In Babyn Yar, the memory of the Roma genocide victims was honored: “Romani Caravan” turned ten years old

August 2, 2026 at the National Historical and Memorial Reserve “Babyn Yar” in Kyiv, commemorative events were held dedicated to the International Day of Remembrance for the Victims of the Roma Genocide.

Participants marched in a mourning procession from the Entrance Gate along the Alley of Martyrs to the Alley of the Righteous. The ceremony continued near the memorial sign “Roma Wagon”, dedicated to the Roma who were exterminated by the Nazis during the occupation of Kyiv and other territories of Ukraine.

It was in 2026 that ten years since the installation of the monument in Babyn Yar was marked. The official opening of the “Roma Wagon” took place on September 23, 2016, although the idea of the memorial appeared more than two decades before that.

Mourning procession and ceremony near the “Roma Wagon”

The official program began on August 2, 2026, at 11:00. Participants gathered at the Entrance Gate of the reserve at the address: Kyiv, Yuri Ilyenko Street, 44.

At 11:00, the mourning procession began, at 12:00 a musical memorial program was planned, and at 19:00 — an evening screening of Amaro Kino short films at the “Living Memory” film club. These times and locations were previously published by the National Reserve “Babyn Yar” and the Ministry of Culture of Ukraine.

The central moment of the ceremony was the laying of flowers and honoring the victims near the “Roma Wagon”. This metal depiction of a traditional Roma wagon is installed in memory of the people whom Nazi policies of persecution and physical extermination condemned to death solely because of their origin.

The General Director of the National Historical and Memorial Reserve “Babyn Yar”, Roza Tapanova, reminded how long the path to public recognition of the Roma people’s tragedy was:

“This year marks ten years since the opening of the memorial sign “Roma Wagon”. And from conception to opening, twenty-one years passed. This path reminds us how long the road to recognizing the tragedy of the Roma people was.”

According to Tapanova, the duty of memorial and state institutions is not only to hold an annual ceremony:

“Our duty is to make the history of each community visible and to return it to the collective memory. We are convinced that memory should not remain just a date on the calendar. It should live in research, museum work, education, art, and above all — in cooperation with the modern Roma community.”

Who participated in the commemorative events

Representatives of Ukrainian state bodies, international organizations, and the diplomatic corps participated in the ceremony.

The Ministry of Culture of Ukraine was represented by Ivan Verbitsky. From the State Service of Ukraine for Ethnopolitics and Freedom of Conscience, Viktor Yelensky participated, from the Ukrainian Institute of National Memory — Anna Sdobnova.

Also present at the event were Julian Kondur, representing the structure of the Commissioner of the Verkhovna Rada of Ukraine for Human Rights, Natalia Oleynik from the Council of Europe, and Katrin Buchholz from the German Embassy in Kyiv.

The cultural program was presented by the Kyiv Academic Music and Drama Gypsy Theater “Romance”, People’s Artist of Ukraine Leonid Sandulenko, and musician Sergio Babuchi.

Babuchi’s participation had special symbolic significance: his music combines Roma and Jewish traditions. In Babyn Yar, which became one of the main symbols of the Holocaust on the territory of Ukraine, such a combination of two cultures of memory acquires special meaning.

The organizers of the events were the National Historical and Memorial Reserve “Babyn Yar”, the State Service of Ukraine for Ethnopolitics and Freedom of Conscience, the Ukrainian Institute of National Memory, the youth organization “ARKA — Agency for Advocacy of Roma Culture”, and the theater “Romance”.

Why the victims of the Roma genocide are remembered specifically on August 2

The date is associated with events that occurred on the night of August 2-3, 1944 in the German Nazi death camp Auschwitz-Birkenau.

On the territory of the camp, there was a so-called Zigeunerfamilienlager — a “family camp” for Roma and Sinti. Families were initially kept together there, but this did not mean milder conditions. Prisoners died from hunger, infections, forced labor, medical experiments, and systematic killings.

On the night of August 2-3, 1944, the Nazis liquidated this sector. The remaining prisoners, among whom were especially many women, children, and elderly people, were sent to the gas chambers.

Different historical sources provide different figures. The Ukrainian Institute of National Memory reports approximately 2,900 Roma and Sinti killed in one night. The Auschwitz-Birkenau State Museum uses a broader estimate — about 4,300 last prisoners of the Roma camp destroyed during its final liquidation. The difference is due to the peculiarities of counting registered prisoners, transferred inmates, and people not included in camp documents.

In total, about 23,000 Roma were deported to Auschwitz. The Auschwitz-Birkenau Museum indicates that approximately 21,000 were registered as prisoners, and another two thousand people were killed without being included in camp lists. Most of the deported Roma did not survive the imprisonment.

From 220,000 to 500,000 victims

The exact number of Roma exterminated by the Nazis and their allies in Europe cannot be established.

Historians estimate from 220,000 to 500,000 dead. Documents on shootings were not always compiled, many killings occurred in small groups outside major camps, and entire families and settlements disappeared without preserved lists of names.

