Porrajmos, the day of (forgotten) remembrance of the genocide of Roma and Sinti

On Saturday, August 2nd, we commemorated Porrajmos, the genocide of our people: over 500,000 Roma and Sinti exterminated by Nazism and its allies across Europe. We remember our murdered children, the sterilized women, the bodies burned in the Zigeunerlager at Auschwitz-Birkenau . We remember, as we do every year, in a silence that still today accompanies our memory, forgotten by institutions and history books. But we cannot commemorate our genocide by remaining silent in the face of the genocide underway in Gaza.

The Porrajmos forces us to look at Gaza—without hypocrisy. Those who were victims of extermination lose themselves when they become executioners. Those who have been dehumanized cannot dehumanize others without erasing their memory. The memory of the Holocaust and the Porrajmos does not authorize anyone to transform their wounds into instruments of genocide. The guilt of those who feel responsible today for the Jewish genocide cannot justify the genocide in Gaza. In Gaza today, people die as they did in the concentration camps. They die burned alive in the tents of bombed refugee camps, they die to get a sack of flour, from hunger and thirst, they die amid the rubble, in the corridors of destroyed hospitals.

People live without water, without healthcare, without electricity, without escape. Gaza is a closed, surrounded, bombed place, where killing takes place with impunity. It is, in effect, a contemporary concentration camp. Facts speak for themselves, not emotions. Israeli politicians publicly call Palestinians " animals," "insects," "non-humans ." Israeli children are filmed chanting, " We will eliminate all Palestinians within a year ." Rockets deliberately target hospitals, refugee camps, schools, and ambulances. Remote-guided weapons are used to kill civilians. Children are shot in the head as they cry and ask for help. Entire families are wiped out as they seek shelter.

We Roma aren't particularly fond of philology; we're not interested in the bureaucracy of precise definitions. We know well what genocide is because we experienced it firsthand, and we can say: this is genocide. It is the systematic and deliberate destruction of a people. It is absolute dehumanization transformed into state policy. It is what we suffered. It is what the Palestinians are suffering today. Those who experienced Auschwitz and don't recognize Gaza have ceased to understand Auschwitz. The Palestinians today are the Jews and Roma of yesterday. And Europe, once again, is silent. We, who were treated like human waste, today recognize the same words, the same mechanisms, the same genocidal logic applied to an entire people.

On August 2, 2025, we would have liked to be in Auschwitz, like every year, to commemorate our collective mourning. This year, we were unable to. But even from afar, even without being physically there, we do not stop remembering. We do not stop bearing witness. And we do not stop linking our memory to that of those who today are victims of the most extreme injustice. Today, we pray for our dead, and for the children of Gaza. For the women, the elderly, the innocent men. For the victims of the ongoing genocide. Because " never again" does not apply only to Jews. It does not apply only to Roma. It applies to everyone. Or it applies to no one. Memory is not a possession. It is a responsibility. And today, facing Gaza, we have the duty to assume it.

FROM

Dijana Pavlovic