State officials and survivors have gathered at the Auschwitz-Birkenau concentration camp in Poland to mark European Holocaust Memorial Day for Sinti and Roma, commemorating Sinti and Roma people who perished at the hands of the Nazis.
Sunday's event was timed to commemorate a massacre on the night of August 2, 1944, when German guards liquidated what was then called the "Gypsy family camp" at Auschwitz-Birkenau, murdering thousands of men, women and children in gas chambers.
In all, historians estimate half a million Sinti and Roma perished in Nazi-occupied Europe.
Some 20,000 died alone in Auschwitz, where representatives of the Evangelical Church in Germany (EKD) and Germany's Central Council of Jews gathered for their first shared remembrance of the Sinti and Roma killed there.
They laid wreaths at a ceremony, and Heinrich Bedford-Strohm, chairman of the EKD's council, spoke of the shame of Christian anti-Judaism and welcomed the joint commemoration.
The President of the Central Council of Jews in Germany, Josef Schuster, said that people had to stand up together for democracy and against inhumanity.
Commemorations also took place online, due to the coronavirus pandemic. Other speakers, including Romani Rose, the chairman of the Central Council of German Sinti and Roma, the President of the European Parliament David Sassoli and leader of the German Bundestag, Wolfgang Schaeuble, emphasised the need to combat all forms of discrimination.
They called for further research into the Roma Holocaust, and said action was needed to combat ongoing discrimination against Roma communities.
"Today, when we recall the tragedy of the Roma Holocaust, it is the obligation of us politicians to firmly reject any form of racism, anti-Semitism, anti-Gypsyism, homophobia and other forms of intolerance," Slovakian President Zuzana Caputova said in a statement online.
