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 Construction To Start On Berlin Memorial To
Gay Victims Of Nazis
by 365Gay.com Newscenter Staff
Posted: June 4, 2007 - 1:00 pm ET
(Berlin) After nearly four years of delays
construction will begin this year on a monument to honor gays and lesbians
persecuted by the Nazis. Final approval of the design was made on Monday
the government announced.
A government committee approved the design by
Danish-born Michael Elmgreen and Norwegian native Ingar Dragset last year but
until now could not agree on minor changes for the memorial.
It will be a gray concrete slab, with a window
allowing visitors to view a film projected inside showing gay men and lesbians
kissing.
The statement said that the memorial will be
completed later in the year at a cost of slightly over $800,000.
It will sit on the edge of Tiergarten Park near
the memorial to the six-million Jews who died in the Holocaust.
The exact number of gay killed by the Nazis may
never be known. Adolf Hitler declared homosexuality an aberration that
threatened the German race. Some 50,000 homosexuals were convicted and an
estimated 10,000 to 15,000 gay men were deported to concentration camps, where
few survived.
The Nazi law against homosexuality remained on
the books in West Germany until 1969.
In 2002 the German parliament issued a formal
pardon for gays convicted under the Nazis.
There also is a monument to gay holocaust victims
is in San Francisco.
©365Gay.com 2007
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