Yesterday was the day set aside by the UN on which the world remembers those affected by the Holocaust.
It seems fitting to head back to Berlin on Travel Tuesday to view another of the memorials to Holocaust victims that the German government has built over the past 10 years. In 2008 the German government unveiled a memorial to gay men killed in the Holocaust, set in Berlin's central Tiergarten Park, opposite the Jewish Holocaust Memorial.
The memorial consists of a four meter-tall block of concrete with a small window on one side. Through the glass, visitors can see a black-and-white film of same-sex couples kissing. An inscription says, "A simple kiss could get you in trouble."
In front of the memorial lay a bouquet of roses left by a previous visitor.
The Holocaust's impact on the Jewish population of Europe is better known than the fate of gays under the Nazis, but Hitler's regime was profoundly homophobic, and gays were relentlessly persecuted. In fact, homosexuality was persecuted to a degree unprecedented in history.
In 1935, the National Socialists issued an order making all male homosexuality a crime; the provisions governing homosexual behavior in Section 175 of the Criminal Code were significantly expanded and made stricter. A kiss was enough reason to prosecute. There were more than 50,000 convictions. Under Section 175, the punishment was imprisonment; in some cases, convicted offenders were castrated. Thousands of men were sent to concentration camps for being gay; many of them died there. They died of hunger, disease and abuse or were the victims of targeted killings.
I have enjoyed your latest travel series and wanted to say thanks for presenting The Holocaust and all who were victims in a balanced manner.
We were in Cambodia last year . Another sad and extremely moving act of genocide.
Posted by: michele Harrison | February 03, 2014 at 11:23 AM
I confess michele, that I have a hard time wrapping my head around it. I get cranky with people but can't imagine watching or even participating in genocide - yet it is so common on our planet. SIGH
Posted by: JDeQ | February 14, 2014 at 09:10 AM