2025 International Roma Genocide Remembrance Day

Today, the Auschwitz Institute for the Prevention of Genocide and Mass Atrocities (AIPG) commemorates the International Roma Genocide Remembrance Day. This solemn day honors the memory of the victims of the Roma Genocide—also known as Samudaripen (“mass killing” in the Romani language)—carried out during World War II as part of the racial purification campaign waged by Nazi Germany and its Axis allies. On April 15, 2015, the European Parliament officially recognized August 2 as the European Roma Holocaust Memorial Day, an annual day of international remembrance for this genocide.

In November 1935, the Nazi regime expanded its Nuremberg Laws to institutionalize its ideology of racial purity, formally designating the Sinti and Roma communities as "racially inferior," "problematic," and "enemies" of the Third Reich. In the years that followed, Roma and Sinti individuals were subject to arbitrary persecution and forced deportation to so-called Zigeunerlager ("Gypsy camps") across Nazi-occupied Europe.

While scholarly understanding of the Roma Genocide has advanced, many details remain undocumented. It is estimated that between 500,000 and 1.5 million Roma were murdered during the Holocaust. This figure includes tens of thousands killed by Nazi military and secret police units in the Soviet Union, and approximately 3,000 Roma who were gassed in the Auschwitz-Birkenau extermination camp. Countless others died due to forced labor, starvation, and disease in camps such as Chelmno, Belzec, Sobibor, and Treblinka.

The Roma people, who originally migrated from Central and Northern India to Europe between the 10th and 14th centuries, today constitute Europe’s largest ethnic minority. For centuries, they have faced systemic marginalization, racism, discrimination, and identity-based violence. In recent years, anti-Roma sentiment has surged across Europe, fueled by scapegoating and the persistence of harmful stereotypes—repeating patterns of exclusion that echo the past. Yet, at the national level, preventing and countering the distortion of the Roma Genocide and pervasive structural racism remain a priority.

AIPG’s Mediterranean Basin Programs (MBP) have continued their Roma-focused efforts in Southeastern Europe through ongoing engagement, including workshops, consultation sessions, and other events in collaboration with the Romanian National Agency for Roma. These efforts build on the findings of a regional study, The Roma Holocaust/Roma Genocide in Southeastern Europe, which examined genocide distortion across eleven countries. The resulting report has fostered inclusive, transnational dialogue around memorialization, education, and anti-discrimination as tools to counter anti-Roma racism, identity-based violence, and democratic backsliding.

On this day of remembrance, the Auschwitz Institute reaffirms its solidarity with Roma and Sinti communities worldwide. We honor the victims of the Holocaust and support all efforts toward the full and universal recognition of the Roma Genocide as an integral part of our shared historical record. Such recognition is vital—not only for historical accuracy but also for building effective atrocity prevention frameworks, promoting post-conflict education, and combating the segregation, stigmatization, and marginalization in difficult times. Acknowledging this history is a necessary safeguard against denialism and revisionism, and an essential part of the broader processes of truth, justice, and memory that underpin resilient, inclusive societies.