Holocaust Memorial Day: The lessons we should learn from the Nazi persecution of gay people

PinkNews publisher Benjamin Cohen reflects on the persecution of gay people by the Nazis as Britain marks Holocaust Memorial Day.

If I was alive 75-year-ago and living in Berlin and not London, my outlook would not have been looking good and not just because I’m Jewish. Like some of those who found themselves in concentration camps, I also have a disability, I am member of a trade union and perhaps more pertinently, like many of the people reading this article, I am gay.

2014 marks the 80th anniversary of the creation of a list of homosexuals, ordered by Hitler, who would later find themselves persecuted. In total, during their time in power, the Nazis arrested 100,000 people for homosexuality, imprisoning half of them including up to 15,000 in concentration camps. Many of those imprisoned died, some after sickening experiments by scientists trying to find the ‘cure’ for homosexuality.

Unfortunately, when the allies liberated the concentration camps, many of the gay people who were imprisoned were not set free. Instead they were transferred to prisons, then under the control of the allied forces. Their crime, homosexuality, something outlawed before the Nazis took power, remained on the statute book until 1968 in East Germany and 1969 in West Germany. Unlike other victims of Nazi persecution, they were not offered reparations and it took until 2002 for the German government to officially apologise for the Nazis’ crimes against gay people. Today memorials to the Nazi persecution of the gay community are found in Berlin, Amsterdam, San Francisco, Sydney and since earlier this month, in Tel Aviv.

Holocaust Memorial Day, marked today is the opportunity to remember all of the victims of Nazi persecution. The Nazi’s rule of terror was an era that witnessed the single worst example of misery that humanity has ever inflicted on itself. Today in my view, also provides moment of reflection for what happened still in our collective lifetimes and an opportunity to galvanise us never to allow the same persecution of minority groups happen again.

I believe that as a community, should use today as an opportunity for us to consider, given how many countries around the world continue to criminalise or discriminate LGBT people, how unchallenged prejudice can quickly and dramatically escalate into unimaginable brutality.

What happened during the Holocaust also stands to us as a warning to all of us that societies can go backwards as well as forwards. In the 1920s, Berlin was one of the gay capitals of the world, where Germany’s prohibition on homosexuality was widely ignored by the police and a large, open, flourishing gay community was in existence. Just before the Nazis took power, the German legislature was poised to repeal the legal ban of male homosexuality. It took a political climate that had nothing to do with gay people to radically alter the treatment of this minority group. The Nazis drew on deep rooted, latent homophobia within the population to stigmatise gay people to justify to ordinarily rational people the single largest act of persecution on the basis of sexuality that the world has ever seen, just as it engulfed the largest single act of anti-semitism on the planet.

What worries me is that eight decades on, as some countries such as Britain have moved forward so much with gay equality, other countries are moving backwards or have yet to move at all. Russia, which legalised homosexuality twenty years ago last year introduced draconian laws that severely clamp down on the rights of gay people and their families.

As a gay man, there are though, far worse places where I could live than Russia. In the majority of the countries of the Commonwealth, including 11 where our Queen is head of state, homosexuality is illegal and can result in life imprisonment. Even worse, there are five countries that routinely execute people for being gay. It seems incredible that in 2014, 78 countries around the world would either imprison me or put me to death simply for being gay, something that I chose no more than the accident of my birth than means that I am a Jew. It is clear that when it comes to gay people, at the least, there are still many lessons from the past that need to be learnt.

Benjamin Cohen is the publisher of PinkNews. He Tweets @benjamincohen

Variants of this article have previously appeared in Gay Times (GT) and the Jewish Chronicle.

http://www.pinknews.co.uk/2014/01/27/holocaust-memorial-day-the-lessons-we-should-learn-from-the-nazi-persecution-of-gay-people/

who put the fake pink badges on.

This is a misrepresentation and ANTI-SEMETIC.

ALLAKAKA wrote:who  put the fake pink badges on.

