Holocaust Monument for LGBTQ+ Victims Vandalized in Berlin

German authorities are investigating whether there is a connection between two arson attacks that were carried out in central Berlin that targeted three Holocaust memorials. Among the memorials was one dedicated to the LGBTQ+ people who died during the Nazi regime.

Saturday morning, arsonists attempted to burn a monument in Berlin-Tiergarten dedicated to LGBTQ+ people persecuted under the National Socialist government, the German newspaper Berliner Zeitungreports.

An unknown person threw a burning object at the memorial in the early hours of Saturday morning with a note containing a modified version of a Bible verse regarding gay people. The monument, which was erected in 2008, didn't suffer permanent damage.

Later that day, a book box at the “Gleis 17,” or Platform 17, Holocaust memorial in Grunewald, caught fire. A man allegedly set fire to a box inside the former phone booth that serves as a free book exchange location, according to the police, who cited witness reports.

Firefighters extinguished the flames, but almost all of the books had been destroyed by the fire. In the book box, the majority of the books were about Jewish life in Berlin during the Nazi era and the persecution of the Jews during that period.

Between 1941 and 1945, Grunewald station served as the deportation point for more than 50,000 Jewish men, women, and children who were killed in concentration camps in the eastern regions and at Auschwitz.

Up to about 15,000 gay men were sent to concentration camps during the Holocaust due to their sexuality. Imprisoned gay men were murdered, castrated, or used in horrendous medical experiments in concentration camps. At these camps, thousands of lesbians, transgender people, and sex workers were detained under brutal conditions and branded “degenerates.”

The Berlin-Brandenburg Lesbian and Gay Association announced on Monday that the LGBTQ+ monument had been the focus of an attack attacked.

“We are shocked by the inciting energy of both acts and hope that the person responsible will be caught quickly in both cases,” said the Lesbian and Gay Association.