Whose Holocaust? Plan to Recognize Gay Victims at Memorial Sparks Row
By Alex Weisler
A plan to memorialize gay male victims of Nazism amid a collection of memorial stones for Holocaust victims in a quiet half-acre patch of Brooklyn has provoked an outcry.
New York State Assembly Member Dov Hikind, a Brooklyn Democrat whose many Orthodox constituents include numerous Holocaust survivors, has decried the planned addition as a distortion of the Holocaust’s meaning with regard to Jews.
“It’s easy to say, let’s include everybody, let’s be universal, diversity is great,” he said. But he added, “It just isn’t fair. It diminishes and really dilutes what the Holocaust is.”
Hikind and the Holocaust Memorial Committee, steward of the tiny Holocaust Memorial Park in the Sheepshead Bay section of Brooklyn, are calling for the park’s memorial stones to be restricted to Jewish victims of Hitler. But the plan, approved by the city’s parks department, to commemorate non-Jewish victims of the Nazi regime there is proceeding thus far.
On June 9, representatives of the International Association of Lesbian and Gay Children of Holocaust Survivors, which proposed the addition, could be found combing the bayside memorial to measure unmarked stone pillars and determine if memorial text could be carved on them, association co-chair Rick Landman said.
The altercation raises a question that Jews have faced with increasing frequency: Whose Holocaust is it, anyway? Roma Gypsies, the disabled and gay men were among those also especially targeted by the Nazis. According to historians, though, only Jews and Roma were targeted for annihilation. Altogether, the Nazis are estimated to have murdered some 11 million from their coming to power in 1933 until their downfall in 1945.
Flanked by Emmons Avenue and Shore Boulevard, at the easternmost end of Sheepshead Bay, the memorial, built in 1997, consists of a tall eternal flame sculpture — engraved with a short statement on the Holocaust and the nations affected by the genocide — surrounded by two adjacent gardens of stone markers, each of which features either a paragraph or two of history or a list of victims’ names.
For $360 per engraved line, donors to the non-profit Holocaust Memorial Committee can pay to have a victim’s name printed on one of the stone markers. The registration form for this service, found on the committee’s Web site, asks donors to provide the victim’s name and a brief history of his or her Holocaust experience. The committee then meets to verify the authenticity of the proposed inscription, committee treasurer and past president Alfred Gollomp said.
Gollomp complained that in signing on to the IALGCHS proposal, Mayor Michael Bloomberg, City Council Speaker Christine Quinn and the city’s parks department were ignoring a memorandum that gives the Brooklyn-based group control over the park markers.
“The parks department is going over our heads… and Miss Quinn and the City Council probably [don’t] give a damn because of who she is,” he said referring to Quinn, who is gay. “What’s going to happen is going to happen. There’s nothing we can do about it.”
Landman said he’s not looking for a fight with Hikind. He just wants to get his pillars — set to commemorate “the homosexual community,” Gypsies, Jehovah’s Witnesses, political prisoners and the disabled — inscribed.
“To me, I think it’s all part of the history of the Nazi era. Everyone who was innocent and was murdered should be memorialized,” he said. “This is not an attack on the 6 million or their memories.”
At a press conference June 8 to inaugurate the High Line, Manhattan’s newest public park, Bloomberg was asked by a reporter about the controversy and said, “It wasn’t only the Jews that were massacred.” Hikind says it’s this comment that most incenses him.
“That is exactly… making equivalency,” Hikind said. “Victims are victims, but the systematic annihilation, the Final Solution, was directed against the Jewish people and no one else.”
Hikind said he sent a letter to Bloomberg inviting him to change the name of the park to the “Victims of the Nazis Memorial Park.” A broad name like that, he says, would produce no objections.
Jason Post, a member of Bloomberg’s press office, said he didn’t know if the mayor had received Hikind’s letter.
Some Holocaust experts point to a third way of dealing with the problem: acknowledging and memorializing other groups’ suffering as a means of both illuminating their struggles and highlighting the singularity of the Jewish experience under the Nazis.
