On this day, 2 August 1944, around 4000 Roma people in the Auschwitz-Birkenau concentration camp resisted being taken to the gas chambers. The SS swarmed into the Roma camp, but prisoners had armed themselves with sticks and crowbars, and barricaded themselves indoors, fighting the Nazis with hands and nails. A non-Roma prisoner who survived described that everyone was fighting, and that “women [were] the fiercest in their fight” as they were “younger and stronger” than the other detainees and were “protecting their children”. Tragically they were overcome, and all murdered in the gas chambers in Birkenau.
Pictured: Rudolph Richter, a Roma prisoner at Auschwitz https://www.facebook.com/workingclasshistory/photos/a.296224173896073/1179704358881379/?type=3
I have a vivid memory of being about 14 and seeing a hardcore punk walking down the street in a busy shopping district with a tiny white kitten tucked in his leather jacket. That’s goals.
