A Double Commemoration

By GoGay for A Wider Bridge

As gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgender Jews, Holocaust Remembrance Day is a special day in which we commemorate and remember the heavy price of hatred, violence and discrimination.

This is a day when the State of Israel remember the fallen Jews, and we as a community also gather to remember those who were killed against the background of gender and sexual identity. This day embodies the essence of being Israeli and simultaneously presents a challenge: should we separate between commemorating our Jewish and our LGBT people, or convene these two identity components together into one memory?



There was a great deal of talk about the place that gay people, in particular, took in the Nazi killing machine, from de-legitimization of homosexual relationships through sending LGBT people to labor and extermination camps. It is a dark, painful and repressed point in history.

Only in recent years has the general public opinion begun to recognize the importance of perpetuating the LGBT Holocaust by Nazi Germany, not without bitter arguments infected with harsh homophobia against the inclusion of the gay community in the commemoration. Memorials around the world that deal with the murder of LGBT people are vandalised from time to time, and there are many who think there’s no point mentioning the gay community as part of the victims of the Nazi death machine. Again, LGBT history is erased and suppressed, and our place is muted.

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