“In order to understand what is unique about the victimization of the Jews, you must understand where their fate paralleled and where their fate differed from other Nazi victims,” said Michael Berenbaum, the original project director of the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum in Washington, from 1988 to 1993. Berenbaum, who employed this approach at the Washington museum, said it has since been used at Yad Vashem, the Museum of Jewish Heritage, and other institutions around the country and the world.
“He’s 20 years behind the times in the debate,” Berenbaum said of Hikind. “The question becomes how you include [non-Jewish Nazi victims] in a way that speaks about the uniqueness of the Holocaust.”
Though a light rain kept most Brooklynites away from the park on the morning of June 9, those milling about the memorial or strolling bayside offered strikingly different opinions on the city’s plan.
Milena Boev, a child care provider from nearby Bensonhurst, called opposition to including non-Jewish victims “a kind of discrimination.”
“If someone decided to build a park for just the gays and Gypsies, what would the Jews say?” she said. “It’s a bit arrogant.”
But Ellen Retsepter of Sheepshead Bay doesn’t buy it. If the Gypsies need a memorial, she said, then make a memorial for the Gypsies.
“I think it should be just for Jews,” said Retsepter, who works in the financial industry. “I don’t know why you need to combine all the groups together.”
Contact Alex Weisler at weisler@forward.com
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Jewish gay men and lesbians were murdered in the Holocaust.
This is a city owned park (not a private Jewish park) dedicated to the 6 million Jews and the other 5 million innocent victims. All we have been trying to do for 13 years to do give more details of what happened to the other victims of the Nazi ers. Not to equate them; but one must see how a civilized country like Germany evolved into a murderous killing machine by first starting with groups such as the disabled and homosexuals and political opponents and then reached the point where they arrested my father and grandfather and sent them to Dachau on Kristallnacht. 17 members of my family perished in the Holocaust. But I am also gay and want the entire history of the era to be studied and show how discrimination can lead to death. "Never Again" is true for all of the victims!
I think that the entire city will gain from our Park when more history is there for people to read. You will read about the comparative numbers of victims, and how their treatments differed. But all should be memorialized.
We must remember the past and learn how to make sure it doesn't repeat. I hope to see everyone at the unveiling of the new markers and thank Supreme Memorials for donating the inscribing. The City is not paying the inscriptions.
Rick Landman Co-chair of the International Association of Lesbian and Gay Children of Holocaust Survivors www.infotrue.com
If this is done...then it must be that all the groups are included - Catholics, dwarves, etc. Do not leave anyone out.
Do you have the approximate # of each of these other groups killed? This should be listed under the group itself on the stone.
That would in effect illustrate the difference between the groups. However, the same hatred killed them all. Just like sharing love, sharing sorrow does not diminish it. Having all groups acknowledged would really do a lot to shut the holocaust deniers up. Strength in numbers.
About 5,000 gays were killed by the Nazis. Based on a German population of 20 million and a 2 per cent gay estimate; then about 1.25 per cent of the gays were killed. Others were tolerated and other gays were Nazi persecutors.
Compared to the 2/3 of the Jews of occupied Europe who were hunted and killed. One was a Holocaust the other was a complicated situation.
If there is to be a memorial to "gay' victims, the full and complete history of gays in Nazi Germany should be told.
It is an insult to memorialize the handful of anti-societal trouble-seeking JWs alongside the MILLIONS of Jewish Holocaust victims given that Jehovah's Witnesses view the Jews much as did the Nazis. The WatchTower Society teaches its own version of "replacement theology", which says that GOD rejected the Jews as His "chosen people", and replaced them with today's "Jehovah's Witnesses". In fact, the title "Jehovah's Witnesses" was originally applied to the Jews by the Prophet Isaiah, and is even quoted on the wall at the entrance to the Holocaust Museum in Washington D.C. The WatchTower Society, in calling its own members "Jehovah's Witnesses" is attempting to steal that designation away from the Jews. The WatchTower Society even teaches that all of the Bible's promises of restoration for the Jewish people now belongs to the followers of the WatchTower Cult. Compare the "millions" of Jewvictims with the "handful" of Jehovah's Witnesses. There were only approximately 6000 Jehovah's Witnesses in Germany during the 1930s-40s. While many of those 6000 German JWs were repeatedly arrested during the 1930s and 1940s, only a fraction were jailed or imprisoned for any significant length of time. Only about 200-300 German JWs lost their lives, and the majority of those died from any number of causes other than having been executed. Approximately 1000 JWs from other European countries lost their lives while incarcerated by the Nazis. During that same time period, there were more Jehovah's Witnesses arrested and jailed in the United States than in Germany. In fact, from 1941 until 1945, approximately 4500 American Jehovah's Witnesses "elected" to go to prison rather than serve in the U.S. Military and go fight against those same Nazis who were committing those atrocities. Approximately 3000 of those 4500 American JWs were even offered "conscientious objector" status, in which they were offered "non-combatant" work as a substitute, but 99% of those JWs refused to even that.
