The revolt of the “Gypsy families camp”: episode 3/9 “the measure of the wound”

The revolt of the “Gypsy families camp”: episode 3/9 “the measure of the wound”

by | Mar 12, 2026 | "The gypsy family camp" uprising

BATTLE STORY

The revolt of the “Gypsy families camp”: episode 3/9 “the measure of the wound”

bY Pierre Chopinaud

The episodes of the series are based on a lecture given by Pierre Chopinaud on May 16, 2025 in Berlin for the European Romani Institute for Art and Culture (Eriac).

 

(Previously…)

“What was now certain was that the story in which I had grown up, the story in which I had learned I was like a character, the story in which my conscience was formed, the story whose moral dictates that if human dignity dies in one person, it dies for all humanity, because all lives equally deserve dignity, the story whose principles and values ​​state that all human lives are equal in dignity and have the right to security and happiness, especially if they are exposed to political hatred—this story would lose all meaning if I didn’t take action. By doing what? I didn’t yet know. Except perhaps to strive, with others, using the powers I possessed, and which I still needed to discover (what can one do at 18?), to make reality resemble the ideal we dream of. To make the world coincide.” as it should be with the world as it really is, as the master of radical political organizing, Martin Luther King, said when describing his vision: “I had a dream.”

 

 “The wound that separates reality and the ideal cannot be healed with the humanitarian bandage of social aid, nor with moral sermons; it must be healed with the instrument of power.”

The gap between the ideal and reality is the measure of the wound afflicting the conscience. It is through commitment and action that reduces this gap that the one whose conscience suffers heals their wound.

But it is not, according to the precepts of Dr. King’s radical political organization, with the humanitarian bandage of social aid, nor with moral sermons, that one heals the wound that separates reality and the ideal; it is through the instrument of power. This is what I will explain by recounting the story of the Romani resistance and May 16, 1944.

Something that could have happened twenty years ago meant that reality was not what I see, that reality—mine, yours—more closely resembled our ideal, the world we dream of where all lives matter, where all lives are equally worthy of mourning; One thing that could have prevented a 27-year-old Roma woman, among my loved ones and those who matter to me, from being gunned down in cold blood by hunters sympathetic to Marine Le Pen, with her unborn son in her womb, as happened in June 2024 in the Jura region of France. One thing that could have prevented the execution of young Angelo, 37, brother of my friend Aurélie Garand, a young Yenish woman living in the city of Blois in central France, on March 17, 2017, by French army special forces because these forces, in order to combat terrorism, conduct training exercises on “Gypsies.” One thing that could have prevented my friend Sue-Ellen Demestre’s mother, a Roma woman and voyeur, from dying because of environmental racism, because she was forced to live on a reception site between a factory and a concrete mixer, is the recognition by European states of the genocide perpetrated against Roma, Manouche, Sinti, Gitans, Yenish, and Travellers during the Second World War. This thing could have prevented Roma people in Metrovica from dying until 2019 under the responsibility of the UN, after the nationalists of the time had murdered their loved ones and burned their homes.

“Today in Europe, while the global far right is coming to power everywhere, recognition of the genocide is lacking.”

 

Why this? Because when states acknowledge that a group of men, women, and children was treated in the past as if they did not belong to the human community, as if their ignoble and anonymous murder were the killing of an animal, this acknowledgment restores a name and a burial to the deceased, gives them back a measure of their dignity, and reintegrates them, through the remembrance of their name and the condemnation of the crime of which they were victims, into common humanity and into history. By restoring this dignity to the dead, it tells their descendants that their lives matter today. And that they must be protected, because they are particularly vulnerable to the political ills that chronically afflict our societies, the ills of racial hatred that chronically afflict nation-states, which then threaten the security and lives of citizens belonging to racial minorities by saying: your lives don’t matter, your dead will not be mourned.

Today in Europe, while the global far right is coming to power everywhere, recognition of the genocide is lacking.

“Anti-Gypsyism is one of the paths that the new fascism is forging to reach its end.”

