For millions of young Roma and Sinti around the world today, the memory of the events of 16 May 1944 forms an important part of their ethnic and historical identity. According to a contemporary witness, on 16 May 1944 the inmates of the so-called “Gypsy camp Auschwitz-Birkenau” resisted the SS orders to evacuate the camp. Informed by other inmates of their imminent dispatch to the gas chambers, thousands of Roma and Sinti barricaded themselves in the barracks armed only with stones and sticks and were thus able to prevent their extermination for the time being.
