Discussion with József Forgács
Phiren Amenca in cooperation with International Bauorden Germany and Documentation and Cultural Center of German Sinti and Roma gathered 30 young Roma and non-Roma from Hungary and Germany for a youth exchange in Hungary in the framework of the ‘Acting for Roma Genocide Remembrance’ project.
After the first getting to know each other games, we hold workshops about the historical background of the Roma Genocide and resistance of Roma during the Holocaust, especially about the Roma uprising in Auschwitz on 16 May 1944. Based on the input of the X-Chavalem exchange of last year, we were dealing with the topic of Romani Resistance connected to Roma superheroes. You can read more about it here: https://phirenamenca.eu/romani-resistance-or-how-to-become-a-roma-superhero-2/
We invited József Forgács, survivor of the Roma Genocide who shared his experiences, his life story. The participants had the opportunity to work together in two art groups throughout the week related to Romani Resistance.
The drama group created a street theatre performance together with Rodrigo Balogh:
„A performance with audience participation in which you can experience what it’s like when we build or destroy walls in society. What kind of positive and negative interactions can occur at personal and community level. We are trying to discover manifestations of individual resistance or a group’s collective resistance, and what is needed for that.”
The other art group worked together with András Kállai on a project of adobe bricks.
They had discussions about Roma Genocide remembrance and present-day discrimination and the participants wrote messages raising questions and concerns related to the situation of Roma people. They created the bricks themselves and híd the messages inside and delivered the messages to the institutions that they wanted to address.
The project is supported by the program “Europeans for Peace” of the Foundation EVZ, the Erasmus+ Programme of the European Union and the German program “Demokratie leben”