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Borzęcin 
 Extermination of Roma Memorial

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I am the resurrection and the life.

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This memorial was built last year

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and it reminds of a victims - 21 people - Roma,

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who were shot to death by Germans in the nearby wood.

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In that wood is a memorial,

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designed by Małgosia Mirga.

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This is the shape of it, we´ll see it later,

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but this is kind of third place connected to the one tragedy.

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The Germans detained the entire Roma camp

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they took them to the wood and shot them to death.

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There were 30 people, but one of them ran away

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and thanks to him we have a report,

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we know the names of those who were assassinated.

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The Germans buried their bodies in the wood, where they killed them,

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but they were exhumed after the war

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and buried at this local cemetery.

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Not at this place, but little further.

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Why the memorial stands here? Well

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over the time, the neighboring graves have expanded so much and took so much space,

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that they´ve occupied that area

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and it was really weird, because 29 killed victims

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[were] buried in such a small space between two graves.

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It was really painful for us to look at it

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and two years ago we organized an exhumation over there

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we´ve found the remains of those buried people,

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so the second exhumation was realized

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and here, the priest gave us this special pretty place

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beside the main alley,

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here all the remains were buried in a small coffin.

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For building this monument, I´ve used

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the sculpture of Hungarian Romani sculptor András Kallay,

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who´ve several times attended plain-airs

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organized by Małgorzata Mirga-Tas in Czarna Góra in Spiš region.

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Circa three-four years ago, at one of these plain-airs

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he made such a sandstone sculpture, called The Gypsy family.

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When Małgosia Mirga offered this sculpture to our museum as a gift,

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our colleague Natalia Gancarz

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suggested, to use it for a monument making at the cemetery.

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We ´ve already had this grave place,

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but we had no idea how to make a memorial out of a grave.

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Natalia made this project,

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the stand and the statue.

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I had an idea, that also the stand should be done by Roma.

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I know one Roma man - Waldek Ondyczy, he lives near Tarnow,

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he is a stone mason, he makes a graves for a cemetery

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and he´d made this stand.

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So there are several Romani contents in this monument.

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Romani sculptor from Hungary

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and Romani stone mason from around Tarnow,

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who produced the stand to the monument.

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On one side there is an inscription in Polish, on the other side in Romani.

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And there is an interesting story

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because in our Christian Polish culture, the sign of a cross is very important.

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And just a year ago,

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with a participation of a many many Roma from the different countries,

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we came to this monument and I realized,

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that there is no sign of a cross at this monument.

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Then, the author Ándrás Kállay,

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with a nail and a chisel

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made such a tiny sign of a cross

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so this was the way how we signed this religious custom

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and the monument got the Christian seal.

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This monument is not fully finished,

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I, my plan is to make such

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as well as nearby, such a stone board,

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to make it not just a single monument, but to give it a form of a grave.

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We are now in the forest, not far from Borzęcin Dolny,

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behind me, there is one of the main roads meandering,

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even though, circa 100 metres away from here

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in August 1942, the Germans shot off 29 Romas,

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as it´s written at this board,

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there were 21 assassinated children among them.

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This crime is very deeply written in the minds of local people

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because the Germans forced few men to bury those Gypsies later.

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This crime shook the local people very much.

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I remember, when this monument was built, the older people were coming here,

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and they remembered, how Germans brought them to the woods,

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and forced them to bury assassinated Romas.

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This crime was also reflected in the topography of this place.

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In the topographic awareness of local people because

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this place is called Cygańskie górki (Gypsy hills),

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some of them don´t even know why.

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There was no life for Gypsies in the town, even in the village they killed, they killed us. What to do? Gypsy women went to the wood with a children, far to the wood, to hide from the German dogs. (Papusza)

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The place of remembrance at 29 Roma: 3 men, 5 women and 21 children, shot here to death by Germans, in 1942.

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More than ten years ago we built a simple birch cross in this place.

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Here is a board informing about the history of this place,

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here is a photo of that cross

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and in 2010

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this monument was built.

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It´s author is Małgorzata Mirga-Tas,

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well-educated Roma, a graduate of a Academy of Fine Arts (Akademia Sztuk Pięknych) in Krakow,

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and it is one of a various variants.

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A several variants of this monument existed, but at last Małgorzata decided,

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that it should be wooden monument.

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This is a wood,

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the monument is made of a wood,

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of course, it´s heavily impregnated, it is a thick wood, a larch tree,

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but of course, it´s not eternal, it´s not a monument made from a stone or an iron

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and it should last as long, as the material can withstand.

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But this memorial already has quite tragic history,

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because 5 years after its unveiling, it was destroyed.

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In may 2016

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someone attached a chain to this monument

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and probably pulled it by the car.

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It was ripped from the concrete subbase

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and later smashed by some axes.

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There are some photos, how it looked.

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It was very dramatic moment for us.

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But then, the Polish president was informed

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about it, the report was markedly publicized,

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we were granted with a special fund,

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Małgorzata, as an author, she made a reconstruction of this monument.

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It is, well, the board is original,

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but these two lying figures are reconstructed.

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It remains an author´s memorial.

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I´ve added some symbolism to this monument,

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when the memorial was attached to the base,

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in a local sandpit, where the sand is being produced, I asked them,

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for these 29 original boulders

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I put them around, as a symbol of 29 assassinated victims.

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Transcription: Lucia Němcová
Corrections: Zdeněk Kovář, Vojtech Sloboda
Translation: Zuzana Paľuchová