OutRage!

QUEER INTELLIGENCE SERVICE


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QUEER REMEMBRANCE DAY

Sunday, 2-November-1997, London

      Nearly 300 lesbians and gay men attended a Ceremony of Remembance at the national war memorial, the Cenotaph, in London, on Sunday, 2nd. November. They were commemorating lesbian, gay, and bisexual people who died fighting Nazism and who perished in the concentration camps.

      The ceremony was organised by OutRage!, who declared Sunday, 2nd. November "Queer Remembrance Day".


Pink Triangle

      The keynote speaker was 74-year-old Sharley McLean, a lesbian who fled to Britain as a refugee from Nazi Germany in 1939. Her gay uncle, Kurt Bach, was arrested by the Gestapo in a gay bar in Berlin in 1937, and died in Sachsenhausen concentration camp.

      After the speeches, there was a minute's silence. Then dozens of pink wreaths and bouquets were laid on the Cenotaph.


Pink Triangle

      The commemoration was denounced by the ex-services association, the British Legion, as "distasteful" and "offensive", and "bound to offend many former soldiers".

      Gay war veterans are never acknowledged by the ex-services association or by the official state-sponsored Remembrance Day ceremony. At least 250,000 gay people served in the British Armed Forces during 1939-45. The current ban on homosexuals in the military is an insult to their service and sacrifice.


Pink Triangle

      The huge media coverage of Queer Remembrance Day has raised awareness about the contribution of lesbian and gay service personnel to the defeat of Nazism, and about the queer holocaust that has been suppressed by revisionist historians.


Pink Triangle

      Coinciding with a campaign by the German SPD and Green parties, OutRage! has written to Chancellor Helmut Kohl, urging him to:


Triangle


Queer Remembrance Day 1998

Gays demand share of looted Nazi Gold

Letter to Helmut Kohl


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©1997 OutRage! London
URL: http://www.RoseCottage.me.uk/OutRage-archives/remem97a.htm
Last modified: 23-September-1999