by Dr. János Bársony minority researcher and Ágnes Daróczi journalist.

Népszabadság, 14. Sept., 1998.

An article by László Karsai entitled Roma Holocaust, Hungarian History was published in Népszabadság, on August 17, 1998. The publication contains several false statements and political accusations which caused grave offense to those mourning the Holocaust.

1. According to László Karsai, there were no Hungarian Gypsies in Auschwitz-Birkenau on the night of the second and the third of August 1944 during the liquidation of the Gypsy camp, a 'fact' which speakers at the commemoration in Nagykanizsa and Budapest neglected to mention. But László Karsai is wrong. The register of the prisoners of the Auschwitz Gypsy camp has survived to this day. The two volumes, containing 20,943 names, were published in Munich in 1993 (K. G. Saur Publishing), edited by the National Museum of Auschitz-Birkenau with the contribution of the Heidelberg Sinti and Roma Cultural and Documentation Centre. According to this register, 0.16 percent, i.e. 34 of the prisoners in the Gypsy camp, were Hungarian citizens. Neither does Karsai consider worthy of mention the thousands of Hungarian Gypsies from Burgenland, even though the names Sárközi, Pápai, Horváth, Holdosi appear repeatedly throughout the pages of the register. And after the 'winding up' of the separate Gypsy camp, masses of Hungarian Roma were taken to Auschwitz.

Obviously, on the second of August, speakers were commemorating not only the Hungarian Gypsy victims, but all Roma victims of Nazism. According to the resolution adopted at the congress held in Paris in 1971 by the Gypsy World Organization (Romani Union), the second and the third of August is the international day of mourning of the Roma holocaust—in Gypsy language: Porrajimos.

We would only remind the historian, that the survivors of the separate Gypsy camp in Auschwitz-Birkenau—two thousand eight hundred and ninety seven people—were killed during one night on the second of August in 1944. This day, therefore, was not 'invented for themselves' by the Roma of Nagykanizsa, or Aladár Horváth, or Ágnes Daróczi, or János Bársony—as is cynically claimed by László Karsai—but is commemorated throughout the world. It is incomprehensible, how he dares to dispute the right of the Roma to commemorate their dead, to hold their night of mourning. These views could have remained the private affair of Mr Karsai. However, the publication of such opinions, coinciding with the commemoration, makes it a public affair. It is a public desecration and the responsibility for it also lies with the editors.

2. Karsai alleges that Aladár Horváth implied that what amounted to the sin of the non-Gypsy society lay in the 'fact' that "there had been no thorough social historical work done about the Roma holocaust, no soul-searching or collective facing up to the past". In this regard, it is fortunate that Karsai's article appeared together with Aladár Horváth's commemorative speech in Népszabadság, as Karsai's distortion is apparent and can be countered with ease. Alad‡r Horv‡th never said this, he does not consider the dearth of thorough social historical work to be the sin of gadzso (non-Gypsy) society. For this is not a task linked to a particular ethnic group or people. Historians, researchers, be they German, Gypsy, Russian, Jewish, Romanian or American can engage in such work. Further, when Aladár Horváth spoke about a collective facing up to the past the meaning was political as well as historical. Nonetheless the fact remains that such a work does not yet exist. For instance, too little is known about the massive forced movement of Gypsies (many of them Hungarian-speaking and with a Hungarian identity) to Transnistria. Neither has the 'Calvary' of Gypsies from the Ukraine, Lithuania, Poland, Moldva, Russia been explored. At present, it is difficult even to assess the magnitude of the number of the victims.

3. Referring to an interview in A Hét (The Week), Karsai claims that János Bársony said things which, in reality, he did not. Karsai alleges that Bársony asserted that in 1944 Gypsies were hated and persecuted in exactly the same fashion as the Jews. Bársony never said this, possibly Karsai's preconceptions led him to erroneously attribute such comments to the speaker. Bársony was not talking about hatred at all, neither did he make comparisons. It is common knowledge that the two peoples were in different historical, economic and demographic circumstances. The majority of the Jews, especially in the towns, was linguistically, residentially and economically assimilated to its environment. The majority of the Gypsies, on the other hand, was segregated, and also easily distinguishable by the colour of their skin. Racists did not need to legislate in order to segregate Hungarians and Gypsies, or to settle Gypsies into ghettos. The majority of the Gypsies was in fact living in ghettos at the margins of settlements, for the most part in subhuman circumstances. On the other hand, it is true, as János Bársony said in A Hét, that the process of rounding up was similar for both Gypsies and Jews: the prior process of registration, the compilation of lists of names, prohibition to leave their places of abode, the rounding up by armed gendarmes, internment camps, and deportation to concentration camps, forced labour, organized raids and manhunts to capture those who remained in hiding or tried to escape. The fact that there were relatively fewer victims among the Hungarian Roma—due to the change in the military situation, differences in timing and perhaps the disgust and shame provoked by the rounding up of the Jews—in no way detracts from Bársony's account.

