Eastern Europe Marks August 2 Roma Holocaust Memorial Day for 500,000 Victims
Updated
Updated · DW (English) · Aug 1
Eastern Europe Marks August 2 Roma Holocaust Memorial Day for 500,000 Victims
3 articles · Updated · DW (English) · Aug 1
Summary
August 2 commemorations across Eastern Europe honor the roughly 500,000 Roma and Sinti murdered by the Nazis, centered on the 1944 liquidation of Auschwitz-Birkenau’s so-called Gypsy Family Camp.
2015 gave the date EU-wide status as European Roma Holocaust Memorial Day, but national observance still varies widely in official recognition, ceremony sites and political visibility.
Poland, Czechia, Slovakia, Hungary, Romania, Croatia and North Macedonia now hold official events, often at Auschwitz or former camp sites such as Lety, Jasenovac and Bucharest’s Holocaust Memorial.
Romania adopted the day only in 2020, Bulgaria still marks it without official status, and Serbia has no dedicated August 2 memorial day for the Roma genocide.
Current ceremonies also highlight ongoing anti-Roma discrimination, linking wartime remembrance to present-day antiziganism across central and southeastern Europe.