Remembering The Prosecution of Homosexuals
Today it was Memory Day: everyone recalled the extermination of an entire people, organized by the Nazis, when 6 million Jews were killed...
I watched a lot of interviews on television but never heard of anything about homosexuals, who were victims of insanity and totalitarianism as well as Jews.
Apparently someone has thought that gay people deserved to die but not to be remembered...
In my opinion the Shoa must be an occasion to reflect and my thoughts concentrated on two points:
* It's very easy to manipulate the collective conscience - and this is still going on today - making people believe that something is wrong and despisable, otherwise such a massacre couldn't have happened.
* Relatively few years ago gay people - even if they weren't caught in the act, but on suspicion - were exterminated, tortured, beaten and burnt ... if today we are just discriminated, this has got to be a progress...
Today I wanna quote here from a book named "I, Pierre Seel, deported homosexual, A Memoir of Nazi Terror", written by Pierre Seel and Jean Le Bitoux.
These lines can be easily found on the Internet but it doesn't matter - we never remember enough of barbarity.
"One day the loudspeakers ordered us to report immediately to the roll-call site. Shouts and yells urged us to be there without delay. Surrounded by SS men, we had to form a square and stand at attention, as we did for morning roll call. The commandant appeared with his entire general staff. I assumed he was going to bludgeon us once again with his blind faith in the Reich, together with a list of orders, insults and threats - emulating the infamous outpourings of his master, Adolph Hitler. But the actual ordeal was far worse: an execution. Two SS men brought a young man to the center of the square. Horrified, I recognized Jo, my loving friend, who was only 18 years old. I hadn't previously spotted him in the camp. Had he arrived before or after me? We hadn't seen each other during the days before I was summoned by the Gestapo.
Now I froze in terror. I prayed that he would escape their lists, their roundups, their humiliations. And here he was, before my powerless eyes, which filled with tears. Unlike me, he had not carried dangerous letters, torn down posters, or signed any statements. What had happened? What had the monsters accused him of? Because of my anguish I have completely forgotten the wording of the death sentence.
The loudspeakers broadcast some noisy classical music while the SS stripped him naked and shoved a tin pale over his head. Next, they sicced their ferocious German shepherds on him: the guard dogs first bit into his groin and thighs, then devoured him right in front of us. His shrieks of pain were distorted and amplified by the pain in which his head was trapped. My rigid body reeled, my eyes gaped at so much horror, tears poured down my cheeks, I fervently prayed that he would black out quickly.
Since then I sometimes wake up howling in the middle of the night. For fifty years now that scene has kept ceaselessly passing and repassing through my mind. I will never forget the barbaric murder of my love - before my eyes, before our eyes, for there were hundreds of witnesses... Why are they still silent today? Have they all died? It's true that we were among the youngest in the camp and that a lot of time has gone by. But I suspect that some people prefer to remain silent forever, afraid to stir up the hideous memories, like that one among so many others."
I watched a lot of interviews on television but never heard of anything about homosexuals, who were victims of insanity and totalitarianism as well as Jews.
Apparently someone has thought that gay people deserved to die but not to be remembered...
In my opinion the Shoa must be an occasion to reflect and my thoughts concentrated on two points:
* It's very easy to manipulate the collective conscience - and this is still going on today - making people believe that something is wrong and despisable, otherwise such a massacre couldn't have happened.
* Relatively few years ago gay people - even if they weren't caught in the act, but on suspicion - were exterminated, tortured, beaten and burnt ... if today we are just discriminated, this has got to be a progress...
Today I wanna quote here from a book named "I, Pierre Seel, deported homosexual, A Memoir of Nazi Terror", written by Pierre Seel and Jean Le Bitoux.
These lines can be easily found on the Internet but it doesn't matter - we never remember enough of barbarity.
"One day the loudspeakers ordered us to report immediately to the roll-call site. Shouts and yells urged us to be there without delay. Surrounded by SS men, we had to form a square and stand at attention, as we did for morning roll call. The commandant appeared with his entire general staff. I assumed he was going to bludgeon us once again with his blind faith in the Reich, together with a list of orders, insults and threats - emulating the infamous outpourings of his master, Adolph Hitler. But the actual ordeal was far worse: an execution. Two SS men brought a young man to the center of the square. Horrified, I recognized Jo, my loving friend, who was only 18 years old. I hadn't previously spotted him in the camp. Had he arrived before or after me? We hadn't seen each other during the days before I was summoned by the Gestapo.
Now I froze in terror. I prayed that he would escape their lists, their roundups, their humiliations. And here he was, before my powerless eyes, which filled with tears. Unlike me, he had not carried dangerous letters, torn down posters, or signed any statements. What had happened? What had the monsters accused him of? Because of my anguish I have completely forgotten the wording of the death sentence.
The loudspeakers broadcast some noisy classical music while the SS stripped him naked and shoved a tin pale over his head. Next, they sicced their ferocious German shepherds on him: the guard dogs first bit into his groin and thighs, then devoured him right in front of us. His shrieks of pain were distorted and amplified by the pain in which his head was trapped. My rigid body reeled, my eyes gaped at so much horror, tears poured down my cheeks, I fervently prayed that he would black out quickly.
Since then I sometimes wake up howling in the middle of the night. For fifty years now that scene has kept ceaselessly passing and repassing through my mind. I will never forget the barbaric murder of my love - before my eyes, before our eyes, for there were hundreds of witnesses... Why are they still silent today? Have they all died? It's true that we were among the youngest in the camp and that a lot of time has gone by. But I suspect that some people prefer to remain silent forever, afraid to stir up the hideous memories, like that one among so many others."
