“May 16th is a reminder that there is no destructive force that cannot be resisted. In the Europe of the 1940s, enraptured by the all-encompassing National Socialist rule and the tacit complicity of so many countries, resistance was undreamed of. With race laws justifying crime, the treatment of groups deemed unworthy of coexistence with the superior race, and open strategies of destruction, the state-led hierarchy of knowledge production has invaded every field of existence, down to the most basic elements that they sustain life.
However, the uprising appeared where most unexpectedly, in defiance of the monstrous rational model that had to prove effective in efforts to liberate millions of people. On the night of May 16, 1944 in the concentration camp Auschwitz-Birkenau, the entire Roma population in the camp rebelled against the ideology of the Nazis, in a desperate attempt to defend themselves from certain death.
The testimonies of the survivors of the neighboring camp reveal a story that has only been told, a story of Poraymos and his victims who fought until the last moment for their right to life and humanity.”
