In her speech during the National Remembrance Day on Dam Square, Lalla Weiss, who has been committed to commemorating the five hundred thousand Sinti and Roma who were killed in the Second World War since 1989, talked about her father. His name was Hannes Weiss, and he was marked by his traumatic experiences during the war. “On my mother’s side, twenty-four relatives did not return from the concentration camps, and twenty-two on my father’s side.”
Weiss spoke on Dam Square about one of her earliest memories. “I woke up very early in the morning. My father shouted: ‘get up’!” Outside, his seven children had to stand in a row and Weiss’ father urged them to defend themselves, armed if necessary, if the situation returned to what it was in the Nazi era. “Seven child soldiers in a row, never resting in place, never resting.”
Weiss now understands better why her father did that, she said. “His family should not be taken away without their will, just because of our origins.”
Weiss is committed to connecting population groups, she said on Dam Square on Monday evening. “Because that is the lesson I draw from history: the importance of connecting and mutual respect.” So that Remembrance Day on May 4 becomes a “memory of a distant past. A memory that we should never forget, but which hopefully will never come true for her.”
Also read
Thanks to Lalla Weiss, the suffering of Roma and Sinti during the Second World War is now also commemorated
Live blog
May 4 and 5
Two minutes of silence passed peacefully, several activists were removed from Dam Square just before Remembrance Day
