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:
- apologise for the terrorisation of gay men and lesbians during the Third Reich;
- authorise the payment of compensation to homosexual holocaust survivors, on a par with compensation to Jewish survivors;
- recalculate the pensions of gay survivors to ensure that their period of detention in the camps is counted towards their pension entitlement;
- bring to trial, on charges of crimes against humanity, the Nazi doctors involved in the medical abuse of gay prisoners.
We look forward to receiving your assurance of prompt action to rectify these past injustices.Yours sincerely,
Peter Tatchell.