It is precisely to build this kind of state shield, even as Marine Le Pen is on the verge of power in France, that I am currently, along with a few friends, founding a new Roma youth organization whose mission is to obtain from the French government recognition of the genocide perpetrated against the Roma, Manouche, Sinti, Yenish, and Travellers during the Second World War.

For we believe—but is there still time?—that such recognition by the state and the nation will help prevent the far right from coming to power. Anti-Gypsyism is one of the paths that the new fascism is forging to achieve its goal. Recognition of the genocide by the state and the nation, by political parties and civil society, can be one of the antidotes.

“What we need, then as now, in the dangerous new world we are entering, is the power to act collectively and resist.”

I repeat: is there still time? In France, we are just moments before the far right returns to power. Isn’t it already too late? It’s there in Italy, in Hungary, we can say, in America, let’s not even go there, it’s stronger than ever in Germany, in Spain. It has always been both too late and still time. In any case, there is an urgent need for action: the value of our lives and the lives of those close to us depends on it. Our security. There is an urgent need to build power. Because soon, we will only be able to rely on ourselves and our allies.

Similarly, for European states to recognize the genocide perpetrated against Roma, Manouche, Sinti, Yenish, and Travellers during the Second World War, if there were still time, arguments based on morality or responsibility are insufficient. What we need is the power to compel them to do so.

And the campaign for genocide recognition that I am developing in France is actually less about obtaining this recognition than about creating the power structure that will be able to act in the next crisis. Because, once again, what we need, then as now, in the dangerous new world we are entering, is the power to act collectively and resist.

That is why we need stories like the revolt of the Roma family camp on May 16, 1994.

(To be continued in the next episode…)

The revolt of the “Gypsy families camp”: episode 2/9 “The world as it really is”

The revolt of the “Gypsy families camp”: episode 2/9 “The world as it really is”

by | Feb 10, 2026 | "The gypsy family camp" uprising

Battle STORY

The revolt of the “Gypsy families’ camp”

Episode 2/9: “The world as it really is”

By Pierre Chopinaud

The episodes of the series are based on a lecture given by Pierre Chopinaud on May 16, 2025 in Berlin for the European Romani Institute for Art and Culture (Eriac).

 

(Previously…)

“The stories I heard, and that you surely have heard since childhood—the stories and grand pronouncements that form the foundation of contemporary European civilization—can be summed up in a slogan, in a moral: ‘Never again!’ Never again should children, men, and women be placed in the state of distress and indignity into which they were subjected by racist and nationalist hatred during the Second World War. Yet here, somewhere in Europe, the children, women, and men of a national minority had been almost entirely driven from the land, from the country to which they belonged, by racist and nationalist hatred, and those who remained were left to die under the care of the United Nations, the very organization tasked with protecting them, in a state of organized collective weakness that had no equivalent in Europe since the Second World War.”

 

 

 “Today, the Roma minorities of Ukraine are at risk of being erased from the present and past of the nation to which they belong.”

“Never again?” That, I’ve heard since childhood, is the moral of European history. Yet here and now, before my very eyes, it was still happening. It was still happening, especially for children, women, and men whose ancestors, 60 years ago, were victims of the genocide perpetrated by the racial hatred of the Nazi German state and its allied and collaborating states.

I want to emphasize that, 20 years later, today it’s still happening for the Roma minority in Ukraine, both in the eastern regions invaded by the Russian army and in the still-protected central and western territories, who are at risk of being erased from the present and past of the nation to which they belong.

.

“Does this mean that Europe was still suffering from the same ill? Was the moral of contemporary European history a bad fable? “

 

As an outsider, the situation I witnessed called into question my own history, my own identity as a Frenchman, as a European, the principles and values ​​in which I had been raised. How is it possible that here in Europe, men, women, and children whose ancestors were victims, just like the Jewish men, women, and children of Europe, of the immense crime in whose memory modern Europe was rebuilt, could find themselves thus driven from their land, murdered, abandoned, victims of the states to which they belong, under the responsibility of the United Nations, and in the indifference of the consciences of the people?

