Berlin Memorial to Gay Victims of the Holocaust Vandalized for Second Time
A monument in Berlin’s Tiergarten, dedicated to the tens of thousands of LGBTQ people who were killed and persecuted under the Nazis, has been vandalized, again.
According to a report on January 28, 2019, in the German art publication Monopol, the monument has been defaced using black paint. As the vandalism appears to be motivated by homophobia, Monopol reports that the Berlin police have begun investigating the matter.
The vandalism appears to part of a growing sense of homophobia in Berlin with fears mounting that the city’s infamous tolerance is yielding to violence and unease by far-right groups.
According to Bastian Fink, head of a non-profit in Berlin called Maneo, which keeps records of homophobic acts of violence, including documentation cases of insults and assaults, homophobic and transphobic acts appear to be on the rise.
In Berlin, Fink said that Maneo dealt with 800 cases in 2017, 324 of which fulfilled their definition of homophobic or transphobic attacks: physical attacks, verbal abuse, and theft. And “the figures we have show we still have a shocking daily reality, despite everything,” said Fink.
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Disappointing, both the act and the memorial. I visited this "memorial" when I was in Berlin over a year ago. It brought me to tears, but not because it was moving but because I saw it as a joke. It is a big granite block with a window, which as you look in you see a 2 minute clip on a loop of gay people kissing. There was no signage to the memorial (none that I saw), and not even a sign explaining what the "structure" was!
Sad it was defaced...again.
