LGBTIQ groups call for Holocaust museums’ recognition of Nazi atrocious committed against homosexuals
National LGBTIQ advocacy organisation, just.equal has written to federal Treasurer, Josh Frydenberg, seeking a commitment that proposed Holocaust museums will present information about all the victims of the Holocaust.
The Treasurer has announced funding for a number of Holocaust museums across Australia that will memorialise Jewish victims of the Holocaust and educate the public about their persecution.
Spokesperson for just.equal, Rodney Croome, said: “We applaud the proposed Holocaust museums and wholeheartedly support the remembrance of the Jewish victims of the Holocaust.
Our hope is that the museums will also present information about the other groups who were persecuted under Nazism, including LGBTIQ people, people with disability, Roma, political prisoners, and various religious, racial, ethnic and language groups.
Often the persecution of different groups intersected, making it difficult to present the suffering of one group and not others.
An example is the experience of Kitty Fisher, a Jewish Holocaust survivor who later lived in Sydney.
She credited her survival of Auschwitz to a man imprisoned for homosexuality who brought food to her and her sister.
Mr Croome said the Tasmanian Government has already given an assurance that the new Holocaust museum in that state “will cover all groups who were persecuted during this dark time in our world history”.
A memorial in Tel Aviv to homosexual victims of the Nazi regime
We seek a similar assurance from the federal government, and other state and territory governments.”
Michael Barnett as a co-convenor of Aleph Melbourne who wholeheartedly endorses Rodney Croome’s call for all Holocaust museums to educate about all groups persecuted by the Nazi regime.
Yes, there is a place for LGB victims of Naziism in museums perpetuating the Shoah, but it must be remembered that only two groups were slatedfor global extermination: the Jews and the Romanies. Of those two, only Jews were treated with the grossest of cruelty.
There were others as well: Communists, Jehova’s Witnesses, prostitutes and criminals. All of those should be remembered. So too should be the victims of other massacres.
But what must not be forgotten is that while we have had many companions on our path of pain and death, the Shoah was the most hellish within the Nazi hell and is uniquely concerned with the suffering of Jews.
In reaponse to Paul Winter,
my understanding that all the Homosexuals were rounded up and put in to concentration camps. The Pink Triange was larger than the other symbols in an effort to make them more identifiable for abuse from the guards and other prisoners.
The homosexuals were used for medical experiments.
It is estimated that up to 15,000 homosexuals were killed in the gas chambers.
Also to be remember is the fact that whilst homosexuals were free prior to Hitler’s rule, those that survived where kepts in prison for years after the end of the war.
Finally, it should be noted that one of the first acts of the regime was to destroy the largest and most sophisticated museam and library of gender diverse people in the world, with the books burned and the museam destroyed.