Day of Roma Resistance – 80 years since the uprising of the Roma in the infamous Auschwitz

The Day of Roma Resistance, May 16, is marked by all Roma around the world as a reminder of the heroic feat of 6,000 of their compatriots, who rebelled and disobeyed the SS officers in the infamous Auschwitz camp exactly eight decades ago, and barricaded themselves in their barracks.

The secret resistance movement informed the Roma about the Nazis’ plans to close the camp where they were imprisoned on May 16 and to kill all 6,000 Roma inmates in gas chambers. The intention of the Nazi regime was to replace the Roma prisoners, tortured by hard work, with new camp inmates, more physically capable.

However, on May 16, the Roma imprisoned in Auschwitz rebelled, and instead of going out for the morning roll call, armed with hammers, picks, shovels, planks, rods and barbed wire, they barricaded themselves in their wooden barracks. At the same time, the children “armed” themselves with stones. When the guards started to attack the camp inmates, the Roma offered them unprecedented resistance, so there were casualties on both sides.

As the trains with new, more physically fit camp inmates had already arrived in Auschwitz, the camp administration stopped the attack and withdrew the units so that the Roma resistance would not spread to the other barracks.

On May 16, 1944, the Roma managed to save their lives, but the revenge of the Nazi regime followed – their starvation. Just a week later, the Nazis transferred more than 1,500 of the strongest Roma to Auschwitz 1, and almost the same number of female Roma prisoners were sent to Buchenwald and other camps.

The remaining inmates, 3,000 of them, mostly children, women and elderly people, despite their resistance, were suffocated in gas chambers and then burned in the crematorium on August 2 of that year. In memory of their suffering, that day is marked as Roma Holocaust Remembrance Day (pharrajimos or porajmos).

Nothing like the Roma uprising ever happened in the infamous Auschwitz. On May 16, the Roma, even though they were in a more than hopeless, oppressed position, showed activity, struggle, and desire for freedom, and for that reason today is marked as the Day of Roma Resistance.

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