Civil Initiative for the Memorial to the Sinti and Roma Murdered under the National Socialist Regime
02.06.2012 | 3 – 5 pm
The citizen’s initiative Perspektive Berlin was established in West Berlin in 1988 in order to erect a memorial in Germany to the Jews murdered during the Holocaust. After the fall of the Wall the initiative started to be supported by the German government, and at the same time it changed its name to the Association for the Memorial to the Murdered Jews of Europe. In 1999, parallel to the Association, the Foundation Memorial to the Murdered Jews of Europe was established, with the mission to build memorials to the other victims of the Nazi regime—homosexuals and the Roma and Sinti. Up to now the Memorial to the Sinti and Roma Murdered under the National Socialist Regime still has not been built; it is an unfinished construction site in the Tiergarten between Brandenburger Tor and the Reichstag. Its construction only began in 2008 and was soon stopped because of conflict between Dani Karavan, the memorial’s designer, and the Berlin authority. The unfinished memorial was closed off by a fence and effectively forgotten.
by Artur Żmijewski and Zofia Waślicka