Monday, September 30
Save the Sinti-Roma memorial: 100 activists protest planned closure
Who gets to decide what is remembered in Berlin? Historians estimate that during the Second World War, between 25 and 50 percent of the Romani and Sinti people in Europe were murdered in genocide, and yet some activists feel these victims are occasionally relegated to an afterthought in official commemorations. The Memorial to the Sinti and Roma Victims of National Socialism was only opened in 2012 and, just over ten years later, it is already under threat.
On Saturday evening, more than 100 demonstrators gathered on Potsdamer Platz to protest against planned construction work for the new S-Bahn line 21 that will not just force the extended closure of this memorial to victims of Nazi genocide, but will also cause a permanent impact due to the felling of nearby trees and other long-term changes to the surroundings.
According to organisers, the Berlin Senate was presented with 15 construction options for the public transport line – and yet deliberately chose the route that would damage the memorial.
In their call to protest, the feminist activist group RomaniPhen write that: “It is particularly shocking that Deutsche Bahn, of all companies, has been commissioned to damage our memorial. This is all the more outrageous as the Deutsche Reichsbahn, the predecessor organization of today’s Deutsche Bahn, earned blood money from the mass deportation of our people during the Nazi era”.
