Download PDF - Gedenkort für die im Nationalsozialismus ...

denburg Memorials Foundation for many years and has done some importantpreliminary work.We welcome the fact that, 60 years after the end of the National Socialistdictatorship, there will finally be a site in the centre of Berlin to remind us ofthe victimisation of homosexuals and of the obligations of the democraticconstitutional state. I extend my best wishes to all the interest groups andinitiatives in their continuing efforts to make this project a success.Romani RoseCentral Council of German Sinti and Roma. The ChairmanTranslated by: Andrea LernerWelcoming SpeechToday is a good day. For you, but for us as well. Because this event willmake clear to all those involved, to all the audience, and through mediareporting, to the population, that, finally, there will be a place of remembrance,a memorial, to the homosexuals as well.I remember clearly that day, it was March 10, 1992, when Edzard Reuterand I had an appointment with the then interior minister, Rudolf Seiters.Edzard Reuter was a member of the board of trustees of the foundation forthe promotion of the Memorial to the Murdered Jews of Europe. Seiterswas friendly, succinct and precise. We told him about our project, ourexpectations of the site, the very site at which the memorial is now beingcompleted. We also told him about our debates and disputes, especiallywith the ‘Central Council of Sinti and Roma’. We and Rudolf Seiters agreedthat the memorial project we had started should be dedicated exclusively tothe Jews. But we also agreed that other persecuted groups, e.g. the Sintiand Roma, the victims of euthanasia, the homosexuals, should also receivetheir own memorials. Seiters expressly agreed with these positions andpromised to help us to realize them. And so it came to be. The memorial tothe Sinti and Roma is currently being built to a design by Dani Karavan.The victims of euthanasia are remembered at the sites of their persecutionand murders – in Hadamar/Limburg, in Grafeneck/ Württemberg, in Bernburg-on-Saale,in Brandenburg(Havel), in Hartheim / Linz, inSonnenstein / Pirna – and their appropriate commemoration made possibleby good documentation.We would have liked a central memorial in Berlin to the victims ofeuthanasia. But one cannot realize all one’s visions and dreams, as I haveexperienced and learned in seventeen years of debates over the Memorialto the Murdered Jews of Europe. Once, in Bonn, I was asked whether myproposal to build individual memorials was aimed at creating a ‘boulevardof memorials’ in the Tiergarten. I answered: why not? It would be good andrighteous to remember the crimes of the National Socialist regime at a centrallocation, in a ‘memorial mile’. And in a certain way, we have arrived at akind of memorial mile, although this might not apply to all groups of victims.One exception, which I greatly regret, is the Karlshorst Museum, which alsocommemorates the Russian prisoners of war murdered by Germans – with20