4. The article in question claims that, 'as a researcher', Bársony must be aware that there was no order of any sort in 1944 which forbade Gypsies to leave their places of living. As a researcher, however, Karsai himself states exactly the opposite. In his own book, Cigánykérdés Magyarországon 1919–1945. Út a holocausthoz. (published by Cserépfalvi Kiadó in 1992, see pages 117-118), he literally cites the order by the IV. Hungarian Royal Gendarme Headquarters, issued on 16th October, 1944, whose first point states: "Gypsies may not leave their permanent residence", closely followed by the stipulation that: "Every Gypsy who leaves his or her permanent residence without the permission of the local principal (mayor), commits an offence against the law, and, on the basis of an order by the Prime Minister, No. 1500/1944, ß 8, paragraph (1), must be punished, and furthermore, aside from this punishment, is to be interned."

The author's memory cheats him yet again, leading him to make claims in his article which contradict what he wrote earlier in his own book. In Népszabadság, he reckons: "It was only about a month after the 15th of October, 1944, when the Arrow-Cross people seized power, and exclusively in a few counties of Western Transdanubia, that a somewhat organized persecution of Gypsies began to take place." By way of contradiction, on page 119 of the aforementioned book, Karsai informed readers that in Baranya county, on 4th November 1944, Gypsies living in Nagybicsérd and Kisbicsérd were rounded up (the list of their names had been drawn up as early as the 20th of April!). Further, on page 127, the reader is told: "What we can say, with full certainty, is that in November 1944, Gypsies from several districts of the Baranya, Vas and Zala counties, were taken away." Again, on page 122, he wrote: "On the first days (3rd) of November 1944 Gypsies were deported from Szombathely and its neighbourhood" So, by his own earlier account all this had occurred within twenty days of the Arrow Cross seizure of power, and not only in Western Transdanubia!

Neither does it seem that Karsai considers other publications to be signals of the deficiencies of his book. He neglects, for example, the information contained in an article in Palócföld, which provided an account of the deportation of Gypsies from Salgótarján, or the filmed interviews about the persecution of Gypsies from Budapest (Újpest, Csepel), Pest county, Borsod, Szabolcs. This is despite the fact that some of these films were shown at the commemoration on the second of August, and that one of the survivors from Hangony (Borsod county) spoke at Kossuth tér. Neither did he pay any heed to the film by Miklós Jancsó, which dealt with the extermination of the Gypsy population of Lajoskomárom (Fejér county).

Karsai is apparently only interested in the material which survived in the archives. He considers interviews, searching for survivors, gathering witness testimonies best left to 'minority researchers'. But documentation is deficient. On many occasions things were simply not documented, many more documents were lost, 'not filed' in the confusions of wartime or its aftermath. A serious scientist would thread more cautiously on such swampy terrain, where one has to be 'guided by assessments and estimates'. And a serious scientist would not make definitive statements about what he does not know, has not found, or cannot know.

We can consider the facts of the Roma Holocaust to be completely uncovered if, in every settlement, in every community in Hungary, survivors can recall the names of victims; if we can find the names of those repsonsible for the persecution and forced removals; and also the names of those rescued Gypsies and who sabotaged the inhuman persecutions and record their names for posterity.

5. Karsai has provoked an argument about the assessment of the overall number of the Gypsy victims of the Nazi regime. His phrasing is as follows: "As opposed to what Aladár Horváth claimed this August, the Nazis did not deport hundreds of thousands of Gypsies to Auschwitz from the countries of Europe". Again, no such statement is to be found in the commemoration speech. Exactly what Horváth said was: "Hundreds of thousands of our brothers and sisters died because of their origin, in the labour service, in concentration camps, or on the way to the death camps."

As is well-known, although Auschwitz was by far the largest, it was but one of the death factories. The Nazis commited genocide in several places, in several forms, against the Roma as well. Karsai does not name his sorce for the estimate of one hundred thousand victims, which "seems (to him) to be reliable". Horváth, on the other hand, mentions an estimated figure of greater magnitude, locates its source and acknowledges that there are disputes about it. In his speech, Aladár Horváth was not asking for numbers, rather he urged the experts to engage in the painstaking task of detailed examination and clarification of facts.

