I’m of two minds. I am glad that the monument exists, considering the fairly appalling history Germany (and the Allied forces who liberated the camps) has had with dealing with the issue of LGBT victims. On the other hand, gol-damn that thing is ugly. I can’t believe that this is the best design that someone could come up with. I get the whole “it’s an ugly thing, let’s make the memorial ugly too” aesthetic, but there’s ugly and then there’s fugly and this thing is fug-lee. I find the repeating video of men kissing to be needlessly confrontational as well. It’s not like this is some Queer Nation kiss-in where the idea is to shock the oblivious straighties out of their complacency. And it’s not like anyone in the Western world is unfamiliar with the notion that gay people kiss.
Wait, so the entire monument consists of a block of concrete with a video screen in the corner? And the screen plays videos of guys kissing? And that’s all?
Well, it’s better than nothing. It really drives me insane when people say that 6 million people were killed in the Holocaust, so I guess anything to raise awareness that there were other groups than Jews put to death is a good thing.
But…yikes, it seems pretty poorly thought-out and ugly.
Well, it is a big ugly chunk of rock, but apparently it was designed that way to visually connect with this Holocaust monument that’s across the street.
Uh, why? Isn’t that the generally recognised figure?
As others say, great that there is a monument to the concept but the form it’s taken doesn’t sound so good (too lazy to look at it, to be honest). I think the homomonument is much cooler.
Ah, I see. I even looked at that very link and didn’t see numbers anywhere that stood out, and I couldn’t be arsed to read the entire article.
Of course as one of the potential gassed it does bother me sometimes that we’re forgotten in the linking of Holocaust to Jews, but as I don’t like playing woeier than thou I tend not to get into it - the Holocaust was a horrible event that involved lots of different people, no-one can claim ownership over the historical fallout (of course that doesn’t stop people trying).
The video will be changed every two years. Of course I find the notion of a repeating video of two women kissing as needless as the current video of two men kissing.
Lesbians were taken to concentration camps but not generally specifically for being lesbian. They were lumped in under the black triangle, which was for the “asocial.”
But as the article explains: “In the Nazis’ meticulous records there is no word of the black triangle having been imposed on lesbians, or of lesbians as a group being confined to concentration camps.”
It was only male homosexuals who were thrown into concentration camps for being homosexual. The article mentions that of the four women, two were put there for political reason and two for being Jewish. The fact that they were lesbian had nothing to do with it, but was duly recorded anyway.
During the years I lived in Berlin, I went to a bar called Paulchen’s Oldtimer. It was a bar populated by older Gay men. I heard many stories, but one that sticks out in my mind was that of a man, probably in his late 80’s, who told me he and his lover were supposed to meet in the park one night. The man I was talking to told me he had to work late that night and by the time he got there, his friend had been found in the park, arrested and sent to a concentration camp - where he later died. This 80 year old man got tears in his eyes and still felt guilty for being late for meeting his lover - playing it over and over again in his mind - thinking maybe he might have saved him or the two of them could have dashed off and hidden somewhere, or - he could have gone with his friend and they would have died together so his friend would not have had to die alone.
