Gay Nazi victim memorial vandalized
The Berlin memorial to gay and lesbian Nazi victims has been vandalised.
Having only been erected on 27th May, a viewing window in the memorial and a fence around it were broken on 16th August.
Gunter Dworek, spokesman for the Lesbian and Gay Association (LSVD) told TheLocal.de that the attack was revolting, an outrage and a scandal.
He said a protest will be held at the memorial on Monday against the vandalism to draw attention to on-going discrimination.
The memorial was opened by Berlin’s first openly-gay mayor, Klaus Wowerit, and representatives of the International Lesbian and Gay Association (ILGA).
Of the memorial, an ILGA-Europe spokesperson said:
“The Berlin memorial has important symbolic value.
“It is in the centre of a city from where decades ago the policies of the extermination of homosexual people along with such groups as Jews, gypsies, Jehovah’s Witnesses and political dissidents, was conceived and the deadly orders were given.”
More than 50,000 gays and lesbians are believed to have been convicted under the Nazis due to their sexuality.
Up to 10,000 of them died in concentration camps.
Many survivors, far from being liberated, were transferred to prisons.
The laws used against gay people in Germany remained in the statute books until 1969.
It was only in 2002 that the German parliament issued a formal pardon for any gay people convicted by the Nazis.
