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The European and national Holocaust Memorial Day for Roma and Sinti takes place on 2 August. Commemorative events will be held in Austria and at the Auschwitz-Birkenau State Museum to mark the occasion.
Commemorative events in Vienna and Lackenbach
The Republic of Austria's official ceremony of the to mark the National Day of Remembrance for Roma and Sinti will take place in the Memorial Room at the Äußeres Burgtor (the Outer Gate of the Vienna Hofburg) on Friday, 31 July 2026 at 10.00 am. Invitations to the event were sent out in the name of the National Council and the Federal Council Presidents, and the Roma Ethnic Group Advisory Board.
The ceremony will feature a reading of "Eine Lebensgeschichte" (A Life Story) by Walpurga Horvath, delivered by the actress, director and cultural activist Mercedes Echerer, as well as a prayer led by Roma chaplain and pastor Matthias Platzer, followed by a moment of silent remembrance. The wreath-laying ceremony will be accompanied by Martin Denic on the accordion. The event is open to the media.
On the afternoon of 31 July 2026, at 2.00 pm, a commemorative event organised by the Federal Ministry of the Interior (BMI) will take place in Lackenbach, Burgenland, where an internment camp for Roma and Sinti existed during the Nazi era. Today, a memorial commemorates the camp and its victims. The ceremony will begin at 2.00 pm at the cemetery at Bergstraße 54. The event, which will be opened by Stephan Mlczoch (BMI), will include welcoming remarks by the Mayor of Lackenbach, Christian Weninger, and historical presentations by Gerhard Baumgartner and Vivian Taubmann from the “The Sinti cemetery in Lackenbach Association”. Following a prayer led by Manuela Horvath from the Roma Pastoral Care of the Diocese of Eisenstadt, a wreath-laying ceremony will take place at the central memorial.
National Fund Managing Director Judith Pfeffer will attend the official commemoration ceremonies at the Äußeres Burgtor in Vienna and at the memorial in Lackenbach on behalf of the National Fund.
International remembrance at the Auschwitz-Birkenau State Museum
The international remembrance ceremony to mark the European Holocaust Memorial Day for Roma and Sinti will take place on Sunday, 2 August 2026 at 12 noon at the Auschwitz-Birkenau State Museum and will be streamed live from 11.30 am. Official representatives from Austria will attend the commemoration ceremony in person.
Remembrance at St Stephen’s Cathedral in Vienna and on Ceija-Stojka-Platz
On the afternoon of 2 August, at 2.30 pm, a remembrance ceremony co-funded by the National Fund, featuring a ceremonial laying of wreaths, will take place at St Stephen’s Cathedral in Vienna. The event is being organised and realised in close cooperation with numerous and Roma associations and organisations from across Austria as a joint project to strengthen cohesion within the community, whilst also reaching out to the wider public to promote dialogue.
Also on 2 August 2026, at 6.00 pm, at an event organised by the Association of Austrian Roma and Romnja Students (HÖR) to mark the day of remembrance, candles will be lit on Ceija-Stojka-Platz in Vienna’s 7th District to commemorate the members of this ethnic group who fell victim to the Nazi regime.
Historical background and planned memorial
The Day of Remembrance commemorates the resistance and honours the memory of around 4,300 imprisoned Sinti and Roma who were murdered by the SS in the so-called “Gypsy camp” at the Auschwitz-Birkenau concentration and extermination camp on the night of 2-3 August 1944.
In 2015, the European Parliament adopted a resolution recognising 2 August as a Day of Remembrance for the genocide of the Romani people during the Second World War.
Austria has formally adopted this Day of Remembrance. In January 2023, the National Council unanimously resolved to establish 2 August as a National Day of Remembrance for the Roma and Sinti peoples who were persecuted and murdered in the Holocaust.
Since 2024, the National Fund has been responsible for establishing a central memorial for the Roma and Sinti victims of Nazism. This is being implemented through a broad-based participatory process involving representatives of ethnic minority associations and the community.