Ethics

Memorial to Gay Victims of Nazi Germany

By Ed Brayton

A new memorial has opened in Berlin dedicated to the thousands of gay victims of Adolf Hitler.

"This memorial is important from two points of view -- to commemorate the victims, but also to make clear that even today, after we have achieved so much in terms of equal treatment, discrimination still exists daily," Wowereit said as he inaugurated the memorial alongside Culture Minister Bernd Neumann.

Nazi Germany declared homosexuality a threat to the German race and convicted some 50,000 homosexuals as criminals. An estimated 10,000 to 15,000 gay men were deported to concentration camps, where few survived.

Full post as published by Dispatches from the Culture Wars on May 31, 2008 (boomark / email).