LBGTQ+ World News: The Holocaust
The Auschwitz-Birkenau museum, situated at the site of the former German Nazi concentration camp in Poland, made a significant move on April 23, 2023, by acknowledging a gay victim of the Holocaust. The museum tweeted that "At least 77 men with pink triangles were imprisoned in Auschwitz, and another 25 could have been initially arrested for their real or alleged homosexuality but had a different prisoner category. Some scholars speak of up to 140 prisoners persecuted for their sexual orientation."
The tweet was posted on the birthday of Johann Mauler, a German man born on April 24, 1897, who was imprisoned at the concentration camp from November 12, 1941, until his murder on February 14, 1942. He was one of the 77 people imprisoned at Auschwitz for the crime of homosexuality, forced to wear a pink triangle on his prison uniform.
The museum's "Memory 4.0" project, an online resource that explores the fate and persecution of diverse groups deported to Auschwitz during World War II, including political prisoners, Jews, Roma, Soviet POWs, Jehovah's Witnesses, and queer people, was noted in the tweet. The portal includes resources such as educator guides that accurately discuss the course of history during one of the darkest periods in the world.
In conjunction with Germany's Federal Foreign Office supporting the Young People Remember campaign, the Memory 4.0 project is funded by the German initiative EVZ, Errinerung, Verantwortung, Zukunft, an endowment charged with "Remembrance, Responsibility, and Future" regarding the German people and the world's commitment to never forgetting the atrocities committed during the Holocaust at the hands of the Nazis.
More than one million people, most of them Jewish, were killed at Auschwitz, while the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum reports that hundreds, perhaps even thousands, of queer people were killed during the Holocaust.
In a remarkable move, the German parliament dedicated its Holocaust commemoration in Berlin this year to those killed by Nazis because of their gender identity or sexual orientation. The body also acknowledged the decades of persecution faced by LGBTQ+ people in Germany following World War II. The endowment's website states that its mission is "In memory of the victims of National Socialist injustice. Let us take responsibility. Together for the past, present, and future. For equal dignity and rights of all people."
Written By: Alice.in.Londini.land
