A Long Overdue Statement and a Long Way Yet to Go

UPDATE: Daniel Boese, who interviewed the artists for Zitty, provides more details of the unveiling on artforum.com. Included is a quote by gay Berlin mayor, Klaus Wowereit, that summarizes why some of the politics about how late this is, who it's not memorializing, and who else should be recognized, are perhaps missing the larger point: “there can be no hierarchy of victims.” That cuts both ways. Each memorial should remind us of all the victims, whether directly or indirectly.
_______________
The last known survivor of Nazi Germany's persecution of gays, Pierre Seel (who had been deported from France to the Schirmeck-Vorbrück camp, by the compliant Vichy Regime), died in November 2005. Pierre's ordeal is well-documented, though, because he wrote a memoir of his life (including how after 6 months of forced labor, he was inexplicably conscripted into the German army [one assumes because in a time of a manpower crisis the Nazis weren't as bothered by his sexual orientation]). Titled Moi, Pierre Seel, déporté homosexuel, his account of the camp is as harrowing as any I've read of WWII:

There was no solidarity for the homosexual prisoners; they belonged to the lowest caste. Other prisoners, even when between themselves, used to target them.

[...] But I delay from relating what was the worst test for me, when, in fact, it happened in the first few weeks of my being imprisoned in the camp. It contributed more than anything to turning me into this silent and obedient shadow among others. One day, the loudspeakers ordered us to report immediately to the Appellplatz. Shouts and barks meant that we all quickly got there. Surrounded by SS men, we had to form a square and stand at attention, as we did for morning roll call. The commandant was in attendance with his entire general staff. I assumed he was going to bludgeon us once again with his blind faith in the Reich, together with a list of instructions, insults and threats -- emulating the famous outpourings of his master, Adolf Hitler. But the actual ordeal was far worse: an execution. Two SS men brought a young man to the centre of the square we were forming. Horrified, I recognized Jo, my sweet 18 year old friend. I hadn't previously spotted him in the camp. Had he arrived before or after me? We hadn't seen each other during the days before I was summoned by the Gestapo. I froze in terror. I had prayed that he would escape their roundups, their lists, their humiliations. And here he was, before my powerless eyes, which filled with tears. Unlike me, he had not carried dangerous letters, torn down posters or signed any statements. And yet he had been taken, and he was going to die. The lists were complete indeed. What had happened? What had the monsters accused him of? Because of my pain, I have completely forgotten the content of the death sentence. Then the loudspeakers broadcast some noisy classical music while the SS stripped him naked. Then they violently shoved a tin pail over his head. They set ferocious German shepherds on him: the guard dogs first bit into his groin and thighs, then devoured him right in front of us. His shrieks of pain were distorted and amplified by the pail in which his head remained trapped. My rigid body reeled, my eyes gaped at so much horror, tears poured down my cheeks, I fervently prayed that he would black out quickly. Since then, I still often wake up howling in the middle of the night. For more than fifty years now, that scene has ceaselessly replayed in my mind's eyes. I will never forget the barbaric murder of my love -- before my eyes, before our eyes, for there were hundreds of witnesses..."

It's with a combination of gratitude and renewed anger that I received the news that Germany has unveiled, finally, a monument in memory of the thousands of gays who were tortured and murdered by the Nazis. Gratitude, obviously, for the gesture. Anger, though, because even though the New York Times reports its unveiling matter of factly:

A monument featuring two men kissing was unveiled by Germany in Berlin on Tuesday in memory of thousands of homosexuals who were persecuted, tortured and killed by the Nazis, Agence France-Presse reported. Designed by the Danish-born Michael Elmgreen and the Norwegian-born Ingar Draset, both based in Berlin, the memorial, situated in the Tiergarten park, near the Brandenburg Gate and the Holocaust memorial, consists of a gray concrete slab about 13 feet high. Inside, at eye level, is a gap filled by a television screen that shows the kissing men [seen above].

The German magazine Der Spiegel notes that even still this monument is controversial:

Even the opening of the monument attracted controversy. Dragset and Elmgreen told Zitty that [Bernd] Neumann, the federal commissioner for culture, refused to allow an image from the video of the two men kissing to be put on the official invitation to the monument's opening. "(The decision) not to print the kiss shows that we still have a problem," Dragset said. "As long as people feel repulsed when they see homosexuals kissing, then something is missing," added Elmgreen, who called the kiss "the basis of the monument."

There are times in life when you simply suck it up and put any uneasiness you have about others' cultural norms on hold and, despite yourself, celebrate diversity as openly as you possibly can. That the federal commissioner for culture, in the context of a monument to gay victims, would refuse to let an image of two men kissing be used for the invitiation...knowing full well that it was bias like his that led to the reason the monument exists...we more than still have a problem: we've made essentially only superficial progress.

Let me rephrase that as bluntly as I can...his uneasiness is exactly what facilitated the rounding up, torture, and murder of thousands of gays. His refusal to accept that gay men kiss, that to us it's the most natural expression of affection, is precisely the kernel of ignorance and intolerance that led so many to their deaths. By objecting to this image, he has convinced me that he would not likely have stood up for the gays being sent to the camps were he to go back in time. And in that way he is as dangerous as the Nazis were.

Does that mean I don't recognize his honest queasiness? Not at all. I do. I wouldn't expect him to volunteer to watch gay romance movies or not object were two men to make out in his living room. I think he should work on getting over that as well, but, I get that if you're not attracted to other men that sexual interactions among men isn't necessarily something you're comfortable with. What I don't get is that he can't simply temporarily deal with that discomfort in order to recognize the atrocity represented by the monument.

I will confess to feeling somewhat ungracious for criticizing Neumann like this. He is opening the monument (and while I think I'm right, it's not exactly generous of me to suggest he would have stood by while gays were sent off to camps). Still, when he's willing to announce that the monument is "also first and foremost an expression of our conviction that in our country there is no place for the discrimination of homosexuals, of people who think and live differently" but still not let the invitation show two men kissing, we clearly have a very long way to go on this issue.