The Roma elderly people from Moldova who were affected by the Holocaust will receive humanitarian assistance. The support will be provided within a project initiated by the German foundation “Memory, Responsibility and Future”, which is implemented by the National Roma Center. The Center’s head Nicolae Radita, in a news conference at IPN, said the German foundation offers €40,000 for the Roma elderly people from Moldova, IPN reports.
According to Nicolae Radita, the project is aimed at offering support to persons of Roma origin who were victims of the national-socialist persecution during World War II, namely those who were deported to concentration camps in Moldova or outside it. The elderly people will receive food products, hygienic products, medicines or medical equipment, clothes, footwear and wood or coal for winter.
For the purpose, the National Roma Center will have to identify all the persons who were born before 1945 and suffered as a result of the Holocaust. The Center’s head said there are no national policies to support the Romani people. “We understand that the elderly people need food products to live. The clothes and footwear are also a problem as we see that the elderly people in rural areas now get a miserable pension, but there are also a lot of persons who do not receive it at all,” stated Nicolae Radita.
The goal of the project is to improve the quality of life of the elderly persons and to prolong it. “We, the young people of Roma origin, want to support the elderly people because the state regretfully takes no measure to improve the conditions of this category of people. Why do we want to support? Because we, the young people, are the future, but should not forget that namely the elderly are that source of traditions and values that laid the foundations of our ethnicity,” said Diana Leahu, a volunteer of the Center.
According to the Center’s data, more than 24,000 Romanies were deported from Bessarabia to Transnistria during World War II. About 12,000 of these returned home. “Until the spring of 1943, the situation of the deported Romanies was tragic. Many died in the winter of 1942-1943. In 1944, a part of them returned to Bessarabia,” said Roman Cebotari, aspirant for master of international relations and political sciences.
The National Roma Center calls on all the Roma elderly people and on the local public authorities to identify the persons in need of assistance. Applications must be submitted to the Center by March 15, while the results will be made public by March 31.
