“Our commitment must be to remember the victims who perished, respect the survivors still with us, and reaffirm humanity's common aspiration for mutual understanding and justice.”
-- Declaration of the Stockholm International Forum on the Holocaust
Identity needs remembrance – dialogue platform on the Roma genocide
09.06.2017
2 June, 2017, Vienna - In the context of the EU Framework for National Roma Integration Strategies, the Austrian Federal Ministry of Education and the Austrian Federal Chancellery organized a dialogue-platform on the topic of remembrance of the Roma genocide on 2 June 2017 in Vienna.
The event was attended by around 70 people, amongst them representatives of all major Austrian Roma associations. One of the aims of the event was to inform Roma civil society and interested stakeholders about the influence and contributions of the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance in raising awareness of the Roma genocide and its consequences. The Chair of the Committee on the genocide of the Roma, Martina Maschke and a member of the Committee, Gerhard Baumgartner, gave an extensive overview of the IHRA and its work, plans and achievements along the thematic lines of education, remembrance and research.
An important outcome of the dialogue platform is an official catalogue of requests from Roma civil society towards the Austrian authorities, grouped along these IHRA criteria. The document will serve as a future tool for addressing Austrian politicians on the local, regional and federal level to introduce significant measures in these fields.
Image: IHRA representatives Baumgartner and Maschke with representatives from the Roma civil society in Austria.