Germany Marginalizes the Gypsies (and now the Poles)
Imke Girssmann confirms the fact that the German Gypsies (Sinti and Roma) wanted a joint memorial with the Jews in Berlin, but were rejected. (p. 56). Instead, the Jews got their way as usual. They got their “Memorial to the Murdered Jews of Europe“, and the Gypsies were told to go away and build their small and distant memorial–one that was separate and unequal to that of the Jews. For further details, see:
Despite the unilateral concession to the Jews, the German government continued to downplay the non-Jewish victims. Girssmann continues, “Rosh and others did not object to a national commemoration of the other victim groups in general, but wanted separate memorials. Taking this attitude, the government decision implied the future obligation to ‘duly honor all other victims of National Socialism.’ Despite this obligation, the changing government coalitions did not put a lot of effort into the memorial project for the commemoration of Sinti and Roma, although Germany’s Social Democratic Chancellor Helmut Schmidt already in 1982 recognized their persecution and murder as genocide.” (p. 56. Emphasis added).
CHEAP GERMAN TALK
We see that, compared with the Jews, the Germans did not treat Nazi crimes against goyim (in this case the Gypsies) with anywhere near the same moral urgency as that of the Jews. The call to “duly honor all other victims of National Socialism” was hollow. We also see that, just because the Germans verbalized agreement that a Nazi crime was genocide, this does not mean that the Germans treated it as such. Actions speak louder than words. Furthermore, to this day, no monument or memorial was built by the Germans to the murdered Poles.
The German stalling towards the Gypsies continued. Girssmann admits that, “The question of the appropriate location was controversial for a long time…presumably to keep the discussions of victim hierarchies to a minimum at this point…The idea to place memorials at an authentic location is a reasonable approach. But in this context of planning new memorials at the capital, after the central monument to the murdered Jews had been approved, this argument was seen not only by the initiators as a further act of marginalization and as a refusal to recognize the plight of the Roma and Sinti under National Socialism.” (p. 57. Emphasis added).
Yes, and the tiny separate-and-unequal memorial to the Gypsies was finally built, while the Poles continue to be marginalized and absent. There is no monument in Germany to the Polish victims of Nazi Germany! This is whose idea of justice?
