New Berlin memorial erected to honor gays persecuted during Holocaust [video]
“[Another] part of our work of commemoration is becoming reality…. This memorial is important from two points of view – to commemorate the victims, but also to make clear that even today, after we have achieved so much in terms of equal treatment, discrimination still exists daily.”
Berlin’s mayor, Klaus Wowereit, who is gay, speaking at the opening of a new Holocaust Memorial in Berlin that is designed to remember the homosexual victims of persecution under the Nazi regime. (International Herald Tribune)
“We wanted to make a story that connects both the homosexual victims and the Jewish victims in a similar way, but, of course, we are also telling a different story.” — Ingar Dragset
“For us it was quite important to have a direct imagery of a love scene — a passionate scene, an emotional scene — between two same sex persons. Beacause that is the main problem in homophobia. Like, you can get whatever rights, you can get whatever acceptance on an abstract level, but they don’t want to look at us.” — Michael Elmgreen
Ingar Dragset and Michael Elmgreen, the designers of the Tiergarten Park memorial, speaking on camera to the Associate Press. The memorial appears to be a simple, sloping slab of gray concrete but features an opening through which people can view a video of a gay male couple kissing. Another article says that an agreement to change the video every two years was reached after lesbians remarked that they were being left out. A number of similar-looking structures were erected eariler across the street as a memorial to the Jewish victims of the Holocaust. (Associated Press video c/o YouTube)
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