Romani Roots

The Holocaust

The Romani Genocide (1939 - 1945)

It is often reported that the Holocaust of World War 2 included OTHER races/persons - but sadly and all too often we are placed somewhere near the bottom of the victims' list.

Yet the Romani Race, was classified in the same manner as the Jewish Race - as "racially inferior" - and therfore suffered the same fate.

Marzahn Interment Camp

Bergen-Belsen Concentration Camp

The Third Reich and its belief in a perfect "Aryan" race led to atrocities beyond imagination for those deemed "inferior". Our race was included in those atrocities and subjected to deportation, interment, forced labour, medical experiments and finally extermination.

Auschwitz Concentration Camp

So many Romani can never be accounted for as they were shot in the streets or gased in Mobile Extermination Vans.

Opel Blitz

Therefore the original estimates of 500,000 are not only invalid but wholely inaccurate. The number is now is estimated to be in the MILLIONS but sadly the real number of victims will never be known.

Despite this genocide there were and are survivors of our race. Wether by amazing avoidance or miracleous survival, they remain.

Romani Holocaust Survivor

THE MILLIONS by ProudRomani

Shot in the streets,
Bodies left to rot.
Thought less than human,
A criminal lot.
Men, women, children,
All treated the same.
The Nazi Regime,
Had no sense of shame.

The final numbers hidden,
Dismissed and lost.
The Forgotten People,
What was your cost?
Memory of you,
All but erased.
Instead of acknowledging,
All that you faced.

They say 500,000,
Of your people dead.
TEN times the amount,
Is what should be read.

Fly-ridden corpses,
In pits they were thrown.
Amongst them you burrowed,
Scared to the bone.

Still you were found,
You had no chance.
Shot from all angles,
Ending life's dance.
Others of yours,
Throwing on dirt.
None had a choice,
Everyone hurt.

Once in the Camps,
Things worsened so.
Used for experiments,
Tranquilized? No.
Marched to the ovens,
Given no choice.
Terror evident,
In every voice.

The Final Solution,
Was against you as well.
But in most remembrances,
Not in the story they tell.
Instead of up there,
Equal with the worst,
Dismissed, ignored,
Forgotten and cursed.

The Roma and Sinti
So many deaths.
Going down fighting,
To their last breaths.
Something you are used to,
Persecuted, still.
Still standing and fighting,
Remember, they will.

Na bister O Porrajmos, na bister THE MILLIONS

©2008 ProudRromani