2 August 2020
Irmgard Schwaetzer
Chair of the Synod of the Evangelical Church in Germany (EKD)
Statement on the occasion of the European Holocaust Memorial Day for Sinti and Roma 2020
The chair of the Council of the Evangelical Church in Germany (EKD), Bishop Heinrich Bedford-Strohm, the chair of the Synod of the EKD, Irmgard Schwaetzer, and the president of the Central Council of Jews in Germany, Dr. Josef Schuster, have accompanied the Central Council of German Sinti and Roma to the commemoration ceremony in Auschwitz-Birkenau.
We are stunned in the face and at this place of the industrially planned cold mass murder and it was indeed very important for us to be able to commemorate this day of remembrance, this mass murder of the Roma and Sinti here in Auschwitz and our gratitude indeed goes to Romani Rose, the president of the Central Council of Sinti and Roma in Germany, but also to Dr. Josef Schuster, the president of the Central Council of Jews in Germany, for spending this day with us here in Auschwitz.
Statements
Alexander Van der Bellen
President of Austria
Stevo Pendarovski
President of North Macedonia
Zuzana Čaputová
President of the Slovak Republic
Klaus Iohannis
President of Romania
David Sassoli
President of the European Parliament
Marija Pejčinović Burić
Secretary-General of the Council of Europe
Helena Dalli
Commissioner for Equality, European Commission
Michaela Küchler
Chair of the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance
Michael O’Flaherty
Director of the European Union Agency for Fundamental Rights
Wolfgang Schäuble
President of the German Bundestag
Ryszard Terlecki
Deputy Marshal of the Sejm, Poland
Stéphane Dion
Ambassador of Canada in Germany, Special Representative of Canada to the EU and to Europe
Ronald Lauder
President of the World Jewish Congress
Romani Rose
Chairman of the Central Council of German Sinti and Roma
Roman Kwiatkowski
President of the Association of Roma in Poland
Dr Piotr M. A. Cywiński
Director of the Auschwitz-Birkenau State Museum
Sara Bloomfield
Director, United States Holocaust Memorial Museum
Irmgard Schwaetzer
Chair of the Synod of the Evangelical Church in Germany (EKD)
Dr. Josef Schuster
President of the Central Council of Jews in Germany
Dr Annette Schavan
Chair of the Board of Trustees of the EVZ Foundation
