16th May – Romani Resistance Day
The Nazi intended to exterminate the Roma completely as early as May 1944.
On the evening of May 16, 1944, in the Auschwitz-Birkenau concentration camp, SS guards armed with machine guns surrounded the area of the camp designated for Roma and Sinti prisoners. Their intent was to round up the nearly 6,000 prisoners there and send them to the gas chambers. But when the guards approached the area, they were met with armed resistance from the inmates.
The prisoners had learned of the planned “liquidation” and fashioned weapons from sheet metal, wood, pipes, rocks, and any other scraps of material they could get their hands on. According to the memories of survivors and witnesses to the incident, the inmates forced the guards into retreat, and though some prisoners were shot that night, the act of resistance allowed the Roma and Sinti prisoners to put off execution for several more months.
The extermination of the Roma in Auschwitz-Birkenau occurred on the night of August 2/3, 1944. Despite resistance by the Roma, 2,897 men, women, and children were loaded on trucks, taken to gas chamber V, and exterminated.
On the 16th of May 1944 men, women and children of the Gypsy camp of Auschwitz-Birkenau got organized in order to fight off SS guards who came that night to lead them to the Gas Chambers.
Fearing casualties the Nazi SS guards withdrew in front of the rebellion of Romani men, women and children that day. Auschwitz had never experienced anything like this before. Instead of passiveness, Roma victims showed proactivity. Instead of amenability, they showed resistance. So 16th May is remembered as Romani Resistance Day every year.
May 16th is the reminder that there is no destructive force which cannot be opposed. In a 1940s Europe awed by the overarching National Socialist rule and the tacit complicity of so many countries, resistance was not even dreamed of. With racial laws justifying the atrocious treatment of groups deemed to be not worthy of living along with the superior race, and overt annihilation strategies, the hierarchy of state led production of knowledge invaded every field of existence, to the most basic elements that sustain life. However, uprising appeared where most unexpected, in defiance to a monstrous rational model that had to prove efficient in the efforts to dispose of millions of people. On the night of 16th of May 1944 in the Auschwitz-Birkenau concentration camp, the entire Roma population of the camp revolted against their aggressors, in a desperate attempt to defend themselves from sure death. The testimonies of the survivors from the neighboring camp reveal a story that was only rarely told, a story of the Pharrajimos and its victims who fought, until the last moment, for their right to life and humanity. – Mihai-Alexandru Ilioaia
Source – Open Society Foundations