Krystyna Gil

Krystyna Gil, née Ciuroń, was born on 5th November 1938 in Szczurowa. Before the war, Polish, Jewish and Romani people lived there together. Krystyna was a Romani girl. Her grandfather had his own orchestra that would play music during important festivities in Szczurowa and the surrounding villages. The Romani men would make frying pans, cauldrons, pots and other metal items and the Romani women would sell them. Krystyna Gil recalled that the older children used to help run the households and graze the animals, while the younger children played together cheerfully. However, the outbreak of WWII changed it all.

On 3rd July 1943, the German Nazis surrounded the Romani settlement in Szczurowa and demanded that all Romani people leave their houses and assemble on the village main square. Krystyna’s grandfather refused to comply and was shot on the spot, in his own house. The other Romani men were taken to the local cemetery in horse carts. The women, children and elderly people who remained on the main square could hear gunshots and screams. When the Germans came back to take away the rest of the people, it turned out that there was not enough space on the horse carts. Krystyna’s grandmother and several other people were left behind on the square. In the resulting chaos, Krystyna’s mother pushed her off the cart and handed her over to her grandmother saying: “If you survive, you’ll at least have her.” Krystyna’s mother, her 10-year-old brother, 2-year-old sister and other members of her family were taken to the cemetery and murdered. On this day, 93 Romani men and women were shot. The operation was led by a German constable called Engelbert Guzdek.

Krystyna and her grandmother miraculously escaped death. They were able to flee when the constables who were supposed to take them to the cemetery stopped by at a local restaurant.
Krystyna Gil went into hiding with her grandmother who wasn’t a Romani woman, so it was easier for her to conceal the girl’s ethnicity. They changed their places of hiding several times. Unfortunately, they were accidentally caught in a round-up in January 1944 and brought to the KL Płaszów camp in Cracow. There, they spent four months until a member of the camp staff helped them escape. Afterwards, they stayed in hiding until the end of the war and returned to Szczurowa in May 1945. Krystyna completed vocational school and moved to the Nowa Huta district of Cracow, where she started her own family. She was the first Romani tram driver in Cracow. She actively advocated for the rights of Polish Romani people, especially children’s rights. In 2000, she founded the Association of Romani Women in Poland and was its Chairwoman for more than 10 years. Krystyna Gil also fought to preserve the memory of the genocide of Romani people and to commemorate the victims of the massacre in Szczurowa. In the 1960’s, locals put a stone with an inscription commemorating the victims next to their mass grave. Upon Krystyna’s initiative, which was supported by Lee-Elizabeth Hölscher-Langner, the wife of the first Consul General of the Federal Republic of Germany in Cracow, a plaque listing the names of all 93 victims was put next to the grave in 2014.

In 2020, Krystyna was awarded the Cross of Merit of the Federal Republic of Germany by the President of Germany.
Krystyna Gil often shared the story of her life with young people.
She died in Cracow on 1st April 2021.

AUTHOR: Larysa Michalska

Denial

This is a stage, occurring after every genocide. The perpetrators obliterate traces of the crime, hide evidence, and intimidate witnesses. They deny committing any crimes and often blame the victims for what happened. They block investigations and try to stay in power until they are forcibly forced to give it up or flee. Only fair and just trials and the imposition of punishment by courts or tribunals prevent the impunity of perpetrators and the progressive denial of crimes. Silence is one of the most common forms of denial. Silence following genocide perpetuates lack of awareness and denial.

How does this person’s story illustrate response to the particular stage of genocide in Dr. Stanton’s theory?

Krystyna Gil spent most of her life after the war fighting for the commemoration of the genocide of Sinti and Romani people. Her mission was to remind people of the names of the victims of the Szczurowa massacre by putting their names on a memorial. This way, the victims’ dignity was restored and contemporary people could view them as individuals who had their own stories, plans and dreams. For many years, the crimes against the Sinti and Romani communities were marginalized. Even scientists would rarely take up this topic. This changed as intellectual elites and organisations within the Romani community began to develop. Their members worked together with scientific, cultural, educational and political milieus in order to reclaim their own history, which used to be forgotten, unspoken or even denied straightforward. Determined, highly engaged and open-hearted, Krystyna Gil fought for the memory of and respect for the Romani victims of Nazi genocide, opposing the constant diminishment or denial of their tragic experience during WWII.