Prague honours Roma resistance fighters in opposition to Hitler

For greater than half 1,000,000 Roma in Czechia and Slovakia, October 15, 2026, marks an essential milestone.

That day, an exhibition on a largely forgotten chapter of Czech historical past opened on the Museum of the Romani National Revival in Prague. The exhibit explores the position of Czech and Slovak Romani resistance fighters throughout the Nazi German occupation and the dismantling of Czechoslovakia from 1938 to 1945.

Until now, Czech and Slovak Roma appeared within the historical past of World War II virtually solely as victims of the Holocaust in opposition to Roma and Sinti. In the so-called Protectorate of Bohemia and Moravia, Nazi Germany murdered roughly 90% of the Czech Roma throughout World War II.

However, what’s much less well known is that a lot of Czech and Slovak Roma fought in opposition to the German occupiers as partisans in resistance teams and as troopers within the Czechoslovak Underground Army, or Defense of the Nation, ON.

Roma have heroes, too

The exhibition on the Museum of the Roma National Movement subsequently marks a turning level in how the Roma are seen throughout World War II. At least that’s the hope of museum director Emil Scuka, a lawyer, former prosecutor and one of many best-known Czech Roma activists.

“We weren’t solely victims; we have been additionally heroes,” Scuka mentioned in his speech to a number of hundred attendees on the exhibition opening, most of whom have been Roma from Czechia and Slovakia. “Many folks, not even among the many Roma themselves, are conscious that we Roma fought in opposition to Nazism,” he famous. In his view, “organizing and opening the exhibition was one thing my era owed to those Roma heroes and at this time we’re repaying that debt.”

Scuka referred to as on these current: “Bring your kids and grandchildren right here to allow them to see for themselves and understand that the Roma have heroes too!”

He additionally identified that this subject had been fully marginalized in Czech and Slovak historic writing for many years and that the Roma had subsequently selected their very own to doc the fates of their conflict heroes.

The exhibition presents the detailed life tales of 100 of essentially the most vital Roma partisans and Roma troopers from the Czech underground military and resistance teams who fought in opposition to the Nazis.

“We discovered over 1,400 Romani fighters within the archives. From amongst them, we chosen the 100 most fascinating tales for this exhibition,” mentioned exhibition curator Radoslav Scuka on the opening.

Groundbreaking analysis on Roma resistance fighters 

Among these figures is Anton Facuna, a sergeant within the American intelligence company Office of Strategic Services (OSS), who was flown to Slovakia in October 1944 on a secret mission. Slovakia had been a puppet state of Hitler from 1939 to 1945.

Another is Josef Serinek, identified by the nickname “Black Partisan from Vysocina,” who managed to flee from the Nazi focus camp for Roma in Lety and subsequently based and commanded the big Capajev-Cerny partisan unit within the Bohemian-Moravian Highlands.

In 2022, Czech President Milos Zeman posthumously awarded him the Medal for Heroism. Toward the top of his life, Serinek shared his reminiscences with historian Jan Tesar, who later wrote the three-volume ebook “Ceska cikanska rapsodie”, which interprets to Czech Gypsy Rhapsody.

Except for Tesar’s ebook, the historical past of Roma resistance in opposition to Nazism has not been researched by Czech and Slovak historians to today. “I’m not conscious of any scholarly historic work that offers with Roma resistance in opposition to Nazism,” Prokop Tomek, a historian on the Military History Institute in Prague, informed DW.

“The variety of 1,400 Roma who took half within the struggle in opposition to Nazism as members of the resistance or within the international military doesn’t strike me as an exaggeration and corresponds to the proportion of the Roma inhabitants in Czechoslovakia,” Tomek mentioned, including that the “exhibition on the Roma resistance in opposition to Nazism throughout the conflict is undoubtedly groundbreaking.”

Fears of showing one’s Roma identification

To today, many Roma in Czechia and Slovakia don’t publicly acknowledge their ethnic identification. This is partly as a consequence of experiences with the Holocaust throughout the Nazi era which have been handed down by generations. Czech historians and politicians proceed to debate the extent to which the Czech authorities of the Protectorate have been complicit within the extermination of the Czech Roma.

However, one factor is for certain: the police registration of all Roma, which had been enshrined in legislation in Czechoslovakia since 1927, facilitated the extermination of the Roma by the German Nazis.

According to estimates by the Czech authorities, roughly 250,000 Roma dwell within the nation at this time. In the 2021 census, nevertheless, solely 21,000 folks recognized as Roma.

Of all ethnic teams in Czechia, which has a inhabitants of 10 million, the Roma are among the many three largest ethnic minorities by way of numbers. However, they’re essentially the most socially deprived, have little or no political illustration, and are subsequently scarcely current in Czech politics.

This article was initially written in German.