Alright. It’s #RomaRemembranceDay2020.

Today is the anniversary of the liquidation of the Gypsy camp in Auschwitz, in which the Roma and Sinti prisoners were sent to their deaths.

Today the Romani live under the shadow of our destruction.

Somewhere between 500,000 and 1.5 million Roma and Sinti were murdered in the Porajmos.

We were murdered because we were a ‘criminal race,’ a threat to the perfect Aryanism of Nazi Germany.

#RomaRemembranceDay2020

The destruction of the Romani by the Nazis has come to the forefront in recent years thanks to a new generation of Roma and Sinti refusing to be silent, standing on a foundation of our elders and ancestors who refused to be silent.

We will not be silent.

The Porajmos was not as fundamental to the Nazis as the Shoah was. The destruction of the Gypsy people was not seen as the all-important priority for the survival of the Aryan race.

But neither was it incidental.

#RomaRemembranceDay2020

The Porajmos was the culmination of nearly 700 years of European antipathy, since our caravans first crossed the Caucasus.

It was the logical end of centuries of enslavement by prince and church, of white supremacy, Christian dominionism, and modern antiziganism.

#RomaRemembranceDay2020 is the pale candle that ‘Never Again’ is for us, that the world will sit up and listen to the stories of our lost parents, ancestors, communities, languages, dignity.

It’s a prayer that maybe this is the year the Gypsy people have a place in this world.