Roma Holocaust Memorial

Roma Holocaust Emlékmű

In 2006, a memorial in Budapest was dedicated to the Roma murdered during the Second World War.

History

The first Roma settled in Hungary during the Middle Ages. The population comprised many different tribes and groups who immigrated during different periods. They practised various traditional professions. Since the 18th century there had been attempts, at times violent, to force the nomadic »Gypsies« to settle down. During World War I, the Hungarian government introduced measures deeming unemployed Roma and those without a permanent stay criminal. The elites only dealt with the issue of Roma living conditions from the perspective of public order. Towards the end of the 1930s, first suggestions were made to re-evaluate the situation of the Roma from a racial perspective; radical solutions such as forced sterilisation were proposed. Following the beginning of the Second World War, some Roma were expelled from Hungarian border regions. At the same time, Roma were not persecuted to the extent as Jews were; they were, for example, conscripted for military service like other Hungarian citizens.
When Hungary was occupied by the German Wehrmacht, Hungarian authorities began rounding up Roma in many places, mostly during the summer of 1944, and handing over men and women capable of working to the Germans, who in turn deported them to concentration camps such as Mauthausen and Ravensbrück. The largest collection camp for »Gypsies« was set up in a fortress in the north of Hungary, in Komárom. The living conditions for the thousands of prisoners were catastrophic. When the National Socialist Arrow Cross Party came to power in October 1944, its followers carried out several massacres of Roma, mostly in far-off villages.

Budapest, 2010, Roma Holocaust Memorial, Stiftung Denkmal

Budapest, 2010, Dedication on the ground in front of the memorial, Stiftung Denkmal

Victims

The number of Roma murdered by the National Socialists and their helpers is much disputed; most estimates speak of 500,000. The best known single event of the genocide of the Roma is the dissolution of the »Gypsy camp« in the Auschwitz-Birkenau extermination camp: In the night of August 2/3, 1944, the SS murdered all of the Roma remaining in the camp; about 3,000 perished in the gas chambers.
The persecution of Hungarian Roma has not been documented as thoroughly as the mass murder of Jews which took place at the same time. Many killing operations, especially towards the end of the war, were not organised in any way, but occurred haphazardly. While some historians state that about 5,000 Hungarian Roma were murdered, other sources cite up to 20,000.

Following defeat in the First World War and the collapse of the Austro-Hungarian Empire, Hungary had to surrender two thirds of its territory and sixty percent of its population to its neighbours in 1920. The trauma caused by these losses led Hungary, under the leadership of Miklós Horthy (1868–1957), to gradually ally itself with Nazi Germany from 1937 onwards. Between 1938 and 1941 Hungary managed to almost double its territory in several stages of border revisions. Faced with the advance of the Red Army the country began to distanc itself from Nazi Germany and was therefore occupied by the Wehrmacht in March 1944. Miklós Horthy retained his position as head of state. Almost immediately after the invasion and with the assistance of Hungarian authorities, the SS began to deport Jews to the Auschwitz extermination camp, something that Hungary had refused to do up to then, despite having introduced anti-Jewish legislation. Of the 825,000 Jews from »Greater Hungary« the number murdered in Auschwitz stands at way over half a million. Up to 300,000 of these Jews came from the regions of what is today’s Hungary. In addition, around 140,000 soldiers along with some 170,000 non-Jewish civilians perished during the Second World War. After 1945 Hungary was in the Soviet sphere of influence. Up to 1989, official commemorations in Hungary did not remember the war but rather its end as the »liberation from fascism«. However, for the majority of the population 1945 was the start of a long period of repression. For many Hungarians, memory of the national uprising in 1956 that was crushed by the Soviets overshadows that of the Second World War. Following the uprising the war was viewed as the inglorious prelude to the suffering under communist rule. At the same time, there were many state monuments celebrating »Hungarian-Soviet friendship«. During the communist period there was no official remembrance of those who had died during the war on the front, at home and during the genocide, nor were there any Holocaust memorial sites outside of Jewish institutions. The only related site was the Jewish Museum in Budapest, founded in 1932 and reopened in 1947. In 1985 the Jewish community in Budapest opened a »Raoul Wallenberg Memorial Park« alongside the large synagogue located on the edge of the former ghetto. A state monument to Raoul Wallenberg (*1912–?) was inaugurated in 1987 in connection with a visit by the communist head of state János Kádár (1912–1989) to Sweden. Wallenberg, a Swedish diplomat, saved thousands of Budapest Jews. He was deported by the Soviet occupation force in 1945 and since then has been missing, presumed dead. This monument marked a turnaround in the decades of silence regarding the Holocaust. Only since the new millennium have numerous Holocaust memorials and memorial sites emerged in Hungary. These include the »Shoes on the Danube Promenade« in Budapest, inaugurated on 16 April 2005, the date of the Hungarian Holocaust Remembrance Day introduced in 2000. This memorial remembers the murder of up to 20,000 Jews from the Budapest ghetto in January 1945 by the »Arrow Cross«, a right-wing extremist party that had assumed power in Hungary on 15 October 1944. A national Holocaust Museum was opened in the capital in 2004. However, there are still very few memorials to other victims. Symptomatic of the way in which post-communist Hungary has dealt with its 20th century past is the fiercely debated »House of Terror«, opened in the centre of Budapest in 2002, which deals with the history of »both totalitarian dictatorships«. The involvement of Hungarians in the deportation of their fellow Jewish citizens often recedes into the background.

Remembrance

Until today, only a few historians have conducted research on the persecution of Hungarian Roma during World War II, the history is also little known to the public. The first books and documentaries on this topic were only published after the collapse of the communist system.
Since the political and economic transformation, the situation of the Roma in Hungary has changed decisively. On the one hand, many Roma have become unemployed and live in poverty, prejudices against the Roma are also articulated more openly. On the other hand, Roma can organise themselves better than ever and many live out their identity, particularly in the field of art and culture.
The »Roma Holocaust Memorial« in Budapest was erected in 2006 in a park on the bank of the Danube. It was a joint initiative of the municipal »Budapest Galéria«, the administration of the IX. district in Budapest and several civil-society Roma organisations. According to its dedication, the monument doesn't specifically commemorate the Hungarian victims, but all »Roma victims of the Holocaust«. There is no information tablet. The memorial was designed by Ákos Maurer Klimes and Tamás Szabó. It consists of a stele made of black granite, which is fractured in several places. Close up one can see gold paint on the inside of the stele. The glistening of the paint should serve as a reminder of the fire in a crematorium.

Budapest, 2010, Detailed view of the memorial, Stiftung Denkmal

Open

The memorial is accessible at all times.

Contact

Nehru Park, Közraktár u.
1093 Budapest

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