© Nachlass der Familie Wernicke
Deutz-Tief Gleis ins Vergessen [Deutz Tief – Platform to Oblivion] commemorates the Sinti, Roma, Yenish people and Jews deported from Cologne and makes Deutz a memorial for remembrance, dignity and visibility.
Deutz-Tief – Gleis ins Vergessen [Deutz Tief – Platform to Oblivion!] is a memory culture project that portrays the largely unknown history of the persecution and deportation of Sinti and Roma, Yenish people and other marginalized groups at Deutz Station in Cologne. Today an ordinary transportation hub, the site was the scene of one of the earliest deportations from the Rhineland in 1940. Many of the abducted never returned, their names and stories remained invisible for a long time – with consequences for their families right up to the present day.
Founded in 2000, the association Sinti Allianz Deutschland e.V., is an alliance of German Sinti. It sees itself as representing the interests of German Sinti, who feel a particular duty to their traditional way of life with their historically developed obligations and prohibitions –cultural and social taboos – and want to maintain this order.
It has been based in Bergisch Gladbach since 2018. Most of the Sinti represented by the Sinti Alliance do not see themselves only as members of a minority, but at the same time as a Sinti ethnic group that is part of German society as a whole and that lives and maintains the Sinti language and culture alongside its German language and culture.
