Holocaust Scholar Upset by Location of Gay Memorial in Berlin

May 29th, 2008 · 1 Comment

Gay Men and Pink Triangles in a Concentration Camp

In what seems to be an apparent slight against gay people, a leading Holocaust scholar has criticized a monument in Berlin to homosexual victims of Nazi Germany unveiled this week, saying the location was poorly chosen.

Israel Gutman of Jerusalem’s Yad Vashem Institute told a Polish daily in an interview published Wednesday, May 28, that Germany had made a mistake by erecting the monument to commemorate homosexual victims of Nazi Germany in the heart of the capital, Berlin, news agency AFP reported.

“For many years after the war I had the impression that the Germans understood the immense scope of the crime of the Holocaust which they had committed … But this time, they made an error,” Gutman toldRzeczpospolita.

“The location was particularly poorly chosen for this monument. If visitors have the impression that there was not a great difference between the suffering of Jews and those of homosexuals, it’s a scandal,” Gutman said, according to AFP. “A sense of proportion must be maintained.”

A text on the stone surface details the persecution of gays under Hitler. The Nazis banned homosexuality in 1936 and convicted around 50,000 people for “unnatural” behavior deemed unbecoming of the Aryan “master race.” It is estimated that between 5,000 and 15,000 homosexuals were deported to Nazi concentration camps, where more than half died.

You can watch a clip of the monument’s unveiling here:

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1 response so far ↓

1 Eli // May 29, 2008 at 12:08 pm

It seems that Gutman is upset that the simple grey rectangular stone monument for murdered queer people, located in Tiergarten park near the monument dedicated to murdered Jews, equates the tragedies experienced by both groups. As a Jewish Gay Man, I am not surprised by these comments… I grew up listening to this argument, that the Jewish experience of the holocaust is the worst of all experiences of any group during the holocaust. Yet, Jews were not alone in being singled out. It just so happens that there were many many more to kill. And the scale of the massacre against the Jews is reflected in the large monument erected for the murder of the Jews in Berlin. The simple rectangular stone monument dedicated to gay people simply honors the loss of thousands of individuals also killed simply for being a member of a group that the Nazis were disgusted by. I am deeply saddened by Gutman’s upset.