Articles by Margarata Matache

Source: Foreign Policy in Focus

A growing movement among Roma activists looks to celebrate their ancestors’ resistance to persecution — and to pick up where they left off.

On May 16, 1944, the Nazis scheduled the extermination of the Roma in the Auschwitz II-Birkenau’s Zigeunerlager. But the transfer of the Roma to the gas chamber met with vigorous resistance. Approximately 6,000, Roma alerted to the Nazis’ extermination plans, barricaded themselves in the Zigeunerlager buildings and prepared to fight back against the German SS. The guards withdrew in the face of this uprising. read more