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 Monument To Be Erected In Israel To Gay
Holocaust Victims
by 365Gay.com Newscenter Staff
Posted: May 1, 2008 - 3:00 pm ET
(Tel Aviv, Israel) A monument will be erected in
Tel Aviv honoring gays and lesbians persecuted during the Holocaust.
The Israeli news site Ynet reported Wednesday
that an agreement to build the monument has been signed by city council and LGBT
civil rights leader Itai Pinkas.
The announcement came as Israel observed
Holocaust Remembrance Day honoring the six million Jews murdered by the Nazis.
Tel Aviv Mayor Ron Huldai said that the design
for the monument to LGBT victims will feature an iron triangle and bear the names of those victims who have been
identified. Homosexuals were required by the Nazis to wear pink triangles to
identify them.
The monument will be set up in Meir Garden the
mayor said. It will be the first memorial in Israel to gay victims of the
holocaust in Germany. Similar monuments are in Amsterdam, Copenhagen, San
Francisco and Sydney, Australia. Work is underway for a monument in Berlin.
In Jerusalem, the Yad Vashem Museum on the
Holocaust features a small exhibit dedicated to gay and lesbian victims of the
Nazis.
The American Holocaust Museum in Washington also
has an exhibit dedicated to gays and lesbians.
Under Paragraph 175 of the German penal code,
which banned sexual intimacy between members of the same gender, an untold
number of gays and lesbians were rounded up by the Nazis and sent to
concentration camps where they were subjected to medical experiments including
lobotomies, and forced to work in labor camps.
Estimates of gays and lesbians persecuted by the
Nazis range from several thousand to a quarter million. A large number of those
interred were sent on to the gas chambers.
Orthodox religious leaders in Israel who have
fought to try to block gay pride marches from taking place in Jerusalem
denounced the Tel Aviv memorial as trivializing the millions of Jews who were
exterminated by the Nazis.
Last month, a Catholic bishop in Scotland accused
gays of using the Holocaust to further their political objectives. (story)
"It is ever present at the service each year
for the Holocaust memorial - as if to create for themselves the image of a group
of people under persecution," the Right Rev Joseph Devine said.
Even in the US there have been deniers of gay
Holocaust victims.
In 2003 Minnesota state Rep. Arlon Lindner (R)
during debate on two bills he had brought forward to repeal gay rights laws in
the state, said gays were lying when they cited thousands of homosexuals who
were exterminated or sent to concentration camps by the Nazis.
"It never happened," Lindner told the
House.
"I was a child during World War II, and I've
read a lot about World War II," he said. "It's just been recently that
anyone's come out with this idea that homosexuals were persecuted to this
extent. There's been a lot of rewriting of history."
The remarks shocked the legislature, but attempts
to censure him failed.
©365Gay.com 2008
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