Memorial plaque ‘Memoria dellʼOlocausto Rom’ in Pistoia, Italy, May 2025. The memorial plaque, which was placed in the Giardino di Piazza della Resistenza on 31 January 2006 by the municipality of Pistoia, Italy, commemorates the Roma victims of the Holocaust. The park is a symbolic place of remembrance where there are numerous monuments, plaques and memorial stones commemorating the events of World War II.
The memorial plaque bears Romanes and Italian versions of lines by the poet, essayist, musician, university lecturer and Rom Santino Spinelli {born 1964}, who has organised and supported many initiatives and events to make the artistic and cultural work of Roma visible. He is also the author of the poem ‘Auschwitz’, which is engraved on the edge of the pool in the Memorial to the Sinti and Roma of Europe murdered under National Socialism (inaugurated in Berlin in 2012).
In translation, the poem on the memorial plaque, which was written in 1994, reads: Against Forgetting // Bitter tears / from the Romani eye / wellsprings of pain / in an innocent heart / tortured feelings / cruel events / unheard cries / dying sobs / Repulsive smile / Perpetual danger / Still looming.
