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Post by anniversary on Jan 27, 2005 10:10:14 GMT -8
1,100,000 people were sent to their deaths in the concentration camp complex at Auschwitz, a million of them were Jews. Today marks the sixtieth anniversary of the liberation of Auschwitz-Birkenau-Monowitz by the Red Army. Though Auschwitz is deservedly infamous, it was only one part of a network of concentration camps and death camps that were responsible for deaths of up to 10,000,000 people; at least 3,500,000 Jews, 2,000,000 Romany Gypsies and millions of Poles, Soviets, political prisioners and gay men and women.
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Post by anniversary on Jan 27, 2005 10:12:12 GMT -8
Sorry, my title was cut off. It should read:
January 27th 2005, The 60th anniversary of the liberation of Auschwitz-Birkenau
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Post by Jen on Feb 7, 2005 12:24:50 GMT -8
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Post by JS on Feb 7, 2005 18:34:35 GMT -8
The numbers of the gays are probably understatted. Firstly those issued with pink triangles were more commonly regarded as fodder for the various human experiments being surreptitiously carried out within the Third Reich rather than being regarded as a problematic section of society suitable for 'evacuation' or 're-settlement'. These experiments often involved unanesthetised, invasive surgery and could include outlandish procedures such as the attachment of gland tissue to a patient's body with a view to observing subsequent behaviour modification. More often than not patients would die as a result of untreated surgical wounds or would otherwise be euthanised once judged as being of no further scientific utility. Moreover these deaths, numbering in the tens of thousands, are not usually included in the fervently contested final death toll of the Holocaust.
Secondly, if we accept that one in twenty individuals are predominately homosexual then some further 300,000 gay men and women are likely to of died in the Holocaust, not due to their sexual orientation but because of their membership of 'undesirable' groups such as Jews, Gypsies and Slavs.
Irrespective of a final tally, gay men and women deserve recognition in any commemoration of the Holocaust precisely because they were a group deliberately targeted by the Third Reich because they did not fit an ideologically driven concept of the perfect Aryan and as such were subjected to brutal, unwarranted punishment as well as experimentation and latterly liquidation. In that respect it is intent and consequence rather than statistics that demand inclusion.
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