Are you serious? Those pink badges weren't fake, it was part of the Nazi persecution:





Here's the original, without the coloring -- you can still see the badges:

You can see the badges in both pictures, try looking harder

Dear me, another Holocaust denier

The only "lie" is that the first image has had color added to it to show that the badges were pink; something that a black and white photo can't capture.

It's called "photo illustration" and it's done all the time in media.

Ben_Reilly wrote:The only "lie" is that the first image has had color added to it to show that the badges were pink; something that a black and white photo can't capture.

It's called "photo illustration" and it's done all the time in media.

Ben you cannot reason with Holocaust deniers, they come out with all kinds of crap!

PhilDidge wrote:

Ben_Reilly wrote:The only "lie" is that the first image has had color added to it to show that the badges were pink; something that a black and white photo can't capture.

It's called "photo illustration" and it's done all the time in media.

Ben you cannot reason with Holocaust deniers, they come out with all kinds of crap!

Is Allakaka one, though? Because that takes a very special kind of stupid.

Ben_Reilly wrote:

PhilDidge wrote:


Ben you cannot reason with Holocaust deniers, they come out with all kinds of crap!

Is Allakaka one, though? Because that takes a very special kind of stupid.

Very much so.

Only a Holocaust denier would try to make such an absurd claim as he did claiming a lie when you can still see the badges.

PhilDidge wrote:You can see the badges in both pictures, try looking harder

Dear me, another Holocaust denier

I am not denying it but pointing out the exaggeration to suit an agenda.

Before you know it victims who DIDN'T have a PINK badge will be second class victims.

Where as I think ALL were EQUAL victims of a disgusting regime.

ALLAKAKA wrote:

PhilDidge wrote:You can see the badges in both pictures, try looking harder

Dear me, another Holocaust denier

I am not denying it but pointing out the exaggeration to suit an agenda.

Before you know it victims who DIDN'T have a PINK badge will be second class victims.

Where as I think ALL were EQUAL victims of a disgusting regime.

You posted "Lie"


It was not a lie though was it, it was for the benefit of showing the colour used for homosexual victims, being as the picture was in black and white.

So you very much showed the virtues of a Holocaust denier

PhilDidge wrote:

ALLAKAKA wrote:


I am not denying it but pointing out the exaggeration to suit an agenda.

Before you know it victims who DIDN'T have a PINK badge will be second class victims.

Where as I think ALL were EQUAL victims of a disgusting regime.

You posted "Lie"


It was not a lie though was it, it was for the benefit of showing the colour used for homosexual victims, being as the picture was in black and white.

So you very much showed the virtues of a Holocaust denier  

denying that a picture was not as original , is a holocaust denial . Your are DESPERATE to prove YOUR AGENDA.

ALLAKAKA wrote:

PhilDidge wrote:


You posted "Lie"


It was not a lie though was it, it was for the benefit of showing the colour used for homosexual victims, being as the picture was in black and white.

So you very much showed the virtues of a Holocaust denier  

denying that a picture was not as original , is a holocaust denial . Your are DESPERATE to prove YOUR AGENDA.

You called the picture a Lie not that it was not original, except we know it is was original. In fact if it had been in colour you would have seen the pink as bright as day, so why did you call something a lie, when it was the truth?

Please do tell

The picture was original, are now others where colour has been added to them all lies?

I don;t think so, as per usual you offer nothing to the debate and come off once again looking embarrassing.

Ben_Reilly wrote:

ALLAKAKA wrote:who  put the fake pink badges on.

Are you serious? Those pink badges weren't fake, it was part of the Nazi persecution:

A RED BADGE.



with a 'P' for political prisoner,

Ben_Reilly wrote:

ALLAKAKA wrote:who  put the fake pink badges on.

Are you serious? Those pink badges weren't fake, it was part of the Nazi persecution:

These badges are definitely PINK and worn by Homosexuals , easy to recognise as they are much larger than the standard one , they replaced the 'A' badge which meant Arse Fucker.

