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HMDT Blog: Auschwitz-Birkenau's Roma survivors

HMDT Blog: Auschwitz-Birkenau's Roma survivors

During this year’s Gypsy Roma Traveller History Month, historian Rainer Schulze reminds us of the systematic persecution the Roma and Sinti suffered during the period of Nazi rule in Germany and in Nazi-occupied Europe.

Otto Rosenberg

Otto Rosenberg

Born in 1927, Otto Rosenberg grew up in Berlin with his grandmother and two siblings. His family were Sinti, a Romani population of central Europe. Otto remembers living on private rented ‘lots’ of land that his family shared with the caravans and houses of extended family and other members of the Sinti community.

Johann ‘Rukeli’ Trollmann

Johann ‘Rukeli’ Trollmann

Johann ‘Rukeli’ Trollmann was born on 27 December 1907 near Hannover. He was a popular German Sinto boxer, who was discriminated against, marginalised, sterilised, and finally deported to a concentration camp, where he was murdered. Here, Rainer Schulze, Professor of Modern European History at the University of Essex, shares his story.

HMD Partnership Group

The HMD Partnership Group, facilitated by the Holocaust Memorial Day Trust, brings together organisations that have significant reach across the UK and which work to extend the reach and impact of Holocaust Memorial Day (HMD).

Rescue and rebuilding lives

After three and half years of Khmer Rouge rule, relations with neighbouring Vietnam had deteriorated because of the number of refugees fleeing Cambodia and because of border disputes. The Vietnamese invaded after being provoked by an attack ordered by Pol Pot.

2 August 1944: Roma Genocide Remembrance Day

On the night of 2/3 August 1944, the camp where Roma and Sinti people were held at Auschwitz-Birkenau was liquidated. Thousands of men, women and children of Roma or Sinti origin were murdered in the gas chambers by Nazi officers. Their bodies were burned in pits.