German Chancellor opens memorial for Roma Holocaust victims
October 25, 2012
German Chancellor Angela Merkel opened a memorial in Berlin to honor the Roma and Sinti, also known as gypsies, who were discriminated and targeted during the Holocaust, according to NBC News.
The memorial is a circular pool, meant to be the tears for the dead and also the reflection of the beholder, and to eliminate hate in the future. President Joachim Gauck as well as around 100 elderly survivors went to the unveiling of the memorial, according to the news outlet.
"This memorial commemorates a group of victims who, for far too long, received far too little public recognition - the many hundreds of thousands of Sinti and Roma who were persecuted by the Nazis as so-called gypsies," said Merkel. "The destiny of every single person murdered in this genocide is one of unspeakable suffering. Every single destiny, fills us, fills me, with sadness and shame."
According to BBC News, Israeli artist Dani Karavan designed the memorial. Next to the pool is the chronology of what the Nazis did and a fresh flower will be placed in the middle triangle surface in the middle of the pool each day.
Once Adolf Hitler came into power in 1933, the Roma and Sinti people were discriminated against at an unbelievable rate. They were forced into sterilization as a part of the Nazis' "racial purity" laws, the media outlet reports. It is estimated that between 220,000 and 500,000 Roma and Sinti people were killed during World War II.
Those who want to talk about the new memorial can make calls to Germany using international calling cards.