Badpuppy Gay Today |
Tuesday, 02 December 1997 |
Government officials from the 15 nations attending the London conference on looted Nazi gold, including the British Foreign Secretary, Robin Cook, will be confronted by lesbian and gay campaigners today demanding compensation for the homosexual victims of Nazism. The gay rights group OutRage! has condemned suggestions that only Jewish people should benefit from a restitution agreement. It demands that everyone who suffered under the Third Reich should be entitled to a share of the gold stolen from holocaust victims by the Nazis, with priority going to those who have been denied compensation by the German government. The Nazi gold conference is taking place at Lancaster House, London SW1. Campaigners from the gay rights group OutRage! will picket the conference from 9 a.m., as Foreign Ministry officials from 15 nations arrive. The picket will be at the press entrance, on Queen's Walk, (a bridle path between Green Park tube station and The Mall). "Where the owners of looted gold cannot be traced, it should be used to compensate holocaust victims who have been refused reparations by the German government, including East European Jews and gay people" said Huw Williams of OutRage! "Some of the gold should be set aside to finance memorials, educational programs, and museums in honor of the forgotten victims of Nazism, such as gypsies, the disabled, homosexuals, and black people." OutRage! is proposing that gay community groups should receive a share of the looted gold, to help finance: * On October 20 Peter Tatchel, on behalf of Outrage! wrote an open letter to Chancellor Helmut Kohl of Germany. The text of his letter is as follows: The Chancellor, I am writing on behalf of OutRage!--the campaign for lesbian, gay and bisexual human rights--concerning the persecution of homosexuals during the Nazi era and the subsequent mistreatment of gay holocaust survivors by the German authorities. We are shocked that the German government still refuses to compensate most gay holocaust survivors for their suffering, on the grounds that the Supreme Court ruled in 1957 that they were common criminals and were therefore legitimately incarcerated. Furthermore, it cannot be morally right that the work of SS concentration camp guards is counted towards their pension entitlement, whereas the years spent in the camps by gay prisoners are deducted from their pensions. We would like to know why no Nazi doctors were ever prosecuted at the Nuremberg Trials --or since-- for abusing gay concentration camp inmates in gruesome 'medical' experiments that, at Buchenwald, included forcible castration and hormone implants. It is long overdue that the injustices suffered by the lesbian and gay victims of Hitlerism were remedied. We ask you, as Chancellor of democratic Germany, to: • Apologize for the terrorization of gay men and lesbians during the Third Reich;• Authorize the payment of compensation to homosexual holocaust survivors, on a par with compensation to Jewish survivors; • Recalculate the pensions of gay survivors to ensure that their period of detention in the camps is counted towards their pension entitlement; • Bring to trial, on charges of crimes against humanity, the Nazi doctors involved in the medical abuse of gay prisoners. We look forward to receiving your assurance of prompt action to rectify these past injustices. Yours sincerely, |
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