European Holocaust Remembrance Day for Sinti and Roma

On the night of August 2-3, 1944, the elderly, the infirm, and mothers with small children tried to resist, but in vain: They were forced to enter the gas chambers of the Auschwitz-Birkenau concentration and extermination camp. Their execution marked the end of the so-called gypsy camp. Prisoners who could work had already been shifted to other camps.

On that one night alone, the Nazi paramilitary force, the SS, murdered around 4,300 people. It was one of the deadliest days during the "Porajmos" — the genocide of the Sinti and Roma in Europe. Altogether, Nazi Germany killed up to 500,000 people from Europe's largest minority: in camps, in ghettos, through gas and shootings, starvation, forced labor, disease and medical experiments.

In 2015, the European Union declared August 2 the "European Roma Holocaust Memorial Day." Participants in the commemorative events in 2024 — the year marking the 80th anniversary of that murderous night — will include the last living survivors, members of the minority group, and politicians.

Bärbel Bas, the President of the German lower house of parliament, the Bundestag, will also be present. Ahead of the event, she said: "Many people are still not aware of the persecution of the Sinti and Roma under National Socialism. That is why it is very important to me to speak for Sinti and Roma at the European Holocaust Memorial Day — to help keep the memory of the victims alive. They must not be forgotten." 

Holocaust survivor hopes history will not repeat itself

Christian Pfeil is of Roma heritage. He survived the genocide as a baby, together with his parents and siblings. He says this was probably because his family, unlike other relatives, did not end up at Auschwitz. Now at the age of 80, he talks about the persecution as often as he can.  "Otherwise, so many people would have died in vain," he told DW.

Pfeil has spoken in schools, to the United Nations in New York on the International Holocaust Remembrance Day, and to audiences in Berlin, Brussels, and at the Auschwitz Memorial — where four of his great-uncle's children were killed. To commemorate them, as well as other Nazi victims in Pfeil's hometown of Trier, "Stolpersteine" or "stumbling stones" have been installed.

Each of the brass plaques embedded in pavements recalls the fate of a person who was persecuted by the Nazis, deported, murdered or driven to suicide. The private art project is the largest decentralized Holocaust memorial in the world.   

In his speech at the Auschwitz Memorial in 2022, Pfeil said: "I hope that future generations will learn from history. And I pray that something like this will not happen again."

He warns that "racist tendencies exist throughout Europe." Antiziganism is the form of racism directed against Sinti and Roma. Pfeil has a message for young people: "That is why you must stand up for democracy — and resolutely oppose antiziganism, antisemitism and racism. Visit the memorial sites and places of persecution and see for yourself what the people went through." 

Born in a ghetto: hunger, cold and violence

Early in the morning on May 16, 1940, Pfeil's parents and siblings were forcibly taken from their home. They were deported from their hometown of Trier, where his father had a tools trade. They were eventually taken to German-occupied Poland. His eldest sister Berta was twelve, and his youngest brother Ludwig was not yet three years old.

Pfeil was born in early 1944 in the Nazi-created "Lublin Ghetto" in occupied Poland. His parents and siblings have told him that the entire family was starving and suffering from forced hard labor, and the experiences of mock executions. When the SS officers celebrated during the evening, his father had to play music for them. In return, he was given leftover food. That is how he supported the family.

There were no clothes or diapers for baby Christian. His mother would take him wrapped in rags to the forced labor camp, and she would set him down next to her in the snow. He tells us that the SS and camp guards would kill any crying children. Later, his mother told him her thoughts at the time: "I'd rather have you freeze to death with me than have the terrible people in the barracks kill you."

German students visit the Auschwitz Memorial

"It was a miracle that we survived" was the title of a lecture by Christian Pfeil in Trier in April 2024. It was presented by the "AG Frieden" association. "Frieden," in German, means peace. The hall was filled to capacity and many could not get in. Sitting next to Pfeil on stage were two students from the local Auguste-Victoria-Gymnasium. They  visited the Auschwitz Memorial at the beginning of the year.