Nazi policy towards Roma, like the policy towards Jews, was based on racial ideology and the desire for the physical extermination of people declared “alien” or “inferior”. The Ukrainian Institute of National Memory emphasizes that the genocide of the Roma remained outside public attention for a long time even after the defeat of Nazism.

In modern Ukraine, researchers have identified more than 140 sites of mass murder of the Roma population. However, the real scale of the tragedy may be significantly larger, as not all shooting sites have been established and investigated.

Roma among the victims of Babyn Yar

Babyn Yar is primarily known as one of the main sites of mass extermination of Jews in Nazi-occupied Europe.

On September 29 and 30, 1941, nearly 34,000 Kyiv Jews were shot here. Killings in the ravine continued throughout the occupation of Kyiv — from 1941 to 1943.

Among the victims of Babyn Yar were also Roma, Soviet prisoners of war, patients of a psychiatric hospital, Ukrainian nationalists, underground fighters, hostages, and other civilians. Roma camps were destroyed not only directly in Babyn Yar but also on the then outskirts of Kyiv — in Svyatoshyn and on Berezniaky.

At the same time, the names of most of the killed Roma remain unknown. Entire families could be destroyed, leaving behind neither witnesses nor documents.

For NANews — News of Israel, it is especially important to emphasize: preserving the memory of Roma victims does not diminish the significance of the memory of the six million exterminated Jews. On the contrary, an honest history of Babyn Yar requires naming each group of victims and returning to the dead their belonging, names, and human biographies.

Why the “Roma Wagon” had to wait more than 20 years

The author of the monument was Ukrainian architect and sculptor of Roma origin, Shevchenko Prize laureate Anatoliy Ignashchenko.

The life-size monument depicts a traditional Roma wagon. It is made of ship steel at the Kyiv plant “Kuznya na Rybalskom”. The metal body is covered with symbolic bullet marks and decorated with forged flowers.

The monument is also called “Black Horror” or “Kali Trash”.

It was planned to be installed back in 1998, but the project was not implemented then. For some time, the already manufactured composition was located in Kamianets-Podilskyi — on a cliff above the Smotrych River.

Only in September 2016 was the monument transported to Kyiv. Its opening took place on September 23, 2016, during events marking the 75th anniversary of the Babyn Yar tragedy. The official transcript of the Verkhovna Rada confirms that more than twenty years passed from the idea’s inception to its realization.

Thus, Roza Tapanova’s words about the decade of the “Roma Wagon” refer to the period from September 2016 to August 2026.

Key dates in the history of memory

Ukraine began officially marking the commemorative date after the Verkhovna Rada’s resolution No. 2085-IV, adopted on October 8, 2004. The European Parliament adopted a corresponding resolution on April 15, 2015, calling to recognize August 2 as the European Day of Remembrance for the Victims of the Roma Holocaust.

Amaro Kino: memory through modern Roma cinema

After the official ceremony, participants were invited to an evening screening of the short film program Amaro Kino. The name translates from Roma as “our cinema”.

The screening began on August 2, 2026, at 19:00 at the “Living Memory” film club. The program was supported by the European Roma Institute for Arts and Culture ERIAC.

The 2026 program included four films:

• The Angry Bird, directed by Jack Lillywhite, UK, 2025;
• The Exhibition, directed by Dasha Raimanova and Bela Varadi;
• The Gift, directed by Lara Izagirre Garisurieta, Spain, 2025;
• Fifteen Minutes, directed by Sejad Ademaj, Germany, 2022.

Documentary and feature films tell about the modern life of Roma in Europe, the search for identity, family experience, creativity, discrimination, and attempts to maintain their own voice in society.

The choice of modern cinema continues the thought expressed by Roza Tapanova: the memory of genocide should not be limited to a mourning date. It should exist in education, museum work, and art, and the Roma community itself should not be the object of someone else’s story but a direct participant in creating its own history.

Why this ceremony is important for Israel

For the Israeli reader, the history of the Roma genocide is especially understandable through the experience of preserving the memory of the Holocaust.

The Jewish and Roma tragedies are not identical in scale, organization of extermination, and historical circumstances. However, at the core of both was Nazi racial ideology, dividing people into those supposedly entitled to live and those who should be deprived of civil rights, expelled from society, deported, and exterminated.

Babyn Yar shows that the policy of mass murder could be directed against different groups on the same territory. That is why near the Menorah, preserving the memory of the shot Jews, there is also the “Roma Wagon”, returning the history of Roma families to the public space.

NANews — News of Israel views such events as part of a common counteraction to anti-Semitism, racism, and attempts to make certain groups of victims “invisible”.

The ceremony on August 2, 2026 reminded: memory begins with a mourning procession and laying flowers, but should not end with them. It continues in research, films, theater, music, school programs, and in society’s readiness to hear those whose history has remained on the sidelines for decades.

“Roma Wagon”, which could not be installed for more than twenty years, became not only a monument to the dead. It became a testament to how difficult it is for society to return the repressed pages of its past — and how important it is not to stop this work.