Catman wrote:

PinkNews publisher Benjamin Cohen reflects on the persecution of gay people by the Nazis as Britain marks Holocaust Memorial Day.

If I was alive 75-year-ago and living in Berlin and not London, my outlook would not have been looking good and not just because I’m Jewish. Like some of those who found themselves in concentration camps, I also have a disability, I am member of a trade union and perhaps more pertinently, like many of the people reading this article, I am gay.

2014 marks the 80th anniversary of the creation of a list of homosexuals, ordered by Hitler, who would later find themselves persecuted. In total, during their time in power, the Nazis arrested 100,000 people for homosexuality, imprisoning half of them including up to 15,000 in concentration camps. Many of those imprisoned died, some after sickening experiments by scientists trying to find the ‘cure’ for homosexuality.

Unfortunately, when the allies liberated the concentration camps, many of the gay people who were imprisoned were not set free. Instead they were transferred to prisons, then under the control of the allied forces. Their crime, homosexuality, something outlawed before the Nazis took power, remained on the statute book until 1968 in East Germany and 1969 in West Germany. Unlike other victims of Nazi persecution, they were not offered reparations and it took until 2002 for the German government to officially apologise for the Nazis’ crimes against gay people. Today memorials to the Nazi persecution of the gay community are found in Berlin, Amsterdam, San Francisco, Sydney and since earlier this month, in Tel Aviv.

Holocaust Memorial Day, marked today is the opportunity to remember all of the victims of Nazi persecution. The Nazi’s rule of terror was an era that witnessed the single worst example of misery that humanity has ever inflicted on itself. Today in my view, also provides moment of reflection for what happened still in our collective lifetimes and an opportunity to galvanise us never to allow the same persecution of minority groups happen again.

I believe that as a community, should use today as an opportunity for us to consider, given how many countries around the world continue to criminalise or discriminate LGBT people, how unchallenged prejudice can quickly and dramatically escalate into unimaginable brutality.

What happened during the Holocaust also stands to us as a warning to all of us that societies can go backwards as well as forwards. In the 1920s, Berlin was one of the gay capitals of the world, where Germany’s prohibition on homosexuality was widely ignored by the police and a large, open, flourishing gay community was in existence. Just before the Nazis took power, the German legislature was poised to repeal the legal ban of male homosexuality. It took a political climate that had nothing to do with gay people to radically alter the treatment of this minority group. The Nazis drew on deep rooted, latent homophobia within the population to stigmatise gay people to justify to ordinarily rational people the single largest act of persecution on the basis of sexuality that the world has ever seen, just as it engulfed the largest single act of anti-semitism on the planet.

What worries me is that eight decades on, as some countries such as Britain have moved forward so much with gay equality, other countries are moving backwards or have yet to move at all. Russia, which legalised homosexuality twenty years ago last year introduced draconian laws that severely clamp down on the rights of gay people and their families.

As a gay man, there are though, far worse places where I could live than Russia. In the majority of the countries of the Commonwealth, including 11 where our Queen is head of state, homosexuality is illegal and can result in life imprisonment. Even worse, there are five countries that routinely execute people for being gay. It seems incredible that in 2014, 78 countries around the world would either imprison me or put me to death simply for being gay, something that I chose no more than the accident of my birth than means that I am a Jew. It is clear that when it comes to gay people, at the least, there are still many lessons from the past that need to be learnt.

Benjamin Cohen is the publisher of PinkNews. He Tweets @benjamincohen

Variants of this article have previously appeared in Gay Times (GT) and the Jewish Chronicle.

http://www.pinknews.co.uk/2014/01/27/holocaust-memorial-day-the-lessons-we-should-learn-from-the-nazi-persecution-of-gay-people/

I KNOW I shouldnt, its not at all funny


BUT


some folks Really get the bad end of the stick