Every year since 1996, the Bundestag has paid tribute to the victims of Nazism on January 27, the day the Auschwitz camp was liberated by the Red Army. This year, for the first time, a tribute will be specifically paid to the bearers of the pink triangle, the symbol imposed in the Nazi concentration camp and repressive universe on homosexuals.
With our correspondent in Berlin, Nathalie Versieux
Of all the victims of Nazism, the wearers of the pink triangle are the only ones to whom the Bundestag had not paid tribute to date. ” The aim and driving force of Nazism was anti-Semitism, believes the former member of parliament and homosexual activist, the Green Volker Beck. But there were also a few thousand homosexual victims. There were 15,000 persecuted in concentration camps and 50,000 convicted by National Socialist courts. »
It took the arrival of a new president at the head of the Bundestag, the Social Democrat Bärbel Bas, for the Bundestag to take up the cause of homosexual victims of Nazism. An important symbol for Volker Beck. “ Homophobia has not disappeared, it is clear, he judges. There are problems with young native males on the right and also on the right in immigrant circles. »
Paragraph 175 of the civil code, which criminalized homosexuality, adopted in 1871 and hardened by the Nazis, was not abolished until 1995.