Seth Grossman's comment that the murder of - at least - thousands of gay men by the Nazis was simply a "complicated situation" is extremely homophobic.
To write that some gay men "were tolerated" and that some "were Nazi persecutors" is a gross misstatement of the facts. There was one Nazi gay man in a high position - Ernst Roehm - who in 1934 was murdered on the orders of Hitler. At that point, the Nazis began raiding gay bars and arresting gay men.
To state simply that "other [gay men] were Nazi persecutors" implies that gay men as a group were supporters of the Nazis and were actively involved with Nazi crimes. That is a gross mis-statement of the facts and incredibly offensive.
(There were also, by the way, a few Jews who collaborated with the Nazis, but to cite this fact as a way of protesting against the memorialization of the Jewish victims of the Holocaust would be grossly anti-semitic.)
The number "5000" was arrived at by one particular researcher. It may be accurate but it has yet to be firmly established. Homophobia has kept more than just a very few historians from researching the Nazis' anti-gay persecutions.
Any attempt to minimize the sufferings of German gay men under the Nazis is homophobic and extraordinarily offensive.
As a Gay man and the son of two holocaust survivors, I find Mr. Hikind's comments and protestations disgustingly reminiscent of our common oppressors and murderers. People who close their eyes and ears to the suffering and hardship of others are exactly who Jews don't want to be, having experienced that from our Gentile neighbors in far too many places where we formerly lived in Europe.
By denying this recognition to other victims of the Nazis Dov Hikind is like the Nazis. I hope you're enjoying the new company you are keeping don.
You can read the text for the 5 markers at www.infotrue.com. They do include the numbers of victims. The original concept of the Park did include several stone markers for the other victims. The whole Park is dedicated to the 6 million Jews and 5 million other victims. Our small group took on the duty to do 5 markers. There are around 240 stones (the vast majority are devoted to Jewish names and events as it should be) and as more knowledge is acquired other victims can be memorialized. This issue has been going on for 13 years. Where was the Catholic League during this time? They only came out to complain once we got our request approved.
This will all help to increase the educational component of the city owned park and will show respect to all of the victims. NEVER AGAIN should be for any genocide. We should all learn the lessons of the Holocaust and work together and stop all this bickering.
Rick Landman, Co-chair of the International Association of Lesbian and Gay Children of Holocaust Survivors www.infotrue.com
First, all non-Jewish groups, including gypsies and homosexuals, are already mentioned there several times. Second,here is the text that is going to be inscribed in the Holocaust Memorial Park. I think it's obvious who is right in this debate.
AFTER THE NAZIS SEIZED POWER IN 1933, THE PERSECUTION OF THE HOMOSEXUAL COMMUNITY DRAMATICALLY INTENSIFIED IN GERMANY. ON MAY 6, 1933, DR. MAGNUS HIRSCHFELD’S INSTITUTE OF SEXUAL RESEARCH WAS VANDALIZED AND ITS LIBRARY AND PHOTO COLLECTION WERE BURNED.
BY 1935 THE LAW THAT CRIMINALIZED HOMOSEXUAL ACTS (PENAL CODE PARAGRAPH 175, PASSED IN 1871) WAS EXPANDED. IN 1936 S.S. CHIEF HEINRICH HIMMLER ESCALATED THE PERSECUTION BY FORMING THE POLICE TASK FORCE TO COMBAT HOMOSEXUALITY AND ABORTION.
