The exhibition The long shadow of the past will be opened in the museum of the Memorial Center Kamp Westerbork on Wednesday 17 May. 79 years after the deportation of 245 Sinti and Roma from Camp Westerbork, a collective of Sinti and Roma led by Lalla Weiss (1961) acts as guest curator.
The exhibition features personal stories, special images, (newly composed) pieces of music, poems, audiovisual fragments and, among other things, historical objects. “It shows the complex journey that the memory of the Second World War has made in the past 78 years within the Sinti and Roma community,” says spokesperson Tessa Bouwman.
Centuries of oppression
Sinti and Roma have been oppressed and persecuted worldwide for centuries. Stigmatized for centuries as ‘itinerant thieves’ and ‘vagabonds’. People ‘without any form of morals’. During World War II, the Sinti and Roma community estimates that more than 1 million Sinti and Roma from all over Europe were murdered by the Nazis.
It is a history that quickly fell into oblivion after the liberation. In 1945, the European population was in shock: many could not or would not listen to the suffering of the survivors. The stigma continued. The stereotypes did not disappear.