The last of the exhibition rooms deals with the genocide of the Romani community, showing the sites of their extermination in Poland and Germany, the number of victims of the Nazi system in individual European countries, archival letters confirming the transports of Romani prisoners, and the extremely poignant camp portraits sketched for experimental research. The Romani people were not only murdered in the death camps – whole families were rounded up in their encampments and executed in the surrounding forests. A photograph of a mass grave in the Szczurowa cemetery reminds us about the execution of more than 90 Romani people in July 1943. An event that commemorates the extermination of the Romani in the Tarnów region and reconstructs a caravan on the road is the International Caravan of Remembrance that moves along a route passing Romani mass graves. Every July, the Caravan sets off from in front of the Ethnographic Museum, and the Romani, united in these moments by the memory of their murdered ancestors, come to Tarnów in large numbers to take part in this unusual cultural and social event. Central to the exhibition are the attributes of Roma identity – the flag and the anthem – as well as the emphasis on their Indian roots, through an excerpt from a speech by former Prime Minister Indira Gandhi. In addition, there are statistics explaining the attitude of Poles towards ethnic minority groups and foreign nationalities, a map of contemporary Romani leaders, colour photographs of the Romani anthropological types, and a cross-sectional history of the Cultural and Educational Romani Association in Tarnów, based on archive photographs.
Romani Room, Ethnographic Museum, Tarnów
Beacon