Ghost of a Flea has a fine post on the long-overdue memorial being put up in Berlin to commemorate the gay victims of the Nazi Holocaust.
Without taking anything away from the horror of the “Final Solution” that the Nazis unleashed against the Jews, it’s worth remembering that many other “undesirable” groups were subject to arrest, torture, imprisonment in concentration camps, “medical” experimentation, and execution in Germany during that era. Homosexuals, gypsies, political dissidents, Jehovah’s Witnesses, Communists and Trade Unionists … all were imprisoned and died by the thousands.
Some 100,000 men (only male homosexuality was a crime) were arrested under a harshened 1935 anti-sodomy statute. 5-15,000 of those convicted ended up in the concentration camps, where they were often treated harshly both by guards and inmates alike.
In a particuarly cruel irony, the homosexuals freed from the concentration camps by Allied forces … were then transferred to German prisons to serve out the remainder of their terms. Nor were they ever provided any reparations from the German state. The Nazi-era anti-sodomy law remained on the books in West Germany until 1969.
Let us never forget ….
UPDATE: And for those who might be forgetting … (via ITL?)
Thanks for the link to this post. With all the bother about gay marriage among the paleo-cons I think it is all the more important to remember what we are fighting for: liberty and justice for all.
Indeed.