Germans React to Gay Holocaust Memorial Vandalization

German officials have launched an investigation after a monument memorializing gay Holocaust victims was vandalized last week, Reuters reports. Vandals smashed a window in the monument, a large gray cube in Tiergarten park in Berlin. Through the window, onlookers could see a picture of two men kissing. The perpetrators also ripped down fencing.

"This cowardly and shocking act is an attack on the image we have of ourselves as a tolerant and open city," said Frank Henkel, a Berlin lawmaker and member of the conservative Christian Democrats. "Obviously many people still have homophobic tendencies."

The monument was unveiled in May, honoring the 50,000 gay men who were convicted by the Nazis. Some men were castrated, and thousands were sent to concentration camps.

Rudlof Brazda, a Buchenwald concentration camp survivor, called the attack shocking and appalling in a statement from the Germany Lesbian and Gay Federation.

"To see such a thing today after all the suffering and horror we had to go through, it is cruel," he said. "People don't want to accept that there are people who are different from them by nature." (The Advocate)

Reader Comments

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Name: Terre
Date posted: 2008-08-21 3:26 PM
Hometown: San Luis Obispo

Comment:

I think it will end up good in that people make a judgement about what is essentially vandalism and therefore detrimental to their interests as citizens, business owners, families with gay members... So much of what we're doing is about getting out of the closet and being visible in the larger society. This incites the haters, but staying in the closet is not an option for more and more gays. We refuse to live undercover because the consequences are daily, whereas openness is freedom and in my experience, not dangerous. The tide of opinion is turning as people see how nasty these haters are, and how unreasonable and unfair they are.

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