Borzęcin Extermination of Roma Memorial
I am the resurrection and the life.
This memorial was built last year
and it reminds of a victims - 21 people - Roma,
who were shot to death by Germans in the nearby wood.
In that wood is a memorial,
designed by Małgosia Mirga.
This is the shape of it, we´ll see it later,
but this is kind of third place connected to the one tragedy.
The Germans detained the entire Roma camp
they took them to the wood and shot them to death.
There were 30 people, but one of them ran away
and thanks to him we have a report,
we know the names of those who were assassinated.
The Germans buried their bodies in the wood, where they killed them,
but they were exhumed after the war
and buried at this local cemetery.
Not at this place, but little further.
Why the memorial stands here? Well
over the time, the neighboring graves have expanded so much and took so much space,
that they´ve occupied that area
and it was really weird, because 29 killed victims
[were] buried in such a small space between two graves.
It was really painful for us to look at it
and two years ago we organized an exhumation over there
we´ve found the remains of those buried people,
so the second exhumation was realized
and here, the priest gave us this special pretty place
beside the main alley,
here all the remains were buried in a small coffin.
For building this monument, I´ve used
the sculpture of Hungarian Romani sculptor András Kallay,
who´ve several times attended plain-airs
organized by Małgorzata Mirga-Tas in Czarna Góra in Spiš region.
Circa three-four years ago, at one of these plain-airs
he made such a sandstone sculpture, called The Gypsy family.
When Małgosia Mirga offered this sculpture to our museum as a gift,
our colleague Natalia Gancarz
suggested, to use it for a monument making at the cemetery.
We ´ve already had this grave place,
but we had no idea how to make a memorial out of a grave.
Natalia made this project,
the stand and the statue.
I had an idea, that also the stand should be done by Roma.
I know one Roma man - Waldek Ondyczy, he lives near Tarnow,
he is a stone mason, he makes a graves for a cemetery
and he´d made this stand.
So there are several Romani contents in this monument.
Romani sculptor from Hungary
and Romani stone mason from around Tarnow,
who produced the stand to the monument.
On one side there is an inscription in Polish, on the other side in Romani.
And there is an interesting story
because in our Christian Polish culture, the sign of a cross is very important.
And just a year ago,
with a participation of a many many Roma from the different countries,
we came to this monument and I realized,
that there is no sign of a cross at this monument.
Then, the author Ándrás Kállay,
with a nail and a chisel
made such a tiny sign of a cross
so this was the way how we signed this religious custom
and the monument got the Christian seal.
This monument is not fully finished,
I, my plan is to make such
as well as nearby, such a stone board,
to make it not just a single monument, but to give it a form of a grave.
We are now in the forest, not far from Borzęcin Dolny,
behind me, there is one of the main roads meandering,
even though, circa 100 metres away from here
in August 1942, the Germans shot off 29 Romas,
as it´s written at this board,
there were 21 assassinated children among them.
This crime is very deeply written in the minds of local people
because the Germans forced few men to bury those Gypsies later.
This crime shook the local people very much.
I remember, when this monument was built, the older people were coming here,
and they remembered, how Germans brought them to the woods,
and forced them to bury assassinated Romas.
This crime was also reflected in the topography of this place.
In the topographic awareness of local people because
this place is called Cygańskie górki (Gypsy hills),
some of them don´t even know why.
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)
The place of remembrance at 29 Roma: 3 men, 5 women and 21 children, shot here to death by Germans, in 1942.
More than ten years ago we built a simple birch cross in this place.
Here is a board informing about the history of this place,
here is a photo of that cross
and in 2010
this monument was built.
It´s author is Małgorzata Mirga-Tas,
well-educated Roma, a graduate of a Academy of Fine Arts (Akademia Sztuk Pięknych) in Krakow,
and it is one of a various variants.
A several variants of this monument existed, but at last Małgorzata decided,
that it should be wooden monument.
This is a wood,
the monument is made of a wood,
of course, it´s heavily impregnated, it is a thick wood, a larch tree,
but of course, it´s not eternal, it´s not a monument made from a stone or an iron
and it should last as long, as the material can withstand.
But this memorial already has quite tragic history,
because 5 years after its unveiling, it was destroyed.
In may 2016
someone attached a chain to this monument
and probably pulled it by the car.
It was ripped from the concrete subbase
and later smashed by some axes.
There are some photos, how it looked.
It was very dramatic moment for us.
But then, the Polish president was informed
about it, the report was markedly publicized,
we were granted with a special fund,
Małgorzata, as an author, she made a reconstruction of this monument.
It is, well, the board is original,
but these two lying figures are reconstructed.
It remains an author´s memorial.
I´ve added some symbolism to this monument,
when the memorial was attached to the base,
in a local sandpit, where the sand is being produced, I asked them,
for these 29 original boulders
I put them around, as a symbol of 29 assassinated victims.
Transcription: Lucia Němcová Corrections: Zdeněk Kovář, Vojtech Sloboda Translation: Zuzana Paľuchová