The untold history of a forgotten people lies under garbage dumps and in unmarked fields behind remote villages across Eastern Europe.

The mass graves of the Roma Gypsies dot the remote countryside alongside those of hundreds of thousands of fallen Jews, a neglected reminder of the Holocaust.

Father Patrick Desbois, secretary to a French conference for bishops about relations with Judaism, shed light on this grisly tale last night at NYU’s La Maison Francaise with a lecture, followed by a question-and-answer session and short documentary on his work to construct a microhistory of the mass murders of the Roma, featuring interviews with Roma people.

Antonin Baudry, cultural counselor for the French embassy in the United States, introduced Desbois. He stressed the importance of the largely forsaken history.

“The mass murder of the Roma people is one of the most neglected stories of the Holocaust,” Baudry said.

Desbois has devoted his career to reconstructing this history. He said the Roma are one of the largest groups of forgotten victims of the Holocaust.

“Most of the history has not been written, anywhere,” Desbois said. “With most genocides we only remember the name of the killer, like they are a hero.”

Desbois’ aim is to take the focus off the killers and give the Roma their own microhistory.
“If we don’t establish clearly the story of their genocide, how can we advocate for their dignity today?” Desbois asked.

Desbois and his crew of French and Roma contributors located roughly 2,000 mass graves and about 800 execution sites in Eastern Europe. Of all the sites they found, only one site in Ukraine was marked by a memorial.

The team also interviewed over 2,500 elderly Roma eyewitnesses in their native language of Romani.

Today the Roma are fighting hard for representation in the larger story of the Holocaust. There are no Romas on the United States Holocaust Memorial Council.

Ellen Count, a crime writer who attended the event, was shocked to hear that the Roma are rarely represented in major Holocaust memorial events.

“It’s devastating,” Count said. “I don’t know how they justify that.”

A version of this article appeared in the Thursday, April 4 print edition. Kevin Burns is a deputy university editor. Email him at [email protected].