December 16 is International Day of the Roma Holocaust since on this day in 1942, ‘Himmler ordered that the Romani candidates for extermination should be deported to Auschwitz-Birkenau. For the Romani people of Europe, this order was equivalent to the January 20 decision of that same year, made at the Wannsee Conference, at which Nazi bureaucrats decided on the “Final Solution” to the “Jewish problem”. On November 15, 1943, Himmler ordered that Romani and “part-Romanies” were to be put “on the same level as Jews and placed in concentration camps”.’ (quotation from http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Porajmos)
For further information, please visit http://www.rromaniconnect.org/Romasintiholocaust.html