On July 3, 1943, German gendarmes and soldiers from the navy appeared in Shchurova. Along with them came the German gendarme Engelbert Guzdek, who was the main executor of the tragic events. Almost the entire Roma community living in Ščurova was killed.
The photo shows a wedding in the Polish village of Szczurova, where Roma families lived peacefully with their neighbors for many generations and married into agricultural families. In 1943, German troops surrounded the village and rounded up 94 Roma men, women and children. They were taken to the local cemetery and executed.
Did you know that more than 200 massacres of Polish Roma and Sinti have been discovered in the territory of the former General Government of occupied Poland alone, and that there were probably many more? ... that the first monument in honor of the genocide of the European Roma was erected in Shchurova in 1966? It remained the only such monument in all of Europe for almost thirty years.
Link: https://www.romasintigenocide.eu/en/pdf-eng/szczurowa
