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Human Rights | 16.12.2008

Berlin Gay Memorial Vandalized

 

For the second time in four months, vandals have broken a window on Berlin's memorial to gay victims of the Nazis. The window allows viewers to watch a video of a same-sex couple kissing.

 

Berlin police say the window on the outside of the memorial was broken, most likely with a stone, Associated Press reports.

The window allows visitors to look inside the concrete memorial at a video installation that shows a same-sex couple locked in a perpetual kiss.

The simple grey rectangular stone across the street from Germany's national memorial to Jewish victims of the Holocaust was inaugurated in May after years of controversy.  

More than 50,000 homosexuals are thought to have been convicted under the Nazis "because of their sexual orientation," with thousands of them sent to concentration camps and murdered.

  

Current research suggests 54,000 men and women were convicted of homosexual acts and about 7,000 killed in the camps.

 

Monument's window targeted

 

The monument, designed by Danish-Norwegian artists Michael Elmgreen and Ingar Dragset, contains a window that invites the visitor to look inside and see a film of a homosexual couple kissing. The film changes every two years. 

 

In August, vandals broke the window in a similar manner to the recent vandalism. That round of vandalism led to protests denouncing homophobia attended by more than 100 people, including Berlin's openly gay mayor, Klaus Wowereit.

 

DW staff (th)

 

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