for the first time, Parliament will commemorate LGBTQ victims of Nazism

For the first time, the German Parliament will commemorate next year the victims of the Nazi regime who were persecuted and killed for their sexual or gender identity. On January 27, 2023, International Holocaust Remembrance Day, German MPs will place these victimss “at the center of the commemoration ceremony”Baerbel Bas, the President of the Bundestag, told the daily Tagesspiegel (link in German)Friday, July 22.

Activists have worked for years to obtain official parliamentary memorialization for victims persecuted by the Nazis because of their sexual or gender identity. A petition, signed by victims’ organisations, academics and other civil society figures, was presented in support of this request in 2018.

If former German President Roman Herzog named homosexuals among the victims of the Nazis during the first event in 1996, “these victims have not yet had their own memorial”, said LSVD board member Henny Engels.

The group has “greeted” the decision of the President of the Bundestag. “To learn the right lessons from all its different facets, history must be kept alive in an exhaustive way”, said Henny Engels. Germany has celebrated Holocaust Remembrance Day every January 27 since 1996 with a solemn ceremony in the Bundestag, with a speech by a survivor and commemorations across the country.