Today is International Holocaust Remembrance Day, an international memorial day that takes place every 27th of January commemorating the tragedy of the Holocaust that occurred during the Second World War.
It commemorates the lives of the people killed in a genocide that resulted in the death of an estimated 6 million Jews, 8.7 million Slavs, 1.8 million ethnic Poles, 220,000 Romani people, 250,000 mentally and physically disabled people, 312,000 Serbians, 1,900 Jehovah's Witnesses, and 9,000 homosexual men by the Nazi regime and its collaborators.
Whether they were Jewish, Roma, LGBTQ or one of the many other communities targeted, our duty to remember every soul lost to the Holocaust doesn't wither with time. We must do all we can to stand up to genocide, hatred & bigotry in the world. #HolocaustMemorialDay #WeRemember
— Nancy Pelosi (@SpeakerPelosi) January 27, 2019
According to Attitude Magazine: “The Nazi persecution of gay men – they viewed lesbianism as a temporary condition so they suffered less – began almost as soon as Hitler took power in January 1933. SS boss Heinrich Himmler once said that eight per cent of men in Germany were gay, adding: “If that's how things remain, our nation will fall to pieces. Those who practice homosexuality deprive Germany of the children they owe her. His solution was to ‘convert' them by forcing them to have sex once a week with women taken from prisons and used as sex slaves. If that failed, they faced being sent to camps. Once there, they were brutalized, having their testicles boiled in water or by having 25cm pieces of wood shoved into their rectum.”
A recent story in Pink News timed to coincide with the day tells the story of how the pink triangle came to be associated with being gay. “‘In Nazi concentration camps,' Benno Gammerl, a lecturer in Queer History at Goldsmiths, University of London, said, “a pink triangle was used to identify some gay men. Gammerl, who describes the pink triangle as a ‘Nazi invention,' says it is ‘not quite clear' why the Nazis used the color pink for this purpose.”
Pelosi was joined by her Democratic Representative colleague Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, Parkland Massacre survivor Cameron Kasky, Journalist Dan Rather and many more in tweets on social media.
This #HolocaustMemorialDay, @HRC honors the more than six million Jews & victims, including #LGBTQ people, whose lives were viciously taken.#WeRemember and celebrate survivor Elie Wiesel, whose legacy of fighting to end bigotry and hate around the world endures. pic.twitter.com/y7HzFgdV89
— Human Rights Campaign (@HRC) January 27, 2019
On #HolocaustMemorialDay may we pledge that remembrance of past horrors and vigilance in the face of the ever-present currents of hate and intolerance must be a daily obligation.
— Dan Rather (@DanRather) January 27, 2019
It's #HolocaustMemorialDay and it's just as important today as any other day to talk to your kids about the Holocaust. There is a startling number of people MY AGE (I am an adult physically) that do not know about Auschwitz.
— Cameron Kasky (@cameron_kasky) January 27, 2019
“Neutrality helps the oppressor, never the victim. Silence encourages the tormentor, never the tormented.”
— The King Center (@TheKingCenter) January 27, 2019
~Elie Wiesel #HolocaustMemorialDay #HolocaustRemembranceDay #WeRemember pic.twitter.com/PEJEuVWj4q
Today is #HolocaustMemorialDay – a day where #WeRemember not only the atrocities that result from the contagions of hatred + anti-Semitism, but also the fortitude of communities that continue to be impacted today.
— Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (@AOC) January 27, 2019
A great read for today: Man's Search for Meaning by Viktor Frankl https://t.co/siWAoXcjwC
