Eric Pickles – 2024 Speech at the 80th Anniversary of the Genocide of the Roma Ceremony at Auschwitz

The speech made by Eric Pickles in Auschwitz, Poland on 2 August 2024.

Dear survivors, your excellencies, friends,

Here, we stand at the epicentre of evil, remembering the murdered and the lost. Remembering those that suffered and survived the murder factory of Auschwitz-Birkenau and the other death camps of Europe run by the Nazis and their collaborators.

The Holocaust and the genocide of the Roma are well documented. There are plenty of photographs that burn into the retina, leaving indelible images impossible to forget.

For me, this uniquely depraved time is symbolised by two haunting photographs, both of children. Symbolising the waste and the loss of young life cut short and its unfulfilled promise.

Firstly, the photograph of a frightened and confused seven-year-old Tsvi Nussbaum, with his hands raised over his head, surrounded by heavily armed German soldiers at the end of the Warsaw Uprising—a child victim surrounded by adult bullies. Tsvi may have survived; I hope he did.

Secondly, “The Girl with the Headscarf” is a nine-year-old Dutch Romani girl looking out of a railway truck. In this case too, we have a name: Anna Maria ‘Settela’ Steinbach. The terror and hopelessness in that young girl’s face will stay with me forever. Sadly, Settela did not survive. She is a vivid symbol of a lost generation, of what could have been.

Today, we remember people like Krystyna Gil—whom many of you knew personally—and places like Szczurowa.

The village of Szczurowa had been home to Polish Roma families for centuries.

But on July 3rd, 1943, a German police unit used local farmers to round up the Roma of the village and take them to the local churchyard on carts.

They were murdered and buried in a mass grave. Afterwards, the Nazis and their collaborators burned the Roma homes.

Krystyna survived because her mother managed, unnoticed, to pass her into the hands of her Polish grandmother.

Krystyna’s mother, ten-year-old brother, two-year-old sister, three aunts, and four cousins were murdered.

Krystyna survived in hiding with her non-Roma family for the remainder of the war.

The murder of the ninety-three Szczurowa Roma was not an isolated incident.

We know of over one-hundred-and-eighty sites in Poland alone where Roma were executed in large groups, sometimes together with Jewish people.

So, the Polish Roma were killed in extermination camps, died in ghettos and murdered by the Nazi’s murder squads.

There are differences depending on when and where you look.

But one thing remains constant: none of this could have happened without deep-rooted prejudice against Roma. This prejudice continued after 1945, and Krystyna dedicated her life to fighting it.

She was a major advocate for a memorial to mark the Szczurowa massacre, which was inaugurated in May 1966.

In 1993, a large wooden cross was placed beside the monument, which pupils of the local school tend to this day.

Krystyna continued to fight for the victims’ names to be specified on the memorial plaque. Eventually, in 2014, these names – which included those of her mother, siblings, aunts and cousins – were added.

Throughout the 1990s she was active in the Association of Roma in Poland. In 2000 she founded the first organization for Roma women in Poland.

She worked tirelessly to educate young people about what she had experienced and everything she had lost. To make them aware of what can happen when antigypsyism is ignored, when history is neglected.

We are here because we refuse to neglect this history.

We are here because of people like Krystyna.

We are here to carry on her work.

In 2020, the Member Countries of the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance, the IHRA, pledged their political commitment to remember this history, to honour the victims and the survivors.

That same year, we adopted the IHRA working definition of antigypsyism/anti-Roma discrimination, which provides a starting point for raising awareness and for taking action.

In 2018, the Czech government closed down the industrial pig farm at Lety on the site of a former concentration camp for Roma. In March this year, I attended the moving ceremony which saw the opening of the Lety Memorial.

Remembrance triumphed over neglect and a government took ownership of their duty to history.

Earlier this year the groundbreaking online Encyclopaedia of the Nazi Genocide of the Sinti and Roma in Europe was launched.

It marks the first comprehensive overview of the existing knowledge on the persecution and murder of the Sinti and Roma under National Socialism.

And as you heard yesterday, the IHRA is now finalising a set of recommendations to help policy makers include this history in education curricula.

It will sit alongside the materials to help educators teach about the broader history of Roma in Europe developed by the Council of Europe.

These milestones are the result of the work of activists and survivors like Krystyna, who, sadly, passed away in 2021.

Krystyna’s message to young people was simple. And it remains a reminder to us all:

“Respect each other, love one another. Do not hate one another, because it does not lead to anything good, only bad.”

We remember, because the neglect of this history plays into anti-Roma discrimination today.

We remember, to ensure governments and society reflect openly and honestly on our pasts.

Democratic values can only be built on truth and the truth can never harm us.

Krystyna and other survivors and activists laid the groundwork. Now it’s up to us to truly embed education, commemoration, and research of this history into our institutions.

It’s up to us to remember the truth.