[originaltext] OSWIECIM, Poland—Gypsies from across Europe gathered at Auschw

OSWIECIM, Poland—Gypsies from across Europe gathered at Auschwitz on Monday to remember hundreds of thousands of their murdered ancestors and to call for wider recognition of their suffering in the Nazi Holocaust.
   Those at the ceremony, held exactly 60 years after the night the Nazis gassed the final 2,900 Gypsies in the Auschwitz-Birkenau death camp, also heard warnings that today’s Gypsies still face discrimination, especially in Eastern Europe.
   Up to a half-million European Gypsies are thought to have perished at the Nazis’ hands during World War II along with 6 million Jews, though the exact number is not known. Others were sterilized or subjected to pseudomedical experiments.
   The Nazis considered Gypsies racially inferior and "anti-social." Many were deported to a special section of the Auschwitz-Birkenau concentration camp complex in occupied Poland.
   The Nazis liquidated the Gypsy camp Aug. 2, 1944, and gassed most of the remaining inmates, including many women, children and old people. Others were sent to German factories as forced laborers.
   On Monday, several hundred mourners, including camp survivors and envoys of several European governments, walked to the ruins of a gas chamber and crematorium where Gypsy representatives placed candles on the wall.
   Monday’s anniversary was observed with speeches and mournful music amid the ruins of dozens of prison barracks on a vast grassy area, still ringed by concrete fence posts, watchtowers and birch trees.
   Germany’s envoy, Environment Minister Juergen Trittin, noted that Gypsies have struggled for wider awareness of their suffering under the Nazis. "This genocide is part of our history. As Germans, we carry the historic and the political responsibility."