Text by Satu Florin
As a part of commemoration event in Finland, the Finnish Roma Association and the Finnish Roma youth network wanted to raise awareness on the genocide committed against Roma during the Second World War. We invited a group of active young Roma people with whom we together commemorated the victims of the Roma genocide.
In our video, we shared the history of Finnish Roma and told about the Second World War and the Roma Holocaust. As far as we known no Roma had been sent from Finland to concentration camps. However, the Roma in Finland fought for Finland during the war.
Thus, there is no memorial in Finland to the victims of persecution, but there is a memorial in Finland to the Roma who have fallen in the war.
We shot the video in a beautiful park by the ocean. We laid wreaths and stones with the Roma youth and lit candles honoring the memory of the victims. Our video also interviews young people who have participated in the Dikh He Na Bister event. They visited Auschwitz and Auschwitz Birkenau, where terrible events became concrete for them. And they share their experience about what they learned.
The project is funded by the EVZ Foundation and the Federal Foreign Office as part of the program YOUNG PEOPLE remember.