Karsai is wrong when he claims that the 'Sinte' (correctly Sinti) and Lalleri Gypsies were not persecuted by the Nazis "because of their being Aryan". It is true that the 1942 order by Himmler contained such a term, but what happened in practice was that some of their group were given the option of not being taken to camps on condition that they allowed themselves be sterilized. Thousands undertook this, but Karsai could easily aquaint himself with the fact that there were many Sinti victims, if he checked the data of the Heidelberg Roma Cultural and Documentation Centre. He could also come across thousands of their names in the lists of the prisoners of the Auschwitz Gypsy camp. It is a fact, that after 1943, the aim of the Nazis was the total extermination of Gypsies as a people. Even Karsai's own book records the plans of the Arrow-Cross people regarding Jews and Gypsies: "Gábor Vajna (Minister for Home Affairs) announced in K szeg on the 23rd of February 1945: I have started the complete, and, if necessary, draconian setting the matter of Jews and Gypsies straight, which has been necessitated by the behaviour of these two alien antinational races."

6. László Karsai has invented a separate scientific territory for himself: comparative Jewish-Gypsy Holocaust research. The subject of his examinations is not to describe what happened to the Gypsies and an analysis of its causes and outcomes on the basis of available sources, but rather the analysis of all these in comparison to what happened to the Jews. This limitation—the product of his bias—does nothing good to his work. This was pointed out to him by historians of international renown, other than János Bársony and Aladár Horváth, attending an international Roma Holocaust conference, organized by the University of Vienna, where he delivered a paper.

So much for history. Karsai then moves to politics.

7. Perhaps he does not realize that when he attacks the commemorating Gypsies, he uses the same arguments as ideologues of the extreme right when they challenge the facts of the Holocaust and find excuses for the Nazis. They talk about the lie of the Holocaust, about the absurd exaggeration of the 'real facts'. They also claim that the aims are to arouse pity and public guilt, and that the motivation is greed, a perpetual grasping for monetary compensation.

The Roma need a historical consciousness of their own, they need to learn and come to terms with their past. They want clarity in their understanding of the holocaust. They expect a clarification that is free of bias and preconceptions—not accusations. But this is in all of our interests. As to the charge of profiteering, no Roma organization in the country makes monetary claims for collective compensation to use or dispense as they see fit. This is a libel. Roma organizations demanded the right of individual compensation for victims without any distinctions. As for the issue of collective compensation, similar to the German Gypsies, Roma organizations in Hungary asked the German Government to establish a museum, research and documentation centre, where it would be possible to conduct further research and to show the newer generations what happened to the Roma.

Karsai, however, is not wrong in perceiving that those at the commemoration sought to arouse solidarity and awareness of the losses endured by both the Roma and the Hungarian nation; to evoke a unity of thought and action against racism, to contemplate both the historical facts of the genocide and the contemporary dangers of hatred and anti-minority violence. If Karsai does not feel such dangers relate to the Roma, it is his private affair. But the Roma and many others in the country feel differently. Why does the call for solidarity evoke such suspicion in Karsai?

The Roma expect facts from those who research their past, evidence to substantiate their claims, and the Roma then attempt to relate it to the experience, traditions, and memories of those living around them. Karsai's claims often fail this test, so the Roma have good reason to be sceptical. Far too often they have been the subjects of prejudiced attacks, attacks often dressed in a scientific guise, to accept his statements and claims uncritically. But it is precisely the Roma, whom Karsai should first try to convince of his presumed truths. Rather than making accusations and causing offence and hurt to those mourners at the remembrance ceremony who have asked for clarification. For this is primarily about them, the relatives of the victims, about their sense of history. Further, Karsai has committed a sacrilege: he was elaborating on his presumed truth at an improper time, and in an improper way about the dead of others. It is just as if he told mourning relatives at a funeral: your loss is not that big, you don't have to mourn that much, my loss is much bigger. This is made possible only by the infatuation of someone who has been socialized in a European culture.

The second of August is the international day of mourning of the Roma holocaust, the porrajmos. It was commemorated by hundreds, Roma and non-Roma alike, with dignity at Kossuth tér, in Nagykanizsa and also in Auschwitz, with speeches, recollections of what occurred, a mourning service, common prayer, and a recounting of the names of the victims. Those present were united in mourning and by a desire for historical clarification. It is a great pity that László Karsai's article brought dissonant sounds to this night of remembrance.

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