Intervención de Don Juan de Dios Ramírez Heredia, Presidente de la Unión Romaní. Discurso "La voz del pueblo gitano"

Madame minister, ministers, authorities, dignitaries, and friends:

Every time I take the floor to speak about the remembrance of the Holocaust victims I am overcome by an emotion which is a blend of anger, tenderness and liberation. That feeling is particularly strong today. Looking at the children present here today, knowing that the Holocaust represented the physical elimination of so many innocent children, to think that at some point in the sad history of our country children were the hapless targets of hate and Nazi blindness, continues to cause me tremendous anguish.

From time to time, when I look back at gypsy films, particularly those on the Holocaust, I pick up the video of ‘And the Violins Stopped Playing’ and once more I shudder inside. When I received the call to say I was to be invited to participate in this solemn State Remembrance, I wanted to nurture my spirit once more, to flay myself again, by watching ‘And the Violins Stopped Playing’ because it shows the gipsy and Jewish children on whom that monster of nature Dr Mengele performed such horrific experiments. It is horrible to see how the film reproduces what was certainly the reality of those years. Living testimony remains today in the form of some who survived. Testimony telling how that monster would take children’s eyes out to test their sense of direction when blind; the monster who took gipsy and Jewish children -in his bid to secure the proliferation of the Aryan race - and literally sewed (yes, sewed) their hands together to make the blood flow between one little body and another, and other terrible experiments. Luckily we have the testimony of survivors, such as the Jewish doctor who had no choice but to be there, Dr Miklos Chrisnik, who protested most vividly at what he saw carried out at the hands of that monster, who escaped alive and fled to Brazil, where he died in 1979.

I recall during my time as a member of the European Parliament that the person who for me personified Nazi hate and Holocaust denial was Mr Le Pen. By the way, may I say to the Minister of Justice that Le Pen will no doubt be happy at the ruling by Spain’s Constitutional Court amending Article 607 (2) of the Penal Code. Before me today I see also the last President of the European Parliament, whom I would like to congratulate among other reasons because the European Council, in a Framework Decision adopted in 2007, stated that the memory of the Holocaust had to remain and anyone who defends it on the grounds that it was necessary to deal with inferior beings must be punished. The Framework Decision approved by the European Parliament went further, adding that anyone who denies that these events actually took place should be punished also.

Dear friends, for these reasons I find it very hard to see why we cannot achieve such basic things as ensuring that people respect each other: ideally they would all love each other, but if that is not possible, then at least they should at least show respect for each other.
How can anyone think that all human beings have not been vested with the same principle of dignity? Believers, because they are Christian, and non-believers, out of a sense of respect for the dignity of human beings,

How is it possible that hate should reach such extremes, that we should have to recall year after year what genocide was, what the Holocaust was?
Gipsies and Jews, united through affection and emotion as well as by the tragedy we have suffered together. 5 million, 6 million Jews, and half a million gipsies fell victim to that blind hate. Today some gipsy children still suffer persecution, as do some Jewish children, and live in extreme circumstances. Today I would like to call on the monster that abducted Mari Luz - the young gipsy girl from Huelva, whom the whole of Spain is anxious to see turn up soon - to release her alive and allow her to return to her family, her loved ones.

Ministers, ladies and gentlemen, we will always be here, gipsies united with the Jewish people, in song and in hope, to ensure humanity begins to learn mutual respect. Ideally, humanity would love each other. Let the racists be in no doubt whatsoever, those who deny the Holocaust, those who insist it never happened or who say that those responsible were not so bad: even if locked up or silenced, even if democratic courts say Holocaust denial is not a crime, there are those of us who, as Blas de Otero put it, will continue to proclaim that it did happen because we still have a voice and as long as we still have that voice our testimony will continue to be a testimony of respect for human beings and solidarity for the victims of Nazi blindness or terrorism of any kind.