08/05/2022
PPESS RELEASE
May 2, 2022
New York
World Artists Initiative “KHETANES”
and FOR a World without Racism and Xenophobia
For contacts:
Stoimen Vassilev, e-mail: [email protected], ph: 201-486-6367
ROMANI RESISTANCE DAY: Demonstration in New York City
May 21, 2022 at 1:00 pm
in front of the UN building at Ralph Bunche Park, 1st Avenue and E 42nd street
The World Artists Initiative “Khetanes” and FOR a World without Racism and Xenophobia, Romani activist groups, will hold a demonstration in front of the UN building in New York at Ralph Bunche Park on May 21, 2022 at 1:00 pm.
The demonstration will mark the international Romani Resistance Day, which commemorates the unprecedented uprising of Roma and Sinti people on May 16, 1944 at the N**i camp known as “Zigeunerlager” in Auschwitz-Birkenau. Approximately six thousand Roma men, women and children were held at the camp, and on May 16, 1944, after warnings that the N**is were planning their ex*****on, some six hundred Romani prisoners refused to show up for the morning roll call. Instead, they reportedly barricaded themselves in their barracks, equipped with hammers and shovels from a warehouse, as well as sections of their bed bunks used as weapons. As a result of their defiance, no Roma or Sinti died in the gas chambers on that day. Fearing a camp-wide revolt, the N**is transferred 3000 Roma to other camps. On 2 August 1944, the N**is gassed the remaining 3000 Roma prisoners in the Auschwitz “Zigeunerlager.” The brave revolt of 16 May 1944 – a fight for the right to life and humanity – is internationally commemorated as Romani Resistance Day.
While honoring the legacy of Roma and Sinti Resistance, the demonstration will present facts about the current situation of Roma people in Europe and their continuing discrimination in the context of rising nationalism, ultra-right ideologies and parties, and neo-N**i groups. The organizers will make a statement about the situation of Roma people in Ukraine preceding the war, as well as their treatment during the war. Since 2018, human rights groups in Ukraine have documented multiple and vicious mob attacks by neo-N**i groups against Roma settlements and houses, with more than 150 people harmed and multiple fatalities. With the start of the war in Ukraine, it quickly became clear that Romani refugees fleeing the country were among those groups who were being treated in discriminatory ways, together with other Ukrainians of color and international students.
The event will feature two prominent speakers: Grattan Puxon, activist and campaigner for the rights of the Gypsy Roma Traveler community for over 50 years, and Petra Gelbart, Czech-born Romani (Gypsy) scholar, musician and activist, who co-founded Families of Roma and Sinti Holocaust Victims and has been a part of the American organization Voice of Roma for over twenty years.
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