Memorial to Roma (Gypsy) Holocaust Victims Opens in Berlin
Source: New York Times
Guests including Chancellor Angela Merkel, at left, were reflected in a part of the memorial,
which was unveiled on Tuesday.
Germany paid tribute on Wednesday to the hundreds of thousands of Romany people killed in the Holocaust, opening a long-awaited place of remembrance for a minority still plagued by discrimination.
Addressing a crowd that included Holocaust survivors and prominent German politicians, Chancellor Angela Merkel noted that the site, called the Memorial for the Sinti and Roma of Europe Murdered in National Socialism, served to honor the Roma and Sinti victims of the Nazis’ racial purge of Europe while reminding the living of their duty to shield minority populations from harm.
“Humanity means not turning a blind eye when another person’s dignity is being violated,” Ms. Merkel said. “In the commemoration of victims always lies a promise, and this is how I see our duty to protect our minorities. But let’s not beat around the bush,” she told the audience, which included the head of the German Central Council of Sinti and Roma, Romani Rose, and Joachim Gauck, the German president. “Sinti and Roma suffer today from discrimination and exclusion.”
The ceremony took place in a leafy corner of the city’s sprawling Tiergarten park, across the street from the Reichstag, Germany’s Parliament building, and close to Berlin’s other monuments to victims of Nazi persecution, including a sea of polished concrete slabs, unveiled in May 2005, that commemorates the millions of Jews who were killed during the Third Reich, and a smaller memorial for gay men and lesbians that opened three years later.
Read more: http://www.nytimes.com/2012/10/25/world/europe/memorial-to-romany-victims-of-holocaust-opens-in-berlin.html
Merkel has done her share in the past to play to right wing fears of immigration and multiculturalism but this seems to have been a good speech on the importance of appreciating and protecting minorities.
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... to come to terms with the past. Aside from the memorials in Berlin almost everywhere you go in Germany you will see these.
The Germans call them "Stolpersteine" (stumble stones). Small plaques set in the pavement as memorials to the Holocaust victims.
The one above reads "Doctor Max Eichholz lived here. Born in 1881. Imprisoned by the Gestapo 1935/1937/1939-42. Concentration Camp Fuhlsbüttel. Deported 1942. Murdered in Auschwitz on the 12th January 1943."
