Blok 13

On 2 August 2001, a permanent exhibition on the Nazi Genocide of the Sinti and Roma was opened to the public at the Auschwitz-Birkenau State Museum. The project was realized on the initiative and under the direction of the Documentation and Cultural Centre of German Sinti and Roma in close cooperation with the Auschwitz Memorial and the Roma Association in Poland as well as six other national Roma organizations.

The exhibition, which can be seen in Block 13 of the former main camp, documents the genocide of the Sinti and Roma in Nazi-occupied Europe. It also illustrates the particularities of persecution in the individual occupied states or states allied with the German Reich. Due to several national Roma organizations participating in the historical research, numerous new sources have been opened up that show the European dimension of the Holocaust.

One focus of the exhibition is the examination of the historical site of the Auschwitz extermination camp. As a result of Himmler’s Auschwitz decree of 16 December 1942, 23,000 members of the minority were deported here from the Reich and almost all occupied countries.

With the help of survivors’ reports, family photos of the people deported to Auschwitz and the source material available in the archives of the Auschwitz Museum, the crimes committed here are documented in detail for the first time. As in the permanent exhibition in Heidelberg, a central concern is to give the victims a face.

For more information refer to

Sinti i Romowie w Auschwitz, general page of the Auschwitz Museum

Online Lesson about Sinti and Roma in Auschwitz by the Auschwitz Museum

Photo Exhibition about Block 13 by the Auschwitz Museum

Website of the Documentation and Cultural Centre of German Sinti and Roma, that built the exhibition in Block 13.