Romania commemorating the Romani genocide

Date 2 August 2016 Author Roma React Category Romani remembrance

Bucharest: 30th guard of Michael the Brave “Mihai Viteazul” commemorate the victims of Roma Genocide at the Holocaust Memorial. For the first time, this event started by few non-governmental organizations and today it gets into the attention of the state institutions.

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Romany advocate Necula at Roma Holocaust remembrance event: Roma should be included in Holocaust Museum

Article taken from Romanian National News Agency AGERPRES

Attendees of a Roma Holocaust remembrance event on Tuesday asked for the Roma to be included in the Holocaust Museum, the statutes of organisations dealing with Roma issues to be regulated and measures approved for the award of special annuities to deportees.

Ceremony organised in Bucharest on Roma Holocaust Memorial Day

“There are very concrete things that the Roma, the Romany activists, demanded here. One regards the Holocaust Museum, which should include items on Roma. Likewise, a governmental decision is needed to regulate the statutes of the two organisations dealing with Roma issues — the National Roma Agency and the National Romany Culture Centre, which has become the Nicolae Gheorghe National Institute and that deals with culture and social issues. Thirdly, there should be compensatory measures for former deportees. Although entitled to annuities for having been deported, many of the beneficiaries do not draw them because the system ignores them,” Romany advocate Ciprian Catalin Necula told AGERPRES on Tuesday.

He added that the Holocaust is a remembrance subject that has to be overcome so that no similar things will happen in the future.

“We have to develop consistent programmes that reflect social realities instead of imagined things. That means that when we intervene in various communities, irrespective of what they are, we have to base our intervention on knowledge of the community in question. I have very often seen projects that were failing to reflect realities; they were office projections of project promoters. This approach has been radically changed at the Ministry of European Funds. Now, we are demanding a priori analysis of communities. When application is made for a project for European funding for community-related issues, you have to have good knowledge of the community in question that is proved by an analysis, a research study,” said Necula.

Chairman of the Federation of Romania’s Jewish Communities Aurel Vainer said a new living history is needed built on this “continual dialogue for mutual knowledge and acknowledgement.”

“You have organised a successful event that remembers the Holocaust, for both the Jews and the Roma. I am convinced that history, even if it repeats itself — some theories would say in different forms — all the existing signals about today’s world, with extremism and terrorism, are surely signals that should get as many of us as possible to fight against such ideas and to carry on the ideas of good, cooperation, and enshrine in a really democratic development programme in Romania the thriving of all its inhabitants — Romanians, Jews, Hungarians, etc.,” said Vainer.

He also mentioned the importance of a Holocaust remembrance project that will get together all who have suffered from the Holocaust.

“I was a member on a board that was to bid for a Holocaust remembrance project. And I can remember quite will that there was a debate whether or not it should be a memorial for Jews only, or that it should include the Roma as well. The natural idea that all Romania’s Holocaust survivors should be represented by the memorial prevailed in the end,” said Vainer.

Chair of the Democratic Federation of Roma Nicoleta Bitu said she would not want to witness a Holocaust museum that does not include Roma.

“I think that the discussion over the Roma Holocaust is not about acknowledging the Roma, but a discussion leading to the soundness of the Romanian nation. Between memorial ceremonies we will have to do more, which means providing Holocaust education not only in Romanian schools, but also in the schools of politicians, in party schools where young politicians come to be educated but learn nothing about that; it should include a serious discussion of the image and symbol of [Marshall Ion] Antonescu in the history of Romania and the national identity of Romania,” said Bitu.

The National Roma Agency on Tuesday held a Roma Holocaust remembrance event at the Memorial of Romania’s Holocaust Victims. AGERPRES (RO — author: Sorin Penes, editor: Florin Marin; EN — author: Corneliu-Aurelian Colceriu, editor: Simona Klodnischi)