2 August is Holocaust Remembrance Day for the Sinti and Roma. This day commemorates 2 August 1944, when 4,300 Sinti and Roma were murdered by the SS in the Auschwitz-Birkenau concentration camp. As Romani Rose, civil rights activist and chairman of the Central Council of German Sinti and Roma, recalls, on the night of 2 to 3 August 1944, the last 4,300 members of the minority - women with their children and elderly people - were herded into the gas by the SS. Nazi Germany had thus murdered over 500,000 Sinti and Roma from all over Europe.

The co-spokespersons of the HDP Commission for International Understanding and Worldviews, Tülay Hatimoğulları and Turgut Öker, remember the Sinti and Roma who were murdered by Nazi Germany and its allies. The statement released on Tuesday said: "The Roma [according to Rose an umbrella term for the ten to twelve million members of the minority in Europe], who have never occupied a country or persecuted a people in their history and who embody a culture of peace and migration, were to be exterminated by the Nazis because of their language and culture. More than 500,000 Roma were massacred by the Nazis in concentration camps, towns and villages under the worst tortures. Hundreds of thousands of Roma survivors had to deal with great physical and psychological damage caused by the suffering."

"Roma struggle for survival in Turkey"

However, the HDP also warned against the current antiziganism in Turkey, stating, "Today, about 17 million Roma in Turkey and Europe are struggling for their lives and future existence under unacceptable conditions. They are deprived of their basic rights and live far from decent conditions. Despite the suffering, they fight for their lives, their language, their culture in different areas and carry on their pain and values....

We will continue to fulfil our responsibility and fight to put an end to the racist attitudes that have persisted since the genocide and to prevent history from repeating itself. To this end, we call on all social groups to fight together. We feel the great pain of the Roma in our hearts and remember those who lost their lives in the genocide."