The Chancellor,
Bundeskanzleramt,
D-53106 Bonn,
Germany.
20-October-1997
I am writing on behalf of OutRage! --the campaign for lesbian, gay and bisexual human rights-- concerning the persecution of homosexuals during the Nazi era and the subsequent mistreatment of gay holocaust survivors by the German authorities.
We are shocked that the German government still refuses to compensate most gay holocaust survivors for their suffering, on the grounds that the Supreme Court ruled in 1957 that they were common criminals and were therefore legitimately incarcerated.
Furthermore, it cannot be morally right that the work of SS concentration camp guards is counted towards their pension entitlement, wheareas the years spent in the camps by gay prisoners are deducted from their pensions.
We would like to know why no Nazi doctors were ever prosecuted at the Nuremberg (Nürnberg) Trials --or since-- for abusing gay concentration camp inmates in gruesome 'medical' experiments that, at Buchenwald, included forcible castration and hormone implants.
It is long overdue that the injustices suffered by the lesbian and gay victims of Hitlerism were remedied. We ask you, as Chancellor of democratic Germany, to:
We look forward to receiving your assurance of prompt action to rectify these past injustices.
Yours sincerely,
Peter Tatchell.
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