[Pacg] Remembering Holocaust - Film Showings & Interfaith Yom HaShoah Service

[Carolina 1961]

*From Rev Rich Hendricks:*

I felt this was an important message to forward to my friends from Rabbi
Henry Karp and I encourage participation in Yom HaShoah. However, I believe
it is imperative to add, among the list of victims, those who wore the pink
triangle:

*From Wikipedia:
*The prisoners with a pink triangle identified themselves as gay (sometimes
they were married to women, and engaged in very few, if any, homosexual
acts). Not everyone convicted under Paragraph 175 was sent to a
concentration camp; in fact, most were sent to ordinary jails. Most gay men
who suffered and died in Nazi concentration camps actually wore the yellow
star (because they were both gay and Jewish).

While the number of homosexuals in concentration camps is hard to estimate,
Richard Plant gives a rough estimate of the number of men convicted for
homosexuality 'between 1933 to 1944 at between 50,000 and 63,000.' [1]

After the camps were liberated at the end of the Second World War, many of
the pink triangle prisoners were often simply re-imprisoned by the
Allied-instated Federal Republic of Germany. An openly gay man named Heinz
Dörmer, for instance, served 20 years in total both in a Nazi concentration
camp and then in the jails of the new Republic. In fact, the Nazi amendments
to Paragraph 175, which turned homosexuality from a minor offence into a
felony, remained intact after the war for a further 24 years. While suits
seeking monetary compensation have failed, in 2002 the German government
released an official apology to the gay community.

Today, fewer than ten of those imprisoned for homosexuality are known to be
still living. In 2000, the documentary film Paragraph 175 recorded some of
their testimonies.

By the end of the 1970s the pink triangle was adopted as a symbol for gay
rights protest.[2]

Blessings,

Pastor Rich

*'If you're walking down the right path and you're willing to keep walking,
eventually you will make progress.'  Barack Obama*
*From Rabbi Henry Karp: **ravkarp at msn.com* <ravkarp at msn.com>

Subject:  WORLD WAR 2 PICTURES - Yom HaShoah Coming Up
Date: Fri, 25 Apr 2008 12:15:51 -0500
Dear Friends,

The pictures and text below hopefully will remind you why it is so important
for us to continually memorialize the victims of the Holocaust.

*I encourage you to attend this year's Interfaith Yom HaShoah Service -
Sunday, May 4 @ 7:00 p.m., at the Tri City Jewish Center*.  *Our speaker
will be Eva Schloss, childhood friend and posthumous step sister of Anne
Frank (after the war, her mother married Otto Frank).

*I also encourage you to attend at least one of our CINEMA SHOAH showings: *
*
**
*On Wed., April 30, @ 7:30 p.m., at Temple Emanuel, we will be screening the
film VARIAN'S WAR, starring William Hurt & Julia Ormand -* the story of
Varian Fry who rescued many Jews of international renown, including such
figures as Jacob Lipschutz, Marc Chagall, and Hannah Arendt.

*On Sat., May 3, @ 7:00 p.m., we will be screening the film ANNE FRANK,
starring Ben Kingsley & Hannah Taylor-Gordon.*  In my opinion, this is the
best film on the story of Anne Frank.  It hold special meaning for us this
year because of our speaker.

Rabbi Henry Jay Karp
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: http://lists.qcprogressiveaction.org/pipermail/pacg/attachments/20080425/a6d6cdb3/attachment.htm