Wednesday 28 January 2015

LGBT History Month 2015

LGBT History Month starts in a few days, so you should visit the LGBT History Month website to see what events are happening near you.
http://lgbthistorymonth.org.uk/event-calendar/

As part of their celebration of LGBT History Month, Sutton LGBT Forum has arranged a presentation from 6.30pm on the evening of 5th February at Sutton's Central Library.

The presentation is based on material we have created for display in the London Borough of Sutton's libraries throughout LGBT History Month.

Sutton Central Library is on St Nicholas Way, a short walk from Sutton Station (postcode: SM1 1EA). See the map here:
https://www.google.co.uk/maps/search/sutton+library/@51.359969,-0.183592,14z/data=!3m1!4b1?sa=X&ei=6-zIVKWyDsOvaYHegfAD&ved=0CJQBEMgT

If you plan to join us, you will be most welcome. It would be helpful if you let us know ahead of time at info@lgbtsutton.co.uk.

Tuesday 27 January 2015

Holocaust Memorial Day 2015

Today is Holocaust Memorial Day, a time to reflect on the horror of the mass murder of not only the Jews, but a range of other groups that have been considered undesirable.

The Independent has published an article by Roisin O'Connor, which puts the nightmare into context with some detailed figures from the Nazi atrocities.
http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/europe/holocaust-memorial-day-the-stark-figures-that-lay-bare-the-horror-of-the-holocaust-10004671.html

A piece by Keely Lockhart in The Telegraph includes film of the liberation of Auschwitz plus footage taken from a drone that gives an idea of the scale of the camp.
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/history/world-war-two/11368740/Holocaust-Memorial-Day-remembering-horror-of-Auschwitz-70-years-on.html

Links:
http://hmd.org.uk/ - The Holocaust Memorial Day Trust, which includes details of other atrocities worldwide.
http://www.theguardian.com/world/2015/jan/27/holocaust-memorial-day-ceremonies-70-years-auschwitz-liberation
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-wales-30986817 - includes links to many other sites with articles on Holocaust Memorial Day.

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We have referred to the Nazi persecution of gay men in a previous posts

:
http://lgbthistoryproject.blogspot.co.uk/2012/01/holocaust-memorial-day.html

And we marked the death of Gad Beck, the last known gay Jewish survivor of the holocaust:
http://lgbthistoryproject.blogspot.co.uk/2012/06/last-known-gay-jewish-holocaust.html

We have been unable to find much information about how lesbians were treated by the Nazis. However, the website of US Holocaust Memorial Museum in Washington DC has an article here:
http://www.ushmm.org/wlc/en/article.php?ModuleId=10005478


And Richard Plant's book, The Pink Triangle, includes a few details:

  • No laws outlawing lesbianism were ever passed in Weimar or Nazi Germany. P 41.
  • Lesbians *generally* appear to have survived unscathed, but there were  cases of severe mistreatment of lesbians, including imprisonment for behaviour that was not, in fact, illegal and examples of male POWs being rewarded for raping lesbians. P 114-6
Certainly women as a group were considered the 'mothers of the Master Race' and considered expected to help build the Aryan population. To quote the US Holocaust Memorial Museum website, "Every woman, regardless of her sexuality, could serve the Nazi state as wife and mother."