Seventeen-year-old student Yannic Lange told DW that it was a formative experience. He described seeing the prisoners' personal belongings, shoes, clothing, and glasses, and how he was especially affected by the masses of cut hair in one of the rooms: "Who doesn't cry there... You are completely overwhelmed by emotion. And you will never forget something like that."

In Trier, the students met  Pfeil and listened to the story of his family.

'Second persecution' of Sinti and Roma after WWII

Following their liberation from the camp by the Red Army, the Pfeil family returned to Trier. However, Christian Pfeil emphasizes that discrimination and persecution did not stop when World War II ended in 1945. His relatives were seriously ill and unable to work: The family was reliant on state support.

The very same people who were responsible for their deportation during the Nazi era were still working in government agency offices. Pfeil's family now had to beg for help from those officials. His father called them "Hitler heads." Christian Pfeil often accompanied him to the offices because his father was illiterate. "They were disappointed we were still alive," says Pfeil.

It wasn't until 1982 that Germany recognized the Nazis' racist genocide of Sinti and Roma. And in 2022, President Frank-Walter Steinmeier called the post-WWII injustice against Sinti and Roma the "second persecution." He asked Sinti and Roma for forgiveness. 

Standing up against antiziganism and attacks by neo-Nazis

Pfeil describes how he was personally insulted during his school years, and that anytime anything went missing, he was always the suspect. Nonetheless, he always tried to assert himself: "Mediocrity is not acceptable to a Sinto."

As an adult, Pfeil became a singer and ran a trendy bar where well-known musicians would perform. Then he opened a restaurant in the old train station "Trier South" and it was also successful.

Then things turned ugly. In the 1990s, the German public TV channel Südwestfunk broadcast a film (with German subtitles) in which Pfeil sang a song against the Nazi dictatorship in his native Romanes: "Greater Germany, Heil Hitler — never again." Following the broadcast, he was terrorized with death threats and insults.

His restaurant was vandalized, smeared with swastikas and SS runes. After Pfeil renovated and reopened it, a second attack destroyed it completely. The mayor of his hometown told him at the time: "There are no right-wing radicals in Trier."

"That's when my courage deserted me," he says. Pfeil ran a country inn for a few years and eventually returned to Trier, where he was granted honorary citizenship in 2024.

Progress in fighting antiziganism

Much has changed since the 1990s. Germany now has a Commissioner against Antiziganism: Mehmet Daimagüler. He calls attention to racism towards the minority group, and advocates for legal changes. Germany's federal and state governments have set up a permanent commission for the lives of Sinti and Roma. Nonetheless, antiziganism is on the rise.

The Antiziganism Reporting and Information Center (MIA) recorded over 1,200 cases in 2023. That is almost twice as many as the previous year, and tens of the cases were extremely violent. In 80 cases, antiziganist attacks were carried out by the police. In 2024, a Sinti family in Trier reported swastikas painted on their door.

Trier has built apartments for many Sinti families. A memorial erected in 2012 commemorates the persecution of Sinti and Roma — it stands right beside Trier Cathedral. It is the starting point of tours to places of persecution, operated by the "Buntes Trier" association.

At the commemoration ceremony of the 80th anniversary of Sinti and Roma deportation by the Nazis on May 16, 1944, Christian Kling, the chairman of the regional association of Sinti and Roma in Rhineland-Palatinate, had a warning: "Those who do not know their history are condemned to repeat it."

He emphasized that the people the Nazis persecuted were German. 80 years, he told DW, "is just a stone's throw in the history of humanity."

However: to know history, research is key. "If you look into Auschwitz and the persecution of Sinti and Roma, you realize that very little research has been done," historian Karola Fings, who works for the Research Center on Antiziganism at the University of Heidelberg, told DW. Fings hopes that this 80th anniversary will become an opportunity to make up for lapses.

And the work has begun. Fings heads the "Encyclopedia of the Nazi genocide of the Sinti and Roma in Europe," which is an international project. The online reference site plans to grow to 1,000 articles in German and English. It provides information about crime scenes, life stories and persecution of Sinti and Roma throughout Europe.

This article was originally written in German.