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Historians hold all the power. I'm always constantly surprised about how little our community know about themselves. Maybe its because we are a community not based on hereditary and family development, such as the Black Community, maybe its because we are a relatively young Liberation campaign - who knows, or maybe this is just another fall out from the poison of Section 28. But when I'm sitting in a bar with reasonably educated young LGBT people and I mention I've been invited to attend Holocaust Memorial Day, the first thing they say is "Oh yea I forgot you were Jewish. . . ", and its usually at this point I want to hit my head against a brick wall. 'Yes I am Jewish'. But, that's not the only reason I attend HMD Events, the Nazi's not only persecuted my family due to my heritage but they also attacked my other community - the LGB(T) one, and its this lack of knowledge within the Gay community that I worry about, they (the group of LGBT-ers) just simply don't know that our community were a group attacked by the Nazi's in WWII and that we were victims of the Holocaust, and is it really surprising when I was in school I was taught about Hitler and the atrocious atrocities of the Jewish Holocaust, not once was mentioned the fact that tens of thousands of Gay Men, Women, and Bisexuals, were often worked to death, experimented on, tortured, and if they were lucky, just murdered.

Prior to the Third Reich, Berlin was considered a liberal city, with many gay bars, nightclubs and cabarets. There had also been a fairly significant gay rights movement under Magnus Hirschfeld around the turn of the century. However the advancements of the gay community were soon erased with the coming to power of the Nazi Party.

Nazi ideology held that homosexuality was incompatible with National Socialism because gays did not reproduce and perpetuate the master race.

Hitler believed that homosexuality was "degenerate behavior" which posed a threat to the capacity of the state and the "masculine character" of the nation. Gay men were denounced as "enemies of the state" and charged with "corrupting" public morality and posing a threat to the German birthrate. About one million gay men were victimized by the Nazi regime. However gays were not initially treated in the same fashion as the Jews. Nazi Germany thought of German gay men as part of the "Master Race" and sought to force gay men into sexual and social conformity. Gay men who would not conform and switch sexual orientation were sent to concentration camps under extermination through work campaign.

Nazi persecution of gay men was carried out primarily through harsh enforcement of anti-gay laws, under which about 100,000 were arrested. 50,000 were sentenced to prison terms, with an unknown number committed to mental hospitals. Hundreds of gay men were castrated under court order. Some persecuted under these laws would not have identified themselves as gay. Such "anti-homosexual" laws were widespread throughout the western world until the 1960s and 1970s, many gay men did not feel safe to come forward with their stories until the 1970s when many of the laws were repealed.

At the age of 17, Frenchman Pierre Seel was detained by the invading Germans, who rifled local police files on homosexuals. "They saw our names of these lists", he says. "I ended up at the camp in Schirmeck".

"There was a hierarchy from weakest to strongest. The weakest in the camps were the homosexuals. All the way at the bottom".

"I was tortured, beaten…sodomised and raped!", Seel screams in anguish. "The Nazis stuck 25cm of wood up my arse…(it) still bleeds, even today".

His lover Jo suffered a worse fate. "He was condemned to die, eaten by dogs. German dogs! German Shepherds!", Seel shouts with rage. "That I can never forget".

The Nazis again intensified the war against "abnormal existence" in 1935, broadening the definition of homosexual behaviour and the grounds for arrest. Gossip and innuendo became evidence. A man could be incarcerated on the basis of a mere touch, gesture or look.

Later, Himmler authorised a scientific programme for the eradication of "this vice", with gay prisoners being subjected to gruesome medical experiments – including hormone implants and castration.

From 1933-1945, about 100,000 men were arrested under Paragraph 175 for the crime of homosexuality. Some were sent to prisons; others to concentration camps. The death rate of gay prisoners in the camps was 60 per cent, the highest among non-Jewish victims. Heinz Dormer, now a very frail 89 year-old, spent nearly ten years in prisons and concentration camps. In a quivering, barely audible voice he remembers the haunting, agonised cries from "the singing forest", a row of tall poles on which condemned men were hung: "Everyone who was sentenced to death would be lifted up onto the hook. The howling and screaming were inhuman…Beyond human comprehension".

Peter Tatchell
source: www.petertatchell.net/history/survivors.htm

. . . . This is why I support the Holocaust Memorial Foundation in all their work, because if we don't learn from the past we are bound to allow it to happen again. We must ensure that the far-right, such as the BNP, aren't allowed to develop any political gravitas, and why we must work with our Jewish Brothers and Sisters, and all other minority groups in stamping out any groundswell. We will soon be having Local Elections. The BNP currently has 21 councilors and will be hoping to increase their representation on local councils next year. In the 2005 general election the BNP received a record high vote and in 2004 they only missed getting elected to the London Assembly and European Parliament by a hair’s breath securing the highest vote ever for a fascist party in Britain. We must work together to combat this threat to our society.

Action Point

If you are an LGBT Officer, why don't you contact your local Jewish Society (J-Soc) and talk about joint events and campaigns that you could run together, if you can't find a J-soc contact in your Union, contact the Union of Jewish Students (details below), and I'm sure they will help, let us know about any campaigning work you get up to in your Union and beyond, and we will support you with it.

Let this memorial day be more than just a time of reflection let us see it as the beginning of a time of action, building the alliances amongst our groups, politicizing our Students, and fighting against oppression like all those who perished in the Holocaust.

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