"Almost 500,000 murder victims, of which over 20,000 were German Sinti and Roma - that is barbarism on a gigantic scale."
So, "20,000 were German Sinti and Roma." We have to ask if President Herzog is aware that in
the city of Pforzheim, on a single night in the spring of 1945, 17,600 German civilians - mostly women and children - were burned alive in the phosphorus bombing raid carried out by the Allies?[34] Or that 20,000 civilians were similarly murdered in Cologne? Or that hundreds of thousands of other civilians perished in the fire-bombings of Hamburg, Dresden, and hundreds of other German cities, in blatant violation of the Geneva Accords? This was indeed "barbarism on a gigantic scale." Unlike the atrocity stories concocted by Germany's enemies in the two world wars, the atrocities committed against Germans are fully documented. Are the citizens of Pforzheim, Köln, Hamburg, or Dresden demanding Holocaust memorials in Berlin? Would any German politician support such a demand?
Without a doubt, the Central Council of German Sinti and Roma have a right to promote the interests of German Sinti and Roma, but where do they get the right to represent all the gypsies of Europe?
Since the number of Sinti and Roma who died during World War II is clearly far below 20,000, why build a memorial in Berlin for this particular subgroup, but not for German victims of far greater atrocities?
On August 18, 1999, Heinrich Wefing wrote an informative article in Frankfurter Allgemeiner Zeitung article entitled "The Escalation of Memory" about the demands of the gypsy Central Council for a "memorial to the 750,000 Roma and Sinti murdered during the 'Third Reich.'"
He pointed out that between 1997 and 1999 the number of gypsy victims magically increased by another 50%, from 500,000 to 750,000. My correcting letter to the editor on the subject was not printed, however.
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