German parliament pays tribute to victims of the Holocaust






Enrique Anarte

BERLIN (Thomson Reuters Foundation) – For the first time, the German parliament dedicated its annual Holocaust remembrance event on Friday to LGBTQ+ people who were killed or persecuted by the Nazis.

Bundestag President Berbel Bas acknowledged the parliament’s delay in formally recognizing gay, bisexual and transgender people as victims of the Holocaust, a move that has been taken in recent years by other German institutions.

“It is important to our culture of remembrance that we tell the stories of all victims of persecution, make visible their injustice, recognize their suffering,” Bas said in a speech to lawmakers on the occasion of International Holocaust Remembrance Day.

The Nazis killed an estimated six million Jews during the Holocaust and also persecuted and killed members of other groups such as the Roma community, people with disabilities and mental illness, and members of sexual and gender minorities.

Historians estimate that between 1933 and 1945, about 100,000 gays and bisexuals were arrested, and thousands were sent to concentration camps. Many of them didn’t survive.

Among the LGBTQ+ community, gay men were the main targets of National Socialism, but lesbian and bisexual women, as well as transgender people, were also harassed and killed.

“The last survivors of this group of victims have already died, and we have not heard them – their stories must be told by others,” Bas said.

During Friday’s ceremony at Germany’s parliament, lawmakers welcomed Klaus Schierdewan, a 76-year-old gay man convicted in 1964 under the country’s old laws criminalizing same-sex relationships that weren’t fully repealed until 1994.

“It is important for me that young people do not forget how much effort and effort it took us to be able to live the way we live now,” Shirdevan said.

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