Régis Schlagdenhauffen
Das Gedenken an die homosexuellen NS-Opfer in Israel und ihre Darstellung im neuen Holocaust-Museum von Yad Vashem
The Commemoration of the Homosexual Victims of Nazism in Israel and their Depiction in the New Holocaust History Museum of Yad Vashem
English abstract
The new museum of Holocaust history in Yad Vashem was inaugurated on March 15th 2005. The new exhibition presents the Holocaust from a Jewish perspective. Régis Schlagdenhauffen analyzes how homosexual victims are depicted in the exhibition. In Order to answer this question, he describes the exhibition in special regard to the representation of non-Jewish victims. In contrast to "other groups" of victims of Nazism, the exhibition does not mention homosexuals and the fate of homosexual Jews is not explicitly described. One explanation for this phenomenon could be the public controversy of 1994. After the disturbance of a commemoration ceremony of homosexual groups in Yad Vashem by religious fundamentalists a heated debate arose between "secular" and "religious" Jews. In respect to this discussion Schlagdenhauffen considers the limits of a religious interpretation of the Holocaust.