Gay Holocaust Fund Request Denied

[kweerwolf]

A unanimous federal appeals court rejected a challenge to U.S. District Judge Edward R. Korman’s decision last year that a small portion of a $1.2 billion compensation fund for Holocaust survivors not be diverted into a special effort to find gay Holocaust survivors and support research and outreach efforts into homosexual persecution during Hitler’s deadly Nazi regime.

Finding that wide discretion was vested in Korman and Judah Gribetz, the special master appointed to determine distribution from the fund, the court decided in its September 9 ruling not to upset plans for allocating remaining funds for humanitarian assistance to Holocaust survivors living in the former Soviet Union.

Ever since a settlement was reached in 1998 in the class action suit against Swiss banks charged with various improprieties during the Nazi years from 1933 to 1945, there has been intense interest in how the $1.25 billion settlement fund would be divided up. Early in the process there was agreement that a share of the money would go to surviving gay Holocaust victims, but it has proved difficult to locate them.

A group formed to represent the interests of gay survivors, the Pink Triangle Coalition—the name inspired by the symbol the Nazis required gay concentration camp inmates to wear on their uniforms—proposed that one percent of the settlement fund be set aside for “scholarly, educational, and outreach efforts related to Nazi persecution of homosexuals.” Some of this money would be used to undertake intensive research efforts that might lead to the discovery of more than the paltry handful of gay Holocaust survivors who have come forward to date. The rest would be used to promote education about the gay experience during the Holocaust, including research efforts, museum exhibitions, and school curriculums.

http://www.gaycitynews.com/gcn_437/gayholocaustfund.html

[11cents]

1. If the money was requested for survivors alone ....

...I'd say it was a fair request, although not one that the special master was legally obligated to agree to. But in general, compensation money shouldn't go to "scholarly" boondoggles.

[kweerwolf]

2. I'm not sure there are a lot of "survivors"

There was a documentary that came out a few years ago called "Paragraph 175" (the section of the German penal code that allowed the Nazis to send gays to concentration camps). Because gay prisioners were considered the lowest of the low in the German prison system, not many survived. The makers of the documentary managed to find only a handfull of gay survivors. (I don't remember the exact number, but I believe it was less than 10.) In the last year of the war, many gay men in Nazi work camps were given the choice between being sent to the front or being castrated (the ultimate "final solution" for gays). Even worse, when the camps were liberated by the allies, many gay prisoners remained in prison beause they were convicted under Paragraph 175 which predated the Nazi rule (though the Nazis made it a much harsher law).

There's more info on the Nazi persecution of gays on the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum at: http://www.ushmm.org/museum/exhibit/online/hsx/