May 7



GERMANY:

Germany bans 2 groups that deny Holocaust

German Interior Minister Wolfgang Schaeuble on Wednesday banned two
far-right organizations he described as organized Holocaust deniers.
Schaeuble, Germany's top security official, said in a statement released
by his ministry that the organizations' activities violated the nation's
constitution. Denying the Holocaust is a crime in Germany.

"The organizations are reservoirs of organized Holocaust deniers,"
Schaeuble said.

"Their activities include disseminating anti-Semitic propaganda and
praising the tyranny of the Nazis" over the Internet, as well as in
printed leaflets, Schaeuble said.

The two groups were identified as Collegium Humanum and Bauernhilfe e.V.,
with bases in the western German states of North Rhein-Westphalia, Lower
Saxony and Hesse.

Authorities confiscated material seized in searches of 30 premises in the
various states early Wednesday, the statement said.

Meanwhile, in the eastern state of Saxony, where the far-right National
Democratic Party holds seats in Parliament, a new report showed the
party's membership in the state had dropped.

According to a state organization that tracks extremism, the party lost
150 members in 2007, dropping to 850. But the number of people belonging
to an informal group that supported the National Democratic Party doubled
to 500, said state interior minister Albrecht Buttolo.

Meanwhile, the state reported an increase in crimes with a right-extreme
background to 2,144 in 2007 over 2,063 in the previous year. The rise was
attributed to more confrontations with left-wing extremists. Of those
crimes, only 90 involved violence, up from 77 the previous year.

Saxony is the stronghold of the National Democratic Party, where it has
the most members despite the recent drop. It has been in Parliament since
2004, when it won 9.2% of the vote.

(source: Associated Press)


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Holocaust memorial train leaves Germany for Auschwitz


A Holocaust memorial train drawn by a steam locomotive crossed the German
border into Poland Wednesday, bound for the memorial at the former Nazi
death camp Auschwitz.

The engine and its two carriages carried 80 young people chosen from
around Germany by activists who privately organised the train's tour of
German cities and invited the public to view photos and records of Jewish
children sent by train to the death camps.

An ugly dispute with German rail company Deutsche Bahn (DB) brought
international attention to the commemoration.

DB refused the smoke-puffing train a berth in its busy, spotlessly clean
main Berlin station, saying a two-day stop there would hamper traffic.

DB has organized a Holocaust memorial exhibition of its own in the capital
Berlin, also with photos of murdered children, showing how the railways
were part of the machinery of genocide.

DB refused corporate sponsorship to the rival commemoration project.

The memorial train was scheduled to arrive at the death camp site near the
Polish city of Ozwiecim on Thursday, the anniversary of Victory in Europe
day May 8, 1945 when Nazi Germany was defeated.

Mementoes of children caught up in the Nazi persecution of Jews from 1940
to 1945 were to symbolically laid on the soil of Auschwitz at a ceremony
on Thursday.

Organizers said more than 225,000 people have visited the display inside
the Train of Memory carriages since the travelling exhibition began its
tour of Germany and nearby lands in November last year.

(source: IANS)


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Memorial to gay Holocaust victims to be unveiled this month

The new memorial will echo the design of Eisenman's tribute to the Nazi's
Jewish victims


A memorial to the persecuted homosexual victims of Nazism will be
officially unveiled in Berlin on May 27th.

It takes the form of a gray concrete slab, with a window to allow visitors
to view a video. It cost 600,000 euros (450,000).

There will be two alternated videos which show either two men kissing or
two women kissing.

Originally, the plan was for a video of just two men, but that proposal
drew heavy criticism from people who claimed that lesbians were being
excluded.

The memorial was developed at the southern edge of the Tiergaten after
Danish-Norwegian artistic duo Michael Elmgreen and Ingar Dragset won the
artistic competition.

Its design echoes Peter Eisenman's Berlin memorial to the Nazis' Jewish
victims, a vast field of more than 2,700 slabs.

The competition was initiated by the Land Berlin on behalf of the Federal
Republic of Germany and in coordination with the initiative Commemorate
the homosexual victims of the Nazis and gay rights group LSVD.

An estimated 100,000 homosexuals were arrested after Hitler's rise to
power in the 1930s.

Under the Nazi regime, 15,000 gay people were convicted as criminals and
up to 15,000 were deported to concentration camps. Few survived.

The laws used against gay people in Germany remained on statute books
until 1969.

But the German parliament of 2002 issued a formal pardon for any gay
people convicted by the Nazi and approved the construction of the memorial
in December 2003.

The homosexual victims of Nazi Germany remained excluded from the public
process of remembrance of past injustices until recent times.

The LSVD described the exclusion of the victims from compensation for
their suffering under the Nazi-injustices as, "especially scandalous."

The memorial is to honour the persecuted and murdered victims, keep awake
the memory of injustice, as well as be a steady symbol against
intolerance, animosity and exclusion of gays and lesbians, according to
resolution of the Bundestag of 2003.

The dedication to the public has been organised on behalf of the Federal
Government by the Foundation "Memorial to the Murdered Jews of Europe."

Earlier this year the Roman Catholic Bishop of Motherwell in Scotland
caused outrage when he said that a "homosexual lobby" attend Holocaust
memorial events to create for themselves "the image of a group of people
under persecution."

Bishop Joseph Devine's extremist views were widely criticised.

The chair of the Holocaust Educational Trust, Lord Janner, defended the
right of gay people to commemorate the Holocaust, telling
PinkNews.co.uk:"They were persecuted by the Nazis and are right to recall
the horrors of the Holocaust."

Green MSP Patrick Harvie has tabled a motion in the Scottish Parliament in
protest at the bishop's comments about the Holocaust, telling
PinkNews.co.uk: "Not only do his comments mark a revisionism about what
happened to gay people in Nazi Germany but he has also called on parents
not to tolerate their gay children.

"This is very damaging to children who should be fully supported." The
Nazis' anti-gay polices and their destruction of the early gay-rights
movement were generally not considered suitable subject matter for
Holocaust historians and educators.

It was not until the 1970s and 1980s that there was some mainstream
exploration of the theme, with Holocaust survivors writing their
autobiographies, plays such as Bent, and more historical research and
documentaries being published about Nazi homophobia and their destruction
of the German gay-rights movement.

(source: Pink News)