AROUND 50,000 MEN WERE CONVICTED UNDER PARAGRAPH 175 AND SENT TO PRISONS, PENITENTIARIES OR SANITARIUMS. SOME WERE RELEASED ONLY IN ORDER TO BE CONSCRIPTED INTO THE GERMAN ARMY(Nazis!!!!!) HUNDREDS, POSSIBLY THOUSANDS(they even don't know the exact number!!!!!!), OF MALE HOMOSEXUALS DIED IN CONCENTRATION CAMPS. SOME WERE IDENTIFIED BY PINK TRIANGLES THEY WERE FORCED TO WEAR. THESE DEATHS WERE THE RESULT OF HARSH CONDITIONS, HARD LABOR, MEDICAL EXPERIMENTATION, BEATINGS AND MURDER.
AFTER THE WAR, WHILE MOST OTHER INMATES WERE LIBERATED AND SOME GIVEN RESTITUTION (this is complaint about Jews!!!), HOMOSEXUALS CONTINUED TO BE ARRESTED AND PROSECUTED UNDER PARAGRAPH 175 UNTIL ITS REPEAL IN 1969 (homosexuals were also persecuted in Stalin's Russia and they are persecuted in Iran today - but it has nothing to do with Holocaust!!!!!!).
Everybody must be remembered. No questions and exceptions!
What about the website? HTTP://WWW.THMC.ORG Let’s change the melody. Let’s add gay flag and crucifix. Is it your vision of Holocaust mister Landman? Is it your point?
The park of interest is “The Holocaust Memorial Park ”.
Two quotes from the online Dictionary.com (http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/holocaust) regarding holocaust and Holocaust:
[Quote 1 Begin] hol⋅o⋅caust /ˈhɒləˌkɔst, ˈhoʊlə-/ [hol-uh-kawst, hoh-luh-] –noun 1.a great or complete devastation or destruction, esp. by fire. 2.a sacrifice completely consumed by fire; burnt offering. 3.(usually initial capital letter) the systematic mass slaughter of European Jews in Nazi concentration camps during World War II (usually prec. by the). 4.any mass slaughter or reckless destruction of life.
[Quote 1 End]
[Quote 2 Begin]
Holocaust [(hol-uh-kawst, hoh-luh-kawst)] The killing of some six million Jews by the Nazis during World War II. To the Nazis, the Holocaust was the “Final Solution” to the “Jewish problem,” and would help them establish a pure German master race. Much of the killing took place in concentration camps, such as Auschwitz and Dachau. (See Adolf Eichmann and Heinrich Himmler.) The American Heritage® New Dictionary of Cultural Literacy, Third Edition Copyright © 2005 by Houghton Mifflin Company. Published by Houghton Mifflin Company. All rights reserved.
[Quote 2 End]
It would be better for Mr. Rick Landman [and all of us] if he put his time and effort [and money] first to pay tribute to those 17 members of his family who have vanished in Holocaust (with initial capital letter) by having a commemorative stone w/ inscribing installed in “The Holocaust Memorial Park ”. If he already did -- I'd say “THANK YOU, Mr. Rick Landman!”. If he did not -- I'd say “SHAME ON YOU, Mr. Rick Landman!”
If Mr. Rick Landman and other members of GL community really wanted to commemorate all the GLs specifically, they could have their own city-owned or private park [or museum] many years ago.
Otherwise, all those killed during “Kristallnacht”, all those tortured and murdered in gestapo prisons,all whose lives were turned into ashes in Auschwitz, Dachau, Treblinka and 9th Fort, who were starved to death or killed by phenol injection in Mauthausen, those who were killed in Babi Yar, – they are already commemorated in The Park. There is nothing personal. Strictly [and straight] business...
For factual information about the Nazi treatment of gay people, and its part in the larger Holocaust, one should read the text supplied by the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum at the folowing website: http://www.holocaust-trc.org/homosx.htm