Camp Westerbork, also known as Westerbork transit camp, was a Nazi transit camp in the province of Drenthe in the Northeastern Netherlands, during World War II. It was located in the municipality of Westerbork, current-day Midden-Drenthe. Camp Westerbork was used as a staging location for sending Jews, Sinti and Roma to concentration camps elsewhere.
The Romani Holocaust was the planned effort by Nazi Germany and its World War II allies and collaborators to commit ethnic cleansing and eventually genocide against European Roma and Sinti peoples during the Holocaust era.
The Sinti are a subgroup of Romani people. They are found mostly in Germany, France and Italy and Central Europe, numbering some 200,000 people. They were traditionally itinerant, but today only a small percentage of Sinti remain unsettled. In earlier times, they frequently lived on the outskirts of communities.
Despite Dutch neutrality, Nazi Germany invaded the Netherlands on 10 May 1940 as part of Fall Gelb. On 15 May 1940, one day after the bombing of Rotterdam, the Dutch forces surrendered. The Dutch government and the royal family relocated to London. Princess Juliana and her children sought refuge in Ottawa, Canada until after the war.
A Stolperstein is a ten-centimetre (3.9 in) concrete cube bearing a brass plate inscribed with the name and life dates of victims of Nazi extermination or persecution. Literally, it means 'stumbling stone' and metaphorically 'stumbling block'.
Romani Rose is a Romany activist and head of the Central Council of German Sinti and Roma. He lost 13 relatives in the Holocaust.
The Central Council of German Sinti and Roma is a German Romani rights group based in Heidelberg, Germany. It is headed by Romani Rose, who lost 13 members of his close family in the Romani Holocaust. The organization is a member of the Federal Union of European Nationalities.
The Mechelen transit camp, officially SS-Sammellager Mecheln in German, also known as the Dossin barracks, was a detention and deportation camp established in a former army barracks at Mechelen in German-occupied Belgium. It served as a point to gather Belgian Jews and Romani ahead of their deportation to concentration and extermination camps in Eastern Europe during the Holocaust.
Eva Justin was a German anthropologist who was active during the Nazi era. She specialised in scientific racism. Her work contributed to the Nazi crimes against the Sinti and Roma peoples.
The deportation of Roma migrants from France was subject of intense political debate in France and internationally in 2009 and 2010. After two fatal incidents, President of France Nicolas Sarkozy vowed in July 2010 to evict at least half of the 539 Roma squatted land camps. The Government of France initiated a program to repatriate thousands of Romanian and Bulgarian Roma, as part of the crackdown. Between July and September 2010, at least 51 Roma camps were demolished, and France has repatriated at least 1,230 Roma to Romania and Bulgaria.
The Memorial to the Sinti and Roma Victims of National Socialism is a memorial in Berlin, Germany. The monument is dedicated to the memory of the 220,000 – 500,000 people murdered in the Porajmos – the Nazi genocide of the European Sinti and Roma peoples. It was designed by Dani Karavan and was officially opened on 24 October 2012 by German Chancellor Angela Merkel in the presence of President Joachim Gauck.
Ferenc Snétberger is a Hungarian jazz guitarist.
The Roma Holocaust Memorial Day is a memorial day that commemorates the victims of the Romani genocide (Porajmos), which resulted in the murder of an estimated 220,000–500,000 Romani people by Nazi Germany and its collaborators during World War II. The date of 2 August was chosen for the memorial because on the night of 2–3 August 1944, 2,897 Roma, mostly women, children and elderly people, were killed in the Gypsy family camp (Zigeunerfamilienlager) at Auschwitz concentration camp. Some countries have chosen to commemorate the genocide on different dates.
Margarete Kraus was a Roma woman who was persecuted during the Porajmos, imprisoned at Auschwitz and Ravensbruck. Her experience was recorded in later life by the photographer Reimar Gilsenbach.
Romani people in the Netherlands are Romani people who live in the Netherlands; part of the broader Romani diaspora. Though they represent a small portion of the national population, the plight of those in the Roma community has received ongoing national attention.
Kurt Schlesinger was a German Jewish administrative director of Westerbork transit camp during World War II.
Lily Franz (1924–2011), born Adele Franz, married as Lily van Angeren, published as Lily van Angeren-Franz) was a Sintezza writer. She was arrested with her family in 1943 and taken to Auschwitz concentration camp as part of the Romani Holocaust. Franz survived the camp, testifying against a SS officer. She lived in the Netherlands and published a memoir.
The National Holocaust Names Memorial (Amsterdam) (Dutch: Holocaust Namenmonument) is since 2021 the Dutch national memorial for the Holocaust and the Porajmos at Amsterdam. It commemorates the approximately 102,000 Jewish victims from the Netherlands who were arrested by the Nazi regime during the German occupation of the country (1940-1945), deported and mostly murdered in the Auschwitz and Sobibor death camps, as well as 220 Roma and Sinti victims.
Elisabeth Guttenberger was a German Holocaust survivor and human rights activist. Of Sinti origin, she survived the Romani Holocaust and testified at the Frankfurt Auschwitz trials after having been interned at the Gypsy family camp.
The Day of Remembrance for the Victims of National Socialism on January 27 has been a nationwide, legally established day of remembrance in Germany since 1996. It is observed on the anniversary of January 27, 1945, the day of the liberation of the Auschwitz-Birkenau extermination camp and the two other Auschwitz concentration camps by the Red Army in the last year of World War II. In 2005, the United Nations declared January 27 as the International Day of Commemoration in Memory of the Victims of the Holocaust. Since then, the day of remembrance has also been observed in many European countries.
