Home » U Velto – Il Mondo, news and images from the Sinti and Roma worlds: Mantua, the genocide of Sinti and Roma in a sculpture

U Velto – Il Mondo, news and images from the Sinti and Roma worlds: Mantua, the genocide of Sinti and Roma in a sculpture

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U Velto – Il Mondo, news and images from the Sinti and Roma worlds: Mantua, the genocide of Sinti and Roma in a sculpture

Today 27 January 2022 the sculpture on the genocide suffered by Sinti and Roma during fascism and Nazism was inaugurated in Mantua. The sculpture was placed on platform 1 of the Mantua railway station where the trains of the genocide left and passed. In the photo the Vice President of the Sucar Drom association Bernardino Torsi and the Mayor of Mantua Mattia Palazzi discover the sculpture. The plaque placed under the sculpture reads:

January 27, 2022, Platform 1

The sculpture commemorates the genocide suffered by Italian citizens belonging to the Sinti and Roma linguistic minorities during Fascism and Nazism.

The fissure represents the rift created by the racial persecution that began in Italy on September 11, 1940.

The black triangles symbolize the five hundred thousand men, women and children persecuted, deported, interned, tortured in horrendous medical experiments and finally exterminated in the gas chambers and crematoria of Auschwitz – Birkenau.

The sculpture was conceived by the artist Luca Dotti and created together with Bernardino Torsi, Alberto Rocca and Kaioma Pavan.

The inauguration was attended by the Mayor of Mantua Mattia Palazzi, the President of the Province of Mantua Carlo Bottani, the Bishop of Mantua don Marco Busca and Rino “Marcellino” Casadio on behalf of the Zigana Evangelical Mission. The Prefect of Mantua Michele Formiglio, the President of the Jewish Community of Mantua Emanuele Colorni with Licia Norsa, the Provincial Commander of the Carabinieri of Mantua Colonel Antonino Minutoli, the Police Headquarters of Mantua Giannina Roatta, the Provincial Commander of the Guardia di Finanza of Mantua Andrea Antonioli, the councilor of the Municipality of Mantua Alessandra Riccadonna, the councilor of the Municipality of Mantua Andrea Caprini, the President of the City Council of Mantua Massimo Allegretti and the President of the ANPI Luigi Benevelli. During the inauguration, sinte music was played by Athos Held on the violin and Sciato Held on the guitar.

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Below is Declis Del Bar’s speech on behalf of the Sinta Mantovana community

On 27 January 2005, the Mayor of Mantua, Gianfranco Burchiellaro, bestowed the Edicule of Virgil on the three surviving Sinti women from Mantua, apologizing for the racial persecution they suffered.

Today, seventeen years later, we have reached a new important stage in Mantua and in Italy for the recognition of the genocide suffered by us Sinti and Roma during fascism and Nazism.

The Sinta Mantovana Community thanks the Mayor, Mattia Palazzi, who two years ago launched the idea of ​​affixing the sculpture that we are going to discover in this symbolic place and we thank the assessor Alessandra Riccadonna who has worked to make this moment happen.

We also thank the Jewish community of Mantua and remember Fabio Norsa, who passed away a few years ago, who spent his time together with Maria Bacchi so that the memory of the genocide suffered by our community was not obscured.

Today we know without any doubt that fascism in Italy and Nazism in Germany built their own “racial science” to first justify racial persecution and then genocide.

On 11 September 1940, the Italian Government ordered all the Prefects of the Kingdom of Italy to arrest and internee all Sinti and Roma families in special concentration camps. Solution advocated by Guido Landra in the article “The problem of mestizos in Europe” published in the magazine “La Difesa della Raccia”.

The Sinti from Mantua were interned in the concentration camps of Novi Ligure, Bolzano and Prignano sulla Secchia. The testimonies collected in recent years have opened a window on life in the Italian camps. In the concentration camp of Prignano sulla Secchia there was barbed wire, the Carabinieri made roll call twice a day, we ate very little and during the winter we suffered from the cold. Also in Prignano, every morning the men were picked up and taken to break stones to be used for road maintenance.

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On 9 April 1942, the Ministry of Foreign Affairs sent a note to the Ministry of the Interior which reads:

[…] with a recent provision, the gypsies residing in the Reich have been treated on a par with the Jews and therefore the anti-Semitic laws currently in force will also apply to them. Gypsies are considered not only 100% gypsies but also those who have some gypsy blood.

After 8 September 1943, the fascist concentration camp system collapsed and the interned families ran away and hid. But in Northern Italy, with the formation of the Republic of Salò, the ferocious roundups that brought Sinti and Roma to the Nazi camps began. Thanks to the research carried out by the historian Luca Bravi together with the Sucar Drom association, today we know that on the convoys heading from Italy to Dachau, Buchenwald, Mauthausen, Ravensbruck, Auschwitz there were also Italian Roma and Sinti such as the Gabriellis, the Helds, the Brajdics , the Levakovichs, the Pavans.

When fascism and Nazism were defeated in 1945, five hundred thousand Sinti and Roma had been exterminated. Half of the European Sinti and Roma population had been killed, annihilated, devoured in the gas chambers and crematoria.

The historical research in Italy is not concluded because there are still many stories to be reconstructed and to identify all the places of internment. In recent years, the Sucar Drom association together with the Institute of Sinta culture has published four books, two photographic/documentary exhibitions, several videos and created the first virtual museum. We also put up plaques where some concentration camps used to be. In recent days, the news has reached the Sinta Community of Mantua that the European Commission has financed a new project to continue historical research together with the University of Florence.

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In recent years in Italy some people equate the genocide suffered during Nazi-fascism to the discrimination that many people belonging to our community suffer today. In particular, the current “nomad camps” are compared to the fascist and Nazi concentration camps. It is a grave historical and political error because the genocide is a unique event. Its uniqueness must never be questioned.

However, it is unavoidable to question the value of Remembrance Day in Italy. It is necessary for Italy to officially recognize the genocide we have suffered as Germany and the European Union have done. But it is essential that the institutions and civil society are committed to combating the discrimination that still affects us people belonging to the Sinti and Roma linguistic minorities.

Primo Levi never tired of repeating

Auschwitz is outside of us, but it is around us, it is in the air. The plague has died down, but the infection is spreading: it would be foolish to deny it.

Here, it is the task of each and every one of us to recognize and fight the infection, or rather the discrimination that still affects us Sinti and Roma in Italy.

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