BRATISLAVA, August 1, (WEBNOVINY) — On the occasion of Europe’s Roma Holocaust Memorial Day, the Slovak government plenipotentiary for Roma communities, Miroslav Pollak, said that conflicts and negative experience with the local Roma community need to be resolved rationally, without emotions and any abuses of ethnicity.
“I support preserving the memory of Roma Holocaust and I am against any denial of it. The Office of the Government Plenipotentiary for Roma Communities will support the fight against all forms of racial and ethnic discrimination and xenophobia,” said Pollak. He believes that not even after more than sixty years has Europe managed to get rid of the heritage of Nazism and overcome its fear of otherness. August 2 is the exclamation mark of to what size human intolerance and hatred can grow, he said.“ I would like to appeal on members of the majority population to not relate possible negative experience with inhabitants of Roma communities and neighbor conflicts to the whole Roma population in Slovakia,“ said Pollak. He praised the work of representatives of the state administration, self-government organs, NGOs and churches, who have been contributing to easing tensions between the majority population and the Roma minority. He thinks that intolerance and segregated Roma communities do not contribute to mutually getting to know each other and inclusion of the Roma into society. Keeping Roma in marginalized communities and extreme poverty is not the way to integrate them into society but the way leading to their isolation, he believes.
It is estimated that some 300,000 European Roma died in World War II in the Roma Holocaust.
SITA