VIDEO: ARA ART holds Leperiben commemorative ceremony in Prague, public figures read the names of Romani victims of the Holocaust
On Friday, 2 August at 19:00 the traditional commemorative ceremony was held in the park at Karlovo náměstí in Prague on the occasion of European Roma Holocaust Memorial Day. The event, held by the ARA ART organization, was called Lepriben: My nezapomínáme (We Do Not Forget).
Leperiben: My nezapomínáme (We Do Not Forget). Commemorative ceremony honoring the memory of the Romani victims of the Holocaust in Prague, 2 August 2024. (PHOTO: Soňa Kalejová)
“This is the day when it is important to commemorate the events which transpired during the Second World War, because racial and ethnic intolerance are repeating and it is necessary to speak about this loudly, publicly and systematically,” said moderator Gerhard Hadi, who stressed that the Romani victims of the Holocaust cannot remain forgotten.
“Hate, in the history of humanity, has always produced evil and human suffering. Hatred can take different forms, but its victims are always specific. We can only defeat hate by creating more and more room for love and mutual respect,” Hadi said.
The program included the telling of the first-person story of a Romani eyewitness to this history by the actor and singer Marsell Bendig. “Each family had one room. We walked a half-kilometer for water and there was one well for all of us. Well, we were a poor settlement. We were all barely surviving,” Bendig’s character said of the difficult conditions in which Romani people lived during the time of Nazi persecution in the Slovak State.
The culmination of the commemorative ceremony was the reading aloud of the names of Romani victims of the Holocaust from the Book of the Dead by non-Romani and Romani figures in public life. The names were read by Jewish Community member Karolina Sidon, journalist Jarmila Balážová, human rights activist Gwendolyn Albert and the director of ARA ART, David Tišer, among others.
European Roma Holocaust Memorial Day was adopted by the European Parliament in 2015 and is annually commemorated on 2 August. It is dedicated to the remembrance of Romani survivors and victims of the Holocaust and serves as a call to combat the discrimination and hate Romani people still face.
