His memorial service Holocaust in the German Parliament will for the first time also focus on the memory of the people who were persecuted for their sexual orientation on this year’s 78th anniversary of the liberation of the Auschwitz-Birkenau camp.
Since January 27, 1996, German parliamentarians have been organizing a ceremony on the anniversary of the liberation of the Nazi death camp traditionally focused on the memory of the 6 million Jews exterminated by Adolf Hitler’s regime.
Even if German President Roman Herzog (1994-1999) mentioned in 1996 to the tragic fate of gay men and women under the Nazi regimethe community activists insist that their own history has been marginalized, even forgotten.
Today’s ceremony in the Bundestag, in which their persecution will take center stage, is “an important symbol of recognition of the plight and dignity of the imprisoned, tortured and murdered victims”, gay men and women, according to Henny Engels of the union for the rights of homosexuals. “This group is important to me because it still experiences hostility and discrimination,” said Bundestag President Berbel Bas.
The pink star
Remembering that the Holocaust was their primary goal Jewsthe director of Yad Vashem in Jerusalem, Danny Dayan, welcomed this extension of the memorial by the German parliament.
“The Holocaust was an attack on humanity: on LGBTQI+ people, on Roma and Sindi, on people who suffered from mental illness, but above all on Jews,” Danny Dayan told AFP recently. “We respect and honor all victims.”
During the ceremony which will take place in the historic building of the Reichstag, in the heart of Berlin, the 80-year-old Dutch Jewess Rosette Katz, whose parents perished in Auschwitz, will speak in the Semicircle.
Close to 80 years after the liberation of the concentration camps, there will be no testimony from a survivor of the Nazi persecution of the LGBTI+ community. Instead, actors will read texts that tell tragic stories of homosexuals under the Hitler regime.
The German Sindervan, who was convicted in 1964 for his homosexuality, will come to give his own testimony in the name of all those who continued to be persecuted after the war, under the Hitlerian legislation that remained in place, reports the Athenian-Macedonian News Agency, citing AFP.
In West Germany, section 175 of the penal code that criminalized homosexuality will return to its pre-Nazi regime in 1969, before being permanently repealed in 1994. In East Germany, Nazi legislation will remain in place until 1968. .
The rehabilitation of those convicted of the Nazi period will be voted on in 2002 in the now united Germany. But, we should reach March 2017 for the rehabilitation of the 50,000 people persecuted after 1945 and the payment of reparations. At the time, many of the victims were no longer alive,” said the speaker of the German parliament.
Source: News Beast
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