In honor of the estimated 1,200,000 Roma, who are estimated to have suffered from the Nazis across Europe. The day of the Roma Holocaust, August 2, was marked in memory of 2,897 Roma who were killed on that day in 1944 in the Auschwitz-Birkenau concentration camp.
According to one of the well-known Roma activists in Serbia, Osman Balic, thanks to the friendship of his great-grandfather and the Prime Minister of the then Yugoslavia, Dragisa Cvetkovic, who gave him sly advice, and many Roma people were saved.
- My great-grandfather Osman Balic was a friend of Cvetkovic who was also our neighbor because mine had a house on Jovan Ristic Street and he lived on Kozara Street. Also in the Government of Dragisa Cvetkovic, two Roma were MPs, and my great-grandfather was a lobbyist. When he saw what was being prepared for them, my great-grandfather went to him and asked him to try to protect the Roma from the Germans.
Cvetkovic advised him to address the Jamaat community and the Roma from Nis to convert to Islam, because the Germans were friendly to members of this religion. He did that, talked to the Germans and explained to them that the Roma in Nis were Muslims and that is how he saved them, and there was no great persecution of the Roma in Nis. - said Balic.
As he pointed out, this did not mean that the Roma passed without casualties, but on the contrary, many of them ended up in the camp and then executed at the Bubanj site.
- The assassination of German officers at the Park Hotel on August 2, 1941, when Aleksandar Vojinovic threw a bomb at German officers, led to great retaliation. According to the principle of 100 for one, Serbs and Roma were arrested and brought to the Special Police and then to a camp and then shot - said Balic,
He says that the Serbs tried to save their neighbors and one of the doctors made a trick where at one time he kept the Germans away from the Roma neighborhood for a while.
- A doctor at the entrance to the settlement Stochem Pazar sewed "Tifuz" The Germans were afraid of the infection and did not pass this Roma settlement for a long time.
- A large number of Roma joined the partisans, some of them members of the Yugoslav army and fought against the Germans.
How many Roma suffered in the notorious camp is still unknown today, because the Germans set fire to the archives during the withdrawal, which they practiced everywhere to hide their crimes.
Based on the reconstruction of the documents and the events, the Nardo Museum came to the information that during the occupation about 500 Roma went through the gate of that camp and about 160 were shot and killed and another 30 suffered in internment.
