"Within sight of Washington's monuments celebrating democratic values stands a reminder of what can happen when hatred and indifference infect civic life. The United States Holocaust Memorial Museum commemorates the six million Jews killed by the Nazis and their collaborators during the Holocaust and the millions of other Nazi victims - Roma and Sinti, people with disabilities, Poles, Jehovah's Witnesses, Soviet prisoners of war, political dissidents ... and homosexuals."

"Between 1933 and 1945, the Nazis arrested approximately 100,000 men as homosexuals, sentencing roughly half to prison. Eventually they deported about 10,000 to 15,000 to concentration camps, mainly in Germany and Austria."

"This persecution focused primarily on gay men. The Nazis saw lesbianism as 'essentially alien' to the nature of German women, although in some cases they arrested lesbians as 'asocials' or 'prostitutes.'"

"Only recently have some gay survivors broken their silence to give testimony of Nazi persecution. This may be due in no small measure to the treatment of gays in Europe and the United States in the decades following the Holocaust. Most of these 'forgotten victims' were afraid or ashamed to tell their stories."

"Their acts of heroism have also gone largely unheralded. Gad Beck, a gay Jewish survivor of Hitler's Berlin, worked for the underground during the war, forging documents and aiding other Jews in hiding. He speaks at the Holocaust Museum on April 27 (see events below). The museum's archives include photos of Willem Arondeus and Frieda Belinfante, members of a gay resistance group that bombed the Amsterdam Population Register in 1943 in order to destroy records of Jews and others sought by the Nazis. Arondeus was executed; Belinfante escaped to Switzerland and eventually emigrated to the U.S."

"Arondeus's story and those of other real people during the Holocaust appear on 'identity cards' which visitors pick up as they enter the museum. Each visitor follows the fate of that one person shown on the ID card as he or she progresses through the permanent exhibit. Sobering displays include numerous photos and personal memorabilia of gay survivors, including a pink triangle, the badge worn by camp prisoners identified as homosexual. With an appointment, the museum library allows access to a few of the taped interviews with gay survivors."

"The museum continues to make progress in documenting this victim group, supported by the gay and lesbian community's strong interest in its own history and a successful campaign which has raised more than $1.5 million for further research."

"Events at the museum coinciding with the April 30 Millennium March include: April 27 at 7 p.m., an interview with survivor Gad Beck, and April 28 from 10 a.m.-5 p.m., an all-day international symposium on the Nazi persecution of homosexuals. The museum also screens (date and time TBA) the documentary Paragraph 175, a reference to the German criminal code outlawing homosexual relations. For more information, contact the museum at (202) 488-6162, or visit the website at www.ushmm.org."

"Material provided by U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum."

(Amy Alipio, Where Washington, April 2000)

Note from Gerrit Netten:

There was no such thing as a gay resistance group that bombed the Population Register. They were not grouped like that. There was, though, another gay man member of the group. His name is Sjoerd Bakker. He, like Frieda Belinfante, did not take part in the actual bombing, but as a "couturier" made the police uniforms the group was wearing to be able to enter the building. This man was executed, together with the group members. According to his last wish, he was executed in a pink shirt. Other members of this group were artists and students. Jew and non-jew. Gay and hetero.

Regards,

Gerrit Netten (electronic mail, October 30, 2000).

P.S. I did some research on this for a film on Anne Frank.