership, ensuring that young Roma would become the keepers of their own history.

In 2014, on the genocide’s 70th anniversary, more than a thousand young people from twenty-five countries gathered in Kraków and Auschwitz-Birkenau under that name — a mobilization that helped lead the European Parliament to formally recognize August 2 as European Roma Holocaust Memorial Day the following year.

Dikh He Na Bister – Roma Genocide Remembrance Initiative 2014

If you’re wondering what *Dikh He Na Bister* means, see the FAQ

Historians estimate that between 220,000 and 500,000 Roma and Sinti were murdered under Nazi rule and by its collaborators. The true number may never be known. Entire families disappeared without records, and many communities had long been ignored by governments that kept incomplete or inaccurate population records.

Continue reading: To understand the policy decisions that led to this day, see When Did the Final Solution Begin for the Roma? →

Although their persecution arose from the same racial ideology that targeted European Jews, the history of Roma and Sinti during the Holocaust has too often remained on the margins of public memory.

Many people complete their education without ever hearing about the Roma genocide. Many museums and classrooms have only recently begun giving it the attention it deserves.

Remembering is not a competition between histories. Every community that suffered under Nazi persecution deserves to be seen for who they were, not simply for how they died.

In Romani, Dikh He Na Bister means:

Look and Don’t Forget.

The words are an invitation.

Look at the faces in old photographs.

Stephanie Holomek, a Roma victim of the Holocaust, in a triptych of her SS arrest photo. — Stephanie Holomek, a Roma victim of the Holocaust.
By Unknown author – Wiener Holocaust Library Collections, Public Domain, Link

Look at the names carved into memorials.

Plaque in Rome (Italy) in memory of Romani and Sinti people died in extermination camps in the genocide perpetrated by the Nazis (“Porajmos”) during the Holocaust throughout the time of World War II. — Plaque in Rome (Italy) in memory of Romani and Sinti people who died in extermination camps in the genocide perpetrated by the Nazis during the Holocaust. By Myrabella – Own work, CC BY-SA 3.0, Link

Look at families whose stories deserve a place alongside every other chapter of Holocaust history.

Romani prisoners at Belzec camp, 1940, when it was a Labor camp. Belzec later became an extermination camp.Black and white photo of a about 30 romani, primarily younger with some adults, in front of a fence sitting on the ground at Belzec camp, before it was an extermination camp. — Romani prisoners at Belzec camp, 1940 Creative Commons License Link

And don’t forget.

Remembrance doesn’t change the past; it shows us how to look to our own future, learning from what happened. Every generation decides whose stories it carries forward.

Remembering the Roma and Sinti is part of remembering the Holocaust. The Nazi campaign of racial persecution reached many communities, each with its own history, culture, and loss. This is about recognition, not competition, of a people whose history was cast aside for years from negligence.

History isn’t written only by historians, it’s written by the families and people who together overcame every brutal attack by the Nazis. And share their stories, and of those who didn’t make it back home.

On August 2, we remember those who were murdered.

We honor those who survived.

We give thanks to those who found the courage to tell their stories.

And we recognize the people who continue the work today, making sure memory is passed on with care, to their families.

Dikh He Na Bister.

Look. And don’t forget.