Gypsies commemorate their Holocaust dead

GYPSIES from across Europe met at the former Auschwitz-Birkenau death camp in Poland yesterday to remember hundreds of thousands of their ancestors killed by the Nazis and call for wider recognition of the Gypsy Holocaust.

The ceremony, exactly 60 years after the night the Nazis gassed the final 2,900 Gypsies being held in the camp, also heard warnings that the Sinti and Roma continue to face persistent discrimination, especially in eastern Europe.

"Like the Jews, the Sinti and Roma were brutally persecuted and systematically murdered with an inhuman determination," said Germany's envoy to the ceremony, Environment Minister Juergen Trittin.