At the commemoration of the liberation of the former Nazi concentration camp in Buchenwald near Weimar 78 years ago, the fate of the Sinti and Roma was remembered today.
At the event in Buchenwald, Jacques Delfeld, deputy chairman of the Central Council of German Sinti and Roma, said there was not a single family among the German Sinti and Roma that was not existentially affected by the Nazi crime of genocide.
This experience of absolute lawlessness has burned itself deeply into the collective memory, said Delfeld, and at the same time warned of current dangerous developments: “Not only in Germany, but also in Europe, right-wing extremists and nationalist groups and parties are openly agitating against our democratic constitutional state and also against minorities .” He called on the state institutions to “take antiziganism seriously as a danger and to counteract it”.
Some survivors again in fear
The commemoration this year was also influenced by the Russian war of aggression against Ukraine. It is a shame that survivors of Nazi terror and their relatives in Ukraine today have to fear falling victim to Russian bombs, said the director of the Buchenwald and Mittelbau-Dora Memorials Foundation, Jens Wagner.
He recalled that about a third of all prisoners at Buchenwald concentration camp came from the former Soviet Union – including Ukrainians, Russians and Belarusians. As in 2022, official representatives from Russia and Belarus were not invited to the commemoration lights on Sunday.
From 1937 until shortly before the end of the Second World War, the National Socialists deported around 280,000 people from all over Europe to the Buchenwald concentration camp, which was liberated by US troops in April 1945. 56,000 died.
