Between 1939 and 1945, the Nazis killed almost 500,000 Roma and Sinti, according to more recent estimates, even around 600,000. Heinrich Himmler, one of the main organizers and executors of the Nazi genocide, tirelessly devised anti-Roma laws and decrees for the mass extermination of these ethnic groups, and on 15 November 1943, he officially equated them with the Jews, thus beginning the “final settlement of the Roma question”.

After the Second World War, the Nazi genocide of Roma and Sinti, the so-called porajmos, quickly sank into oblivion, and only in recent decades have experts begun to more intensively research this silenced chapter of the European past. Nevertheless, today most people still do not know enough about the historical circumstances of the persecution of Roma and Sinti and the genocide against them during the Second World War, and are not aware of the weight of the horrors caused and the suffering of the Roma victims.

In order to shed light on the fate of Roma and Sinti during the Second World War, especially in Slovenian territory, to place it in the historical framework of the persecution of Roma and Sinti, and to open a discussion on the importance of remembering and educating about porajmos, on Thursday, 11 December 2014, at 10 a.m., we invite you to the Porajmos round table in the context of the persecution of Roma and Sinti.

The round table will begin with introductory lectures by dr. Vere Klopčič and dr. Marjan Toš and continued with the discussion, in which Haris Tahirović, mag. Jožek Horvat Muc and Jasmina Ahmetaj. The event will be coordinated by Petra Jurič.

The honorary patron of the round table is dr. Andrej Fištravec, Mayor of Municipality of Maribor. The round table, which is related to the Stone Tears project, supported by the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance (IHRA) in 2014-2016, is organized in cooperation with Frekvensa, a socio-cultural association of the restless and active, and the Terne Roma – Youth Association Roma.