How was it possible that men, children, and women—whose parents’ and grandparents’ bodies had, 60 years earlier, been reduced to lives deemed worthless—could, with the widespread consent of elites and the people, be rejected 60 years later from the condition of humanity and the dignity that, as a natural right, belongs to them?

Does this mean that Europe was still suffering from the same affliction? Was the moral of contemporary European history a bad fable?

How can we look at this question now, 20 years later, when far-right and fascist movements are returning to power, one after another, in European countries?

 

“To make the world as it should be coincide with the world as it actually is, as the master of radical political organizing, Martin Luther King, said when he described his vision”

 

For me, the moral of the little stories I’d heard there 20 years ago, when I was 18, was that my life had to take a certain direction. I didn’t know exactly which one yet. But what was now certain was that the story I’d grown up in, the story in which I’d learned I was like a character, the story in which my conscience was formed, the story whose moral says that if human dignity dies in one person, it dies for all of humanity, because all lives equally deserve dignity, the story whose principles and values ​​say that all human lives are equal in dignity and have the right to security and happiness, especially if they are exposed to political hatred—this story would lose all meaning if I didn’t take action. By doing what? I didn’t know yet. Otherwise, I would strive, along with others, using the powers I possessed, and which I still needed to discover (what can one do at 18?), to make reality resemble the ideal we dream of. To make the world as it should be coincide with the world as it truly is, as the master of radical political organization, Martin Luther King, said when he described his vision: I had a dream.

(To be continued in the next episode…)

The revolt of the “Gyspy families camp” : épisode 1/9- a story of power for the present

by | Feb 3, 2026 | "The gypsy family camp" uprising

Battle story

“The Revolt of the “Gypsy Families’ Camp”

Episode 1/9: “A Story of Power for the Present”

By Pierre Chopinaud

Par Pierre Chopinaud

 

 

 

The episodes of the series are taken from a lecture given by Pierre Chopinaud on May 16, 2025 in Berlin for the European Romani Institute for Art and Culture (Eriac).

“The choice between rebellion and submission—that’s what I’m going to talk to you about, by talking about the revolt of the prisoners in the Auschwitz-Birkenau Gypsy family camp on May 16, 1944.”

My name is Pierre Chopinaud. I am a writer. I write novels in French that recount the intimate dramas that stir the hearts of men and women, but also the great historical dramas that humanity has experienced since its beginnings. The stories I imagine are interwoven with the war in the former Yugoslavia, the Second World War, but also the wars between the Persians and the Greeks in antiquity. Above all, in the novels I write, I tell how these great dramas of human history enter the hearts of men and women and influence their destinies, the decisions they make, the choice to rebel or submit, to be indifferent or to commit themselves, for themselves or for others.

Ultimately, that’s what I’m going to talk to you about today, dear friends, by telling you a few words about the revolt of the prisoners in the Auschwitz-Birkenau Gypsy family camp on May 16, 1944, and the Romani resistance movement that I co-founded between 2010 and 2015 in France, in Paris, or more precisely, in the northern suburbs of Paris, in Saint-Denis, which is also the place where the presence of Romani people in France was first mentioned in 1427.

“Radical political organizing is an art that allows people in subordinate positions to build power in order to restore justice and reclaim their dignity.”

I speak to you today as a radical political organizer, because it is in this capacity that I co-founded the May 16th Movement. Radical political organizing is an art that allows people in subordinate positions to build power in order to restore justice and reclaim their dignity. The fundamental maxim of this political art is “there is no justice without power.” To this, I personally added, as the slogan of the Conatus organization that I founded to collectively practice this art: “the last are first.” This is a slogan I borrow from the Bible, the New Testament, from Jesus Christ if you will, but I take it more specifically from Reverend Martin Luther King Jr., a radical political organizer who was one of the leaders of the African American Civil Rights Movement. If radical political organizing is like a martial art, Martin Luther King, and his nonviolent revolution, is our Bruce Lee.

