It is also important that the LGBT community not forget, either. Many LGBT people attended the opening of the US Holocaust Memorial Museum in April 1993 to view not only the sacred museum exhibits but the gay collection, with a teaching section, which was included thanks in large part to the efforts of longtime social justice advocate Rabbi Denise L. Eger of Congregation Kol Ami in West Hollywood and longtime gays politicos David Mixner and Roberta Bennett. In an email, Eger said:
Gay men and lesbians were targeted by the Nazis along with Jews, Jehovah Witness’, Roma, communists, political prisoner, and the physically and mentally disabled. As we mark the 70th anniversary of the liberation of Auschwitz, which is a potent embodiment of the evil perpetrated by Nazi Germany, we must also remember that gay men and lesbians were imprisoned, tortured and murdered by this evil. And also were among those who served in the Allied Armed Forces, as the liberators.
This is why many under the leadership of David Mixner and Roberta Bennett, a group of national LGBT leaders worked together to include the stories of the gay men and lesbians in the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum in Washington, DC. Through my work with this group, we were able to meet gay survivors of the Holocaust and document their experiences. Some were Jewish, some were not.
As the survivors of the Holocaust have aged and many have died, it is up to younger generations of LGBT people to remember their stories and include them at every Holocaust Memorial Day.
UK Deputy Prime Minister Nick Clegg told PinkNews (named in honor of the gay Holocaust pink triangle):
“Today we remember the millions of innocent people who lost their lives in the Holocaust, one of the worst genocides known to man. Their crimes, nothing more than the way they were born.
“As we pay tribute to them, we must never forget the tens of thousands of gay people who were so brutally persecuted and executed at the hands of the Nazis, simply because of their sexuality.
“The symbol of the pink triangle, once intended as a badge of shame, today stands as an international symbol of freedom and pride. From the dark shadow of history rises a neon emblem of diversity and hope.
“Any memorial remembering the Holocaust should recognise the persecution of non-Jewish victims whilst maintaining the centrality of the six million murdered Jews.”
Monuments in Tel Aviv, Amsterdam, Berlin and San Francisco already recognize the gay and lesbian victims of the Holocaust, Jewish and non-Jewish.
But as often happens with LGBT history, the gay story runs on its own, sometimes invisible, parallel track, while also intersecting with the rise of Hitler and the decision to eliminate all Jews from Europe. That decision was extended to gays.
“We must exterminate these people (homosexuals) root and branch,” said Heinrich Himmler, head of the dreaded Nazi SS in the film Paragraph 175. “We can’t permit such danger to the country; the homosexual must be entirely eliminated.”
Why?
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