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The guards finally came for the Roma on Aug. 2, 1944. On that dark day, 75 years ago, the remaining 2,897 men, women and children in the Zigeunerlager — “Gypsy camp” — at Auschwitz-Birkenau were put to death in the gas chambers.

Three months earlier, on May 16, 1944, the Roma people imprisoned in the largest concentration camp of the Second World War had fought back against their Nazi captors, a resistance that spared their lives for three more months. Those who were murdered three-quarters of a century ago Friday were among an estimated 500,000 Roma and Sinti killed during the Holocaust alongside 6 million Jews.

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On Thursday, the eve of this sombre anniversary, the victims of the Romani genocide, will be remembered with a ceremony at the Montreal Holocaust Museum. This is the fourth year the event has taken place, said Sarah Fogg, the head of marketing, communications and public relations. It’s an acknowledgement of shared suffering during past atrocities and an act of solidarity in an era of rising xenophobia.