Holocaust Remembrance Day ( 2 photos of gay memorials in Europe)

http://www.aqurette.com/journal/2008/04/holocaust-remembranc.html

Wednesday, 30 April 2008
Holocaust Remembrance Day
By Christopher Aqurette




Holocaust Remembrance Day should have been observed on 2 May 2008, but since this is a Friday, Israel will observe it tomorrow. On this day, the world remembers the six million Jews that were killed by the Nazis. Unfortunately, no day is set aside for remembering the many gay men killed in concentration camps. No surprise really considering that most of the ideas that motivated the killings of gays are still popular in wide circles, not least among people that should know better than to attack minority groups.

When I visited Berlin last year, I snapped a few photographs of the gay memorial at Nollendorfplatz in Schöneberg, an inner-city district emptied of its vibrant gay culture by the Nazis in the mid-1930s. I post two of the pictures here. This is just one of many similar monuments in Europe. And in Germany, more are planned as people recognize the unjust treatment of gays in the past. On 12 December 2003, the German Federal Lower House (Bundestag) decided to establish an official memorial site in central Berlin. To my knowledge, this site is not yet finished.

The biggest and by far most famous gay memorial to date is the Homomonument in Amsterdam. A beautiful place at the heart of the city where gay tourists and others often stop to pray and lay down flowers in memory of those lost to homophobic violence.

a couple came by and sort of laughed at it, not truly hateful, but a laugh as if this was something not really important.