Rappler – AFP, January 10, 2014
A man embraces his dog after he laid down a rose on a new monument commemorating jewish and non-jewish people who died under the Nazi-regime due to their sexuality. Photo by Oliver Weiken/EPA |
TEL AVIV,
Israel – Israel unveiled Friday, January 10, a memorial in Tel Aviv to remember
the gay and lesbian victims of Nazi persecution, in a ceremony attended by
Germany's ambassador.
Members of
Tel Aviv's gay community turned out to see the stone monument, modelled on the
pink triangle Nazis made homosexuals wear in concentration camps during World
War II, and features inscriptions in German, Hebrew and English.
"In
addition to the extermination of Europe's Jews, the Nazis committed many
atrocities, in an attempt to destroy anyone who was considered different,"
Tel Aviv Mayor Ron Huldai said at the unveiling.
"This
monument reminds us all how important it is for us to respect every human
being," he said.
The heart
of Israel's cultural life and a bastion of secularism, Tel Aviv hosts an annual
gay pride parade with relatively few objections from the country's religious
community, unlike similar events in Jerusalem that have seen violence and even
one stabbing.
Israel is
widely seen as having liberal gay rights policies, despite the hostility shown
towards homosexuals, particularly men, from the ultra-orthodox Jewish
community.
German
Ambassador Andreas Michaelis said "it is important that we put up
monuments and name streets, in order to remember things that happened in the
past. But they must be first and foremost reminders for the future."
Adolf
Hitler's Nazi Germany sent thousands of homosexuals to concentration camps in
the 1930s and 1940s, and the Gestapo secret police arrested an estimated
100,000 men for being gay. – Rappler.com
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