June 03, 2008

Holocaust denial at Yad Vashem?

Israel Gutman, Academic Adviser to Yad Vashem, Israel's holocaust museum, has said that Germany has made a mistake memorialising gay victims of the nazis opposite the memorial to the Jewish victims of the holocaust. Here's Pink News:
Israel Gutman of the Yad Vashem Institute in Jerusalem said that the Nazis only targeted German gay men, and that they were the victims of political battles within Hitler's National Socialist Party rather than a campaign of homophobia.

"The location was particularly poorly chosen for this monument," Mr Gutman told Polish newspaper Rzeczpospolita.

"If visitors have the impression that there was not a great difference between the suffering of Jews and those of homosexuals, it's a scandal."
Look at the differences he sets out. It was only the men, they were, after all, only German and, er, that's it. And that means that the suffering was somehow different than that of Jews. Indeed their suffering was better than that of Jews. And it's a scandal not to recognise that fact. And of course, placing a memorial for gays opposite that for Jews merely compounds the offence of memorialising the gay holocaust dead at all.

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