News

A group of active youths and volunteers to the Amalipe Center will take part in this year's Roma Genocide Remembrance Initiative, which will take place in Krakow (Poland) from 29 July to 4 August. The event is organized within the DIKH HE NA BISTER campaign - "Look and don't forget". It will include over 400 Roma and Non - Roma volunteers from 25 national groups across Europe.

Participants will have the opportunity to enrich their knowledge of the Holocaust by visiting the Auschwitz-Birkenau Museum. The initiative aims to raise awareness among young Europeans, civil society and politicians about the Roma Genocide during the Second World War. It will also focus on the rise of anti-gypsysm and anti-semitism in the context of growing racism, hate speech and extremism in Europe. In addition, the campaign aims to stimulate more tolerant learning, to learn from history lessons. In this way, young Europeans will become a reliable foothold against hatred and intolerance, that undermine the foundations of the European idea.

Dikh He Na Bister is a campaign of the TernYpe International Youth Roma Network, which brings together Roma youth organizations from Albania, Bulgaria, Germany, Hungary, Italy, Macedonia, Poland, Romania, Slovakia and Spain. Amalipe Center participates in the campaign for the second time after organizing a visit of young people from Bulgaria to Krakow in 2014 - see here. This year, the Bulgarian group participation was provided with the financial assistance of the Trust for Social Achievement Foundation. The campaign recalls that on the night of August 2, 1944, a total of 2,897 men, women and children of Roma origin who were imprisoned in the so-called "Zigeunerlager" in Auschwitz-Birkenau were taken to a gas chamber five and killed. Their bodies were burned in pits near the crematorium.

Museums dedicated to the Roma, killed in the death camps have been set up in various European countries and ceremonies for the memory of the Roma are already part of the historical memory of the Second World War. Bulgaria is still memorizing the most afflicted ethnic group of Nazi Germany, the Jewish, as the rescue of Bulgarian Jews is a cause for national pride. The general public in Bulgaria are not familiar with the persecutions of the Roma by the Third German Reich and the Roma Holocaust. Amalipe has been working to promote this theme for years. Information about the Roma Holocaust has been included in the Roma folklore and intercultural education books, issued by the organization. For the second year, Amalipe is a co-organizer of a Holocaust Teaching Seminar for secondary teachers in History, which takes place annually in July at the American University in Blagoevgrad.

For more information: Atanas Atanasov, 0894-94-44-13, cor.amalipe.vt@abv.bg