26.10.2020
80th anniversary of extermination of Roma and Sinti in the labour camp in Bełżec
On October 26, 2020, Roma and Sinti, victims of the German labor camp in Bełżec, were commemorated. The delegations paid tribute to the victims by laying of flowers and lighting candles.
In the late spring of 1940, 1140 Sinti from Hamburg were deported to Belzec. Exhausted and confused people were imprisoned in the manor buildings. During the following days an unknown number of Polish Roma, as well as Jews and a small group of Poles were also deported. The prisoners were forced to build an anti-tank ditch on the border of the General Government and the areas occupied by Soviet Russia.
From spring to autumn 1940 over 11 000 people were imprisoned in the Belzec camp and its sub-camps. SS-Sturmbannführer Hermann Dolp was camp commandant.
Diseases, hunger and harsh working conditions caused high mortality rates among prisoners in the camp. The youngest members of the Roma and Sinti communities suffered the most, as they were not assigned to work and were therefore not entitled to receive any food rations.
The dead or murdered Roma and Sinti were buried in mass graves in the courtyard garden. On October 26, 2012, a monument designed by Mikołaj Andrzej Jurkiewicz was ceremonially unveiled in the place of their burial. Construction costs were covered by the Ministry of Administration and Digitization.
Today, under the sanitary regime, representatives of the Bełżec Municipality Office, Bełżec Municipality Council, Pope John Paul II Primary School in Bełżec and the Museum and Memorial Site in Bełżec paid tribute to the murdered Roma and Sinti.
The planned educational conference and historical workshops for children and youth, carried out for the fourth time from the funds of the "Program for the Roma Community in Poland", were transferred to the Internet.