Speech by Zoni Weisz to the German Budestag

Remembrance of the Victims of National Socialism


On 27 January, the German Bundestag held a Ceremony of Remembrance for the victims of National Socialism. Parliament has held a ceremony each year since 1996 on this date, on which the Auschwitz concentration camp was liberated in 1945. The guest speaker this year was Mr Zoni Weisz, a Holocaust survivor from the Netherlands and representative of the Sinti. A video of the speech is on the Budestag home page.

In 2005, January 27 was been declared International Holocaust Remembrance Day by the United Nations. This year the Remembrance speech to the German Bundestag was give by Zoni Weisz, a member of the Sinti, a part of the Roma minority. Along with six million Jews and millions of others, 500,000 Roma were murdered in the Holocaust. The Roma continue to be a persecuted minority within Europe, see the webpage of the European Roma Rights Centre.