DISQUS

AMERICAblog: Berlin unveils memorial to gay victims of the Nazis

  • Indigo · 1 year ago
    It's a peep show, or is it a glory hole? How do you say "that's all wrong" in German?
    Well, as promised, I'm otta here. I'll be back next week.
  • Reidel · 1 year ago
    When Bill and Hllary rushed through DOMA and DADT in the middle of the night, I don't think they ever expected the truth to come out about their hateful campaigning. When Billary was caught red-handed photo-shopping Obama's skin color in an ad designed to enflame racism, she crossed a line. How can we as Democrats, support a family as corrupt and criminal as the Clintons?
  • SkippyFlipjack · 1 year ago
    Help, I need someone to talk me down from Freeper rage. I created an account in Freeperville, submitted two colorless posts -- one agreeing with another member, one making a non-political point -- and my posting privileges were revoked. The level to which they keep the sunlight out of their little meeting hall is astounding. It's no wonder they're all angry, spiteful paranoid freaks -- they occupy the most impermeable echo chamber on the web.
  • OlderAndWiser · 1 year ago
    Well, it's about time, although from some things I've read, high up officials in the Nazi Party were themselves homosexuals on the side...although their tastes tended to run to teenaged boys and secretive. I would almost bet that many of the "homosexuals" they arrested were also politically incorrect in other ways as well. And of course as we've seen in the US lately, the fascists hate everyone who doesn't toe the line politically but allow those who embrace their brand of fascism.

    But what an awful design...it looks more like a port-a-potty. Who designed that piece of junk?

    I'm sure many of us would have designed something entirely different. That one is reeks too much of the [water] closet.
  • tardigrade · 1 year ago
    It's not the best monument. Very very very depressing.
  • ndtovent · 1 year ago
    Good post, but there should be another caveat/add-on note the end, there...
    there were some gay holocaust survivors were put in regular prison for yet ANOther 20/30/40 years (or in mental institutions) after being rescued from the camps following WWII because homosexuality was still illegal under german law at the time. That's why most of the older ones were reluctant to talk about their experiences to interviewers in later years. A very few older gay men were interviewed for a couple of documentaries in the 80's and 90's, but it was very difficult finding them and getting them to talk.
  • ndtovent · 1 year ago
    Yeah, I don't like that AP photo, either. The big box with the trenchcoat guy peeping through the window is just too stereotypically degrading to gays.
  • Grimmlok · 1 year ago
    To me it looks like looking through the latchkey into the closet, where most gays had to hide or risk their lives
  • jr · 1 year ago
    60 years later and cons want gays treated like they were back then
  • hrh · 1 year ago
    Incomprehensible, from that photo.

    The gay memorial in Amsterdam is magnificent.
  • Rob Mule · 1 year ago
    Hideous...Is that Larry Craig in the picture? A Tom of Finland approach could have, at least, had a half-naked, hunky archetype discarding a trench coat...
  • mirth · 1 year ago
    Does anyone have an artistic interpretation of (what to me is) this monstrosity? It strikes me as...insulting, I guess the word is, deeply insulting, but I cannot explain why.
  • sherifffruitfly · 1 year ago
    I'll have a go at it - please note that math and philosophy are my thing, NOT art.

    It dually conveys the closeted lives gay folks were/are pressured to lead and at the same time the in-the-closet-ness of the "gay holocaust" in Germany (overshadowed by the purely Jewish component).

    Just a blind stab at it. I have no idea what the actually designer had in mind.
  • mirth · 1 year ago
    I guess I can see that, sherifffruitfly, and thank you for your interpretation.

    Still, I think the design (not to mention the every-two-years switch to females kissing) is very wrongheaded and does not represent the "are" of "were/are" and for that it seems perpetuating of discrimination, of something wrong.

    I don't like looking at it, in fact it makes me angry to look at it...but maybe the artist intended this reaction.

    Or maybe the artist simply isn't a very good artist.
  • mirth · 1 year ago
    Ok, last one of my wee thoughts:

    I think it would be a much better memorial if someone took a sledge hammer and bashed in one, and only one, of the concrete walls.
  • mirth · 1 year ago
    Much more pleasing memorials to gay victims of the holocaust:

    http://andrejkoymasky.com/mem/holocaust/ho08.html

    And a stirring commemorative video:

    http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OUWzlsA7qDk&eurl...