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Read the PROBLEM STATEMENT AND ARGUMENT FOR THE CIVIL UNITY FOR THE UNFINISHED MEMORIAL TO THE SINTI AND ROMA MURDERED UNDER THE NATIONAL SOCIALIST REGIME
Civil Initiative for the Memorial to the Sinti and Roma Murdered under the National Socialist Regime
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 Establishment of a Memorial to the Murdered Jews of Europe. There were opinions that the memorial should also commemorate other victims of National Socialism, but the final communiqué stated that it would be dedicated 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 People — as well. But the Memorial to the Sinti and Roma Murdered under National Socialism has still not been built; it is an unfinished construction site in the Tiergarten next to the Reichstag and Brandenburger Tor. The memorial is supposed to be accompanied by information about the Roma and Sinti genocide and about the Nazi camps where Roma were exterminated. The construction of the memorial only began in 2008 and was quite 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.
In the framework of the 7th Berlin Biennale a Civil Initiative, led by The Romani Elders and coordinated by the European Roma Cultural Foundation – ERCF (www.romacult.org) advocates for the completion of the Memorial to the Sinti and Roma Murdered under the National Socialist Regime.
In 1992 after years of demand by the Central Council of German Sinti and Roma, the German Federal Government decided upon the construction of a Memorial to the Sinti and Roma Murdered under the National Socialist Regime. Today — twenty years after the decision — it remains an abandoned building site in the middle of Berlin.
ERCF is committed to generating a wide network of Roma and non-Roma organizations and individuals throughout Europe and is collecting their signatures in order to make an effort to impose pressure on all participants — including the political sphere, the official authorities, the construction team, and the artist — for the continuation of the building process.
The Roma community aims to communicate the urgent need to finally finish the memorial in order to celebrate in dignity the inauguration together with the handful of survivors and their families.
The Civil Initiative began with the dissemination and promotion of a Call for Unity. On June 2, 2012 the Romani Elders and the representatives of the younger generation of Roma activism assembled to make their public statements in front of the memorial.
It is the main objective of the Initiative to carve the memory of the Sinti and Roma victims into the European collective memory. The Romani Elders and the Roma community will complete their mission if the disputing parties look beyond their ego-wars, recognize what is really important in this project, and agree to promptly continue the building process until the memorial site is open to the public. We believe it is essential to commemorate the Sinti and Roma victims of the Holocaust and place them in history in order to acknowledge the continuing attacks towards the Roma throughout Europe today.
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