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U.S. gives $500,000 to Nazis' Gay victims
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U.S. gives $500,000 to Nazis' Gay victims An international organization that represents and memorializes gays and lesbian persecuted during World War II will get more than $500,000 from a fund dedicated to helping the survivors of Nazi persecution and to preserving their history. The Pink Triangle Coalition, made up of eight advocacy organizations in Europe, Israel and the United States, will distribute the $504,210 grant to projects in Germany and the United States dedicated to public education about the Nazi persecution of gays and lesbians. For nearly 60 years, GLBT advocacy groups have fought for official recognition of the Nazi persecution of gays and lesbians, until now with limited success. Julie Dorf, one of the founders of the Pink Triangle Coalition and former director of the International Gay and Lesbian Human Rights Commission, said "[this grant] finally validates that [the Nazi persecution] happened and shows that it was wrong and should never happen again anywhere in the world." Ralf Dose, of Berlin's Magnus Hirschfeld society added, "[this grant] also underscores how little has been done by a number of governments, particularly Germany. We are still waiting for the German government to even consider true reparations for the gay victims of the Nazi period." Grant from Nazi gold The grant comes from the U.S. portion of the International Nazi Persecutee Relief Fund. The governments of 23 countries created the fund in 1997, partly from gold that Nazis looted from occupied countries. This isn't the first time money from the fund has gone to gays and lesbians. In 2000, the U.S. portion of the Relief Fund gave $70,000 to the Pink Triangle Coalition, which distributed part of it to seven gay European survivors of Nazi persecution and used the rest to fund a project searching for more survivors. One of the seven survivors who benefited from last years' disbursement, a 78-year-old Polish man, wrote to the Pink Triangle Coalition, saying, "All my efforts to be recognized a survivor of Nazi persecution and to get a compensation have been turned down by the German government. I am overwhelmed now to receive such a sign of recognition. The financial assistance given to me so unexpectedly was a gift from heaven." The new grant will be used to honor the Nazis' gay and lesbian victims by creating a CD-ROM, a Web site and a related exhibit at the Gay Museum in Berlin. Another project will publish a memorial book listing the names of gay and lesbian Berliners killed by the Nazis. A third project will promote the distribution of "Paragraph 175," a documentary about the Nazi persecution of gays. The film's title refers the sodomy provision in the German penal code. More than 100,000 arrested From 1933 to 1945, more than 100,000 men were arrested for homosexuality by the Nazis under Paragraph 175. As many as 15,000 were sent to concentration camps and only about a third survived internment. Because Paragraph 175 remained on the books until the 1960s, many of those gay men who survived their wartime internment remained in prison for years afterward. Although lesbians were also persecuted by the Nazis, the German laws against homosexuality did not apply to women (the Austrian laws, though, did cover lesbians), and therefore, few were arrested or interned explicitly for being lesbian. However, the vibrant pre-war lesbian subcultures in Germany and Nazi-occupied countries were destroyed, and many women were sent to prison as political prisoners or as "degenerates" rather than as lesbians. In November 2000, the German government for the first time officially apologized for the Nazi persecution of gays and lesbians.
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Randy Dotinga and Gregg Drinkwater, Gay.com / PlanetOut.com Network Friday, June 1, 2001 / 04:22 PM
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