For LGBT History Month the Diversity & Inclusion team is sharing some of their reflections. The following piece comes from Helena Mattingley, Head of Diversity & Inclusion.
Last week, I went to Berlin. It’s was a week after Holocaust Memorial day and each memorial I went to had a gathering of flowers and tributes to the victims of the Holocaust. As it is LGBT history month, it was particularly important to me to see the memorial to homosexuals persecuted under Nazism.
As an intersectional aside, section 175 of German law only prohibited male homosexuality. Just like English and Welsh law, female sexual orientation was not considered. Female sexual orientation was not seen to exist or be relevant– there is some intersectional work at play here, something for another blog post.
The memorial is a concrete cube, which mirrors the holocaust memorial on the opposite side of the road with one difference. A small, narrow view point is cut into the concrete to show a looped video of two men kissing. The cube is a physical embodiment of the repressive, intolerant, narrow minded prejudice, with the film showing love concealed from many viewing angles. It’s directly opposite the holocaust memorial (also known as Memorial to the Murdered Jews of Europe) which is a disorienting sequence of symbolic concrete sarcophagi.
The homosexual memorial exists because under German National Socialism, gay and bisexual men were labelled with pink triangles, deported to concentration camps through the ‘extermination through work’ policy, or if ‘lucky’ criminalised or forced to hide their sexuality. Individuals were tortured and murdered. LGB communities were destroyed.
Thinking about the symmetry between the holocaust memorial and the memorial to homosexuals persecuted under Nazism shows me two things – all victims of the holocaust share a commonality, and yet, there are differences too.
This for me is the most important part of inclusion. We all share a commonality of humanity, and we are all different.
The second most important part of inclusion is to learn from history.