Rivesaltes (France) (AFP)
The trembling voice, 95-year-old Leana, is overwhelmed with emotion, evoking for the first time her deportation: the rare testimonies of survivors of the Nazi extermination of Eastern European Roma resonate in an exhibition at the memorial of the camp of Rivesaltes (Pyrenees-Orientales).
During a meeting in Cazabesti, Romania, the old lady with long white braids "said to me while taking me by the hand: + come, I will tell you my story before dying +", remembers father Patrick Desbois , at the origin of the exhibition.
The French priest, who founded the Yahad-In Unum association (together, in both Hebrew and Latin), has been devoting his life for years to documenting the genocide of Jews and Roma or the persecution of the Yazidis by the Islamic State group. Iraq.
There are no precise figures on the number of Roma murdered by the Nazi regime and its allies - between 220,000 and 500,000 according to historians - "and for good reason," says the clergyman.
"The Germans hated the Jews but they despised the Roma, so they did not even count the ones they killed," he says.
Same thing for the photos: "There are many more Jewish execution photos, for propaganda purposes, as + souvenirs sent by the soldiers to their wives, than Roma, because it was less heroic to kill Roma, "says Father Desbois to AFP, came to inaugurate Wednesday the exhibition.
- "To bring bad luck" -
Through their account of the horror sometimes hardly formulated, Gheorghe, Alexandra, Istrate or Leana recount the fear, the humiliation, the torture, the rape and the death.
Their stories, captured in giant portraits and videos shot at home in Moldova, Romania or Belarus, rub shoulders with the memories of thousands of Jews, Gypsies, Spanish Republicans and Harkis interned at the Rivesaltes camp, near Perpignan, during the twentieth century. .
The survey that feeds the exhibition began ten years ago.
"We interviewed more than 300 survivors and did a lot of documentation work, archival consultation, with a team of videographers, photographers, investigators, translators and scripts" mostly Roma, says Costel Nastasié, coordinator of this project within of Yahad-In Unum.
The grandparents of this ex-policeman were themselves deported from Romania to Transnistria by the Romanian gendarmes and not by the German units.
"General Antonescu (who was in charge of Romania), allied with the Nazis, had preferred to do the job himself," said Father Desbois.
This genocide is poorly documented. "Often people do not like Roma, so a genocide of a people we do not like, we do not care," says the priest.
And the transmission of memory within the community is complicated.
"About ten years ago, when I discovered what had happened to my family, my mother told me: + we do not like talking about the past because it brings bad luck +", says Mr. Nastasié .
- "One day we go to the act" -
"At home, it is very difficult to keep records, when we die, we burn everything.Everything is transmitted by the oral", abounds Jojo Soler, chaplain of the gypsy community of Perpignan, present at the inauguration of the exposure.
He said he was particularly moved to see an exhibition on the sufferings endured by the Roma taking place in this place steeped in history.
"Between January 1941 and November 1942, 1,334 women, men and children gypsies, come mainly from the east of France, were interned in the camp of Rivesaltes in appalling conditions" by the Vichy regime, recalls the director of the memorial, Agnès Sajaloli. "There were sometimes up to 10 deaths a day".
Nearly 80 years later, "we always feel that we have no value.When we talk about us, it's always the + gitan +, while we're 100% French. so-and-so, as for everyone, "exasperated Laurent Gimenez, pastor in the municipality of Elne (Eastern Pyrenees).
A sting reminder that Father Desbois was keen to introduce into his exhibition, displaying degrading remarks about Roma held by European politicians.
"We want to show that the rejection of a population, Roma or otherwise, is serious, because one day, we end up acting."
© 2019 AFP