On Sunday, which marked the annual Holocaust Remembrance Day, a program of events in Gainesville, Fla. honored gay victims of Nazi persecution.
Coordinators at B'nai Israel Jewish Center honored gay Holocaust victims as a reminder of the sinister forces that underlie all hate, including recent crimes in the community, according to The Gainesville Sun.
"Recent homophobic events in the city and the efforts to introduce bigotry and intolerance into the mayor's race showed us that this was a poignant time for us to introduce this topic," Holocaust Memorial Program committee member Phillip
Schwartz told the Sun.
According to the Sun, keynote Speaker Geoffrey Giles, a history professor at the University of Florida, planned to contrast the parallel Nazi depictions of Jews and homosexuals, and their experiences in the Holocaust.
"The Holocaust is something that really concerns us all in terms of the relative ease with which hate groups can really gain support," said Giles. "And how easily that can spiral out of control."
Estimates vary widely as to the number of gay victims of the Holocaust. Some figures number in the hundreds of thousands.
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