Will Neibergall

Field Note 4 (Berlin)

After our class visit to the Reichstag, I walked to the nearby Memorial to the Sinti and
Roma of Europe Murdered under National Socialism. Unlike the famous Memorial to the
Murdered Jews of Europe, which lies just north of this memorial and slightly east of the
Tiergarten, this memorial bears some signage and various inscriptions that designate its purpose
and recall the history of the Porajmos the systematic, genocidal murder by the Nazis of
250,000-500,000 people of various cultural identifications loosely grouped under the term Romani,
or Gypsy. These signs and inscriptions run along a wall completely surrounding the memorial,
contributing to a kind of seclusion and simplicity that set it apart from the Memorial to the
Murdered Jews of Europe.
The memorial itself consists of a circular pool of water, at the center of which is a gray,
triangular stone meant to represent the triangular badges worn by prisoners of Nazi
concentration camps. Various stones of different jagged shapes spiral out from the edges of the
pool, becoming larger further away from it. Some of these stones bear the names of camps in
which the Roma and Sinti people were interned. Finally, in metallic letters around the edge of the
pool, a poem called Auschwitz written by a Romani poet and Porajmos survivor is reproduced.
While the memorial is relatively small and visually reserved, its design contributes to a space of
tranquility in which careful meditation on the brutality of Nazi crimes and the vitality of
remembrance is given central functional importance.
In Carriers book chapter on the Monument for the Murdered Jews of Europe as well as
in Wards article, Eisenmanns Cement Graveyard, attention is directed to the political debates
that problematized the conception, design, and execution of the larger and more visually
dramatic memorial just down the street from this one. The former text mentions the influence of
German political interest groups representing the Roma and Sinti communities, which were
instrumental in arguing that Eisenmanns memorial should be narrowed in focus to Jewish
victims of the Holocaust so that another memorial could be built nearby for the murdered
Romani people; Eisenmanns memorial was finally completed in 2005, while Dani Karavans Roma
and Sinti memorial was not officially opened until 2012. Even after the Central Council of
German Sinti and Roma successfully persuaded the German government to commission a
separate memorial, debates in the same vein as those preceding the construction of the Jewish
memorial raged for years around topics like the location of the memorial. Should the memorial
be built in a part of the city historically tied to Roma and Sinti habitation, some asked, or should it
be more centrally located around landmarks like the Tiergarten and the Brandenburg Gate? All of
the same problems related to the form and function of memorialization in public space that we
discussed with regard to the Memorial to the Murdered Jews of Europe apply here as well.
Arguably, the debates were more contentious because of the contentious nature of the
relationship between modern Germany and its Romani inhabitants, still largely designated by the
pejorative name Gypsies.
While Im not sold on the idea that this memorial creates meaningful closure it is, after
all, just another excuse for Germans to stop talking about historical atrocities and the problem of

Will Neibergall
Field Note 4 (Berlin)

potential complicity I found the space itself to be an easier one in which to ponder such
atrocities in public without unwelcome interruption. For example, a sign posted outside the
memorial reminds visitors that playing, smoking, and taking photographs inside the space could
be interpreted by other visitors as disrespectful. Eisenmanns memorial practically invites visitors
to project their own uses and meanings onto it, which accentuates the element of closure and of
moving on without necessarily reckoning with the meaning of history. While I feel that Germany
does not really achieve self-consciousness of the consequences of its project of national identity
in the construction of these memorials, I at least appreciated the quiet place to sit and think. Its
especially important that theres a place to read about the oppressive violence against Romani
people in the middle of a city that, in large part, can still barely stand to see those people huddled
on its street corners begging for change.