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 “Auschwitz-Birkenau gypsy camp” resisted the orders of the SS to evacuate the camp. Informed by other inmates of their imminent dispatch to the gas chambers, thousands of Roma and Sinti, armed only with sticks and stones, barricaded themselves in the huts and so managed to stave off their extermination.
© Documentation Centre of Austrian Resistance DÖW 12.543.
© Documentation and Cultural Centre of German Sinti and Roma Heidelberg.
© d/ROM/a Special Series 03/15 Roma Service, A-7503 Kleinbachselten, Gartenstraße 3
© Foundation Memorial to the Murdered Jews of Europe & RomaTrial e.V. 2022
© Central Council of German Sinti and Roma, Heidelberg, German
© Private collection of Nikolai Bessonov, Moscow, Russia
© Museum of Roma Culture, Brno, Czech Republic
© Photo held in private possession. Johann Balogh: Althodis/Stari Hodas, Eisenstadt 1992.
© Private property Gerhard Baumgartner
