Hands away from our memorial!

Romeo Franz, artist, and member of the European Parliament:

I'm talking here today as an artist who composed and recorded the sound image at the monument to the Sinti and Roma murdered in National Socialism. The sound image is part of this monument designed and built by Dani Caravans. The monument not only refers to the well and to the stones lying around the well where the names of the concentration camp camps are carved, but it refers to the whole area, i.e. the trees on the right and stand on the left, and the tablets that have been attached belong to this entire piece of art. I can still remember doing the installation for the sound with Dani caravans for days so that it has the correct effect it has today, which belongs to the whole monument. 

This would also mean if trees were cut down, it would change the entire character of the monument, and thus this artwork would be destroyed. We can't let that happen and Dani Karavan has also made a very clear statement about this. I remember how we fought for the monument for 20 years and how humiliating that time was, how many times we felt humbled by this discussion. I can still remember that our monument was intended to turn into a ′′ gypsy monument ′′ and that there was little empathy.

Anyway, these 20 years of struggle for the monument have been indelibly burnt into our memory. And now, after eight years, you seriously ask yourself the question or are considering dismantling or changing our monument because of a railway route. I find this thought a shame. It's a shame to even have this thought and it shows what history forgetting institutions and also Deutsche Bahn has, that they hardly have the meaning of the genocide of our humans on their screen. That is why I demand that our monument should not be touched and that it should be declared a mandatory point that is crucial for the course of the S-Bahn route, as well as the monument to the murdered Jews of Europe.

Hands away from our memorial!


The memorial of the Sinti and Roma of Europe murdered in National Socialism is untouchable.
It would be a shame for Germany and a humiliation of the victims and bereaved of the genocide, if the Berlin Senate and the Deutsche Bundesbank, with their planned construction of the S21, would change or block the memorial as a whole.