80 years ago, the guns of war fell silent — but for our people, the Roma and Sinti, the silence had already begun in the mass graves, in the gas chambers, in the forgotten genocide Europe called Porajmos. Over 1.5 million of our people were exterminated — not only as victims, but as fighters, as partisans, as soldiers in the Red Army.
We remember the children torn from their mothers. The elders left to die. Whole families erased from the pages of history. We remember the world’s silence.
And yet, from those ashes, we rose.
Our people resisted — in the ghettos, in the forests, on the front lines. Roma and Sinti stood shoulder to shoulder with others who fought fascism, many in the Soviet ranks, refusing to be erased.
On May 8, 1945, peace arrived in Europe — and in the streets of Prague, where the final battles raged, tyranny fell at last. For the Roma and Sinti who survived, it was the beginning of freedom — and the long road toward truth.
Today, the Roma Nation Movement gives solemn thanks to the Allied soldiers — from Britain, the United States, and the Soviet Union — whose courage defeated Nazi terror and made liberation possible. You helped save the few who lived, and gave our people a chance to breathe again.
But remembrance is not enough. Europe still forgets our dead. Still silences our grief. Still denies our genocide.
We are the Roma Nation. We remember. We resist. We rise.