I’m telling you this because the Romani resistance movement, the May 16th Movement, the story of the uprising in the “Gypsy family camp of Auschwitz-Birkenau” on May 16, 1944, is a story of power. More precisely, it tells how to use history and stories as a leadership technique to build power and work toward justice—not only memorial justice, but justice for the present.

“The men, women, and children who arrived in the commune from neighboring Kosovo, where the war on land and the bombing campaign had just ended.”

At the age of 17, when I started to be a bit of an adventurer. It was precisely my last year of high school, and it was also the year of the Kosovo War, when European and American governments were bombing Serbia and Kosovo to end the conflict. I was perplexed by the excesses of state propaganda in my country that justified this bombing campaign. Since I wanted to become a writer and go into politics, I decided that my place was among the people there, trying to be useful amidst the catastrophe, and that I would learn more there than by listening to scholars talk at university.

There, I had my first deep and lasting encounter with Roma men and women. I was eighteen years old. I was in the commune of Suto Orizari, which I imagine most of you know. An extraordinary place in the suburbs of Skopje, the capital of North Macedonia, the only municipality in the world where the entire municipal council, including the mayor, belongs to the Romani community. Here, children and teenagers in schools and colleges learn Romani, the literary Romani language, written by artists who, for some, live on their street, in their neighborhood. It’s the language everyone speaks, in its various local dialects, in shops, hospitals, and markets. It’s also the language I learned there and still speak daily with my daughter, more than twenty years later. I was welcomed there into a small social organization whose employees were mostly Romani. This organization was responsible for identifying, registering, and assisting men, women, and children arriving in the municipality from neighboring Kosovo, where the war and bombing campaign had just ended, in accessing their rights.

The stories I heard, and that you surely have heard since childhood—the stories and grand pronouncements that underpin contemporary European civilization—can be summed up in a slogan, a moral: “Never again!”

I then listened to the accounts people were giving of the absurd and violent war that had driven them from the land to which they had belonged for centuries, in the heart of Europe. I felt, vaguely at first, that is to say, deep in my heart, that the principles and values ​​conveyed by the stories I had heard everywhere since childhood—at school, in books—the principles and values ​​that underpin Europe as a civilization, were entirely absent here: the dignity of every human being, which must be protected by the rights that belong to them, simply because they are a man, a woman, or a child; the dignity that institutions, states, international organizations, and the European Commission must guarantee in everyone.

“But here, somewhere in Europe, the children, women, and men of a national minority had been almost entirely driven from the land, from the country to which they belonged, by racist and nationalist hatred.”

All the stories, all the grand pronouncements, were a dead letter here, compared to the small accounts of people who told us of the distress they were in, and even more so the distress of those who had been unable to leave, and who had remained, caught in the crossfire of nationalist hatred. And above all, amidst the weapons, the fire that hadn’t quite died down in the city of Mitrovica, in northern Kosovo, where Roma men, women, and children were being protected by the UN in a camp built on land poisoned by lead. Even though they had survived the burning of their neighborhood, the murderous madness of nationalists on both sides was slowly killing them from below, so to speak, under the responsibility of the intergovernmental organization founded after the Second World War to protect children, men, and women when they are endangered by the state of which they are citizens. The UN contingent responsible for this catastrophe was French, and I felt in my heart that I was particularly affected by this disaster.

The stories I heard, and that you surely have heard since childhood—the stories and grand pronouncements that form the foundation of contemporary European civilization—can be summed up in a slogan, a moral: “Never again!” Never again should children, men, and women be placed in the state of distress and indignity into which they were subjected by racist and nationalist hatred during the Second World War. Yet here, somewhere in Europe, the children, women, and men of a national minority had been almost entirely driven from the land, from the country to which they belonged, by racist and nationalist hatred, and those who remained were left to die under the care of the United Nations, the very organization tasked with protecting them, in a state of organized collective weakness unparalleled in Europe since the Second World War.

(To be continued in the next episode…)

Powered by  GDPR Cookie Compliance
Privacy Overview

This website uses cookies so that we can provide you with the best user experience possible. Cookie information is stored in your browser and performs functions such as recognising you when you return to our website and helping our team to understand which sections of the website you find most interesting and useful.