Memorial Vandalized
August 16, 2008
The vandals broke a viewing window and pushed over a fence, in the first time the memorial has been damaged. The damage was seen by a passer-by on Saturday.
The simple grey rectangular stone across the street from Germany's national memorial to Jewish victims of the Holocaust was inaugurated on May 27 after years of controversy.
More than 50,000 homosexuals are thought to have been convicted under the Nazis "because of their sexual orientation," with thousands of them sent to concentration camps and murdered.
Current research suggests 54,000 men and women were convicted of homosexual acts and about 7,000 killed in the camps.
The monument, designed by Danish-Norwegian artists Michael Elmgreen and Ingar Dragset, contains a window that invites the visitor to look inside and see a film of a homosexual couple kissing. The image is to be alternate between two men and two women every two years.