OutRage! invite you to join us in commemorating
(the Sunday before official Remembrance Sunday). |
QUEER REMEMBRANCE DAY is organised by OutRage! in conjunction with other lesbian and gay groups, including Rank Outsiders.
Ceremony of Remembrance to commemorate the lesbians, gays, and bisexuals
who died fighting Nazism and who perished in the concentration camps.
Please bring pink wreaths or bouquets to lay at the Cenotaph, with any message of remembrance attached.
We want to cover the Cenotaph with pink flowers, as a public statement of lesbian and gay visibility and commemoration.
Keynote speakers at the Cenotaph ceremony include a gay World War 2 veteran and a lesbian refugee from Nazi Germany.
British premiere of the gay holocaust survivors' film, We Were Marked with a Big 'A'. Never before shown in Britain, this extraordinarily moving film features personal testimonies from gay men who were deported to concentration camps by the Nazis.
Friedrich-Paul von Groszheim was arrested during a police raid on private homes in Lübeck in 1937, as were 230 other gay men that same night. He was given the "alternative" of castration in Sachsenhausen concentration camp.
Kurt von Ruffin was interned in Lichtenburg concentration camp, and Paul Gerhard Vogel was incarcerated in Emsland. The "Big 'A'" of the film's title stood for 'Arschficker', (arse-fucker): the symbol the first gay prisoners were forced to wear, before the subsequent introduction of the pink triangle.
Gay holocaust survivors were never compensated for their suffering. Their former SS guards, however, receive full pensions.
Free admission. All welcome.
QUEER REMEMBRANCE DAY will help raise public awareness about the contribution of lesbian and gay service personnel to the defeat of Nazism, and about the "hidden queer holocaust" that has been written out of the history books by revisionist historians.
It is vital for the success of QUEER REMEMBRANCE DAY that we get a large attendance at the Cenotaph. Please publicise this commemoration among your friends. If you belong to a gay group, organise a delegation to attend with flowers.
We are delighted to acknowledge the support of
the Freedom Bar,
60-66, Wardour Street, W1
Tel. 020-77.34.00.71
David Armstrong Designs,
152, Gray's Inn Road, WC1X 8AX,
Tel. 020-78.37.26.67; Fax 020-78.37.30.66
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