The stories of Roma survivors from the Czech and Slovak Republics about their experience during World War II are now available on Svedectvi Romu, an online database launched today, symbolically, on International Roma Holocaust Memorial Day, the Czech Academy of Sciences has announced.

The website will eventually contain around 250 testimonies, with both Czech and English versions of the database.

“The experience of Roma and Sinti during World War II is still a neglected topic, even though the Roma communities still feel the consequences of the wartime genocide and persecution today,” said historian Katerina Capkova, head of the steering committee of the Prague Forum for Roma History. “Moreover, even in the few publications about the Roma and Sinti Holocaust, the perspective taken from documents written during the war by the state administration and police forces often prevails.” 

Capkova said she hoped the website would help spread awareness of the genocide of the Roma and Sinti during the Holocaust. That is why the website is being published before the database is complete, as the researchers have currently processed roughly half of the testimonies.

You can read more at: https://tinyurl.com/56kb7929.