The suddenly ditched Concentration Camp gay party scheduled for Wellington this weekend is attracting a chorus of indignation and disgust, with mounting disbelief that a party by and for gays and lesbians could be based on the horrific abuses heaped upon homosexuals in concentration camps during World War 2. Responding to concerns that our collective gay community memory of this part of our history might be disappearing into a fog of half-remembered Hogan's Heroes or Springtime for Hitler style fabrications, several gay men have voiced what others are muttering, urging today's gays to consider the reality their forbears' experiences. In an inadequately short and simplified history lesson it goes something like this: the majority of people who were herded into concentration camps built throughout Europe by the Nazi regime in the late 1930s and early '40s were Jews, an estimated six million of whom, from babies right through to the elderly, were fed through the ruthlessly efficient concentration camp system to be systematically exterminated by gassing, shooting or worse. Those considered sub-normal by Hitler's willing executioners, including homosexuals, the mentally impaired, Slavs, Gypsies and non-whites were also variously castrated, killed, tortured, starved, literally worked to death, subjected to grotesque medical experiments or degraded in ways too various and hateful to list here. For administrative purposes different groups had to be clearly visually identified. The symbol for homosexuals was a triangle of pink cloth sewn onto their threadbare clothes. From this symbol of oppression and death came the pink triangle embraced by defiant early gay rights campaigners and which is still used from time to time today. One of New Zealand's earliest, regularly published glbt-focused magazines was titled, simply, Pink Triangle. "MADNESS" Paul Radoms is a gay man who recently immigrated to New Zealand from Poland, a country whose people suffered terribly from the Nazi onslaught. Some of the most notoriously horrific Nazi concentration camps such as Auschwitz were set up in Poland. He is aghast that such suffering and inhumanity could be the theme for a dance party organised at least in part by a gay man, for gay people. That, he feels, is "madness." "My first reaction was that I couldn't believe that somebody is trying to organize a party like this," says Radoms. "And when I read more about it I was shocked that it was a gay party. What made them organize a party like this? There is nothing funny about it. Any normal human being will not find enjoyment in death, persecution, torture and suffering. This is madness. Six million people were killed during the World War 2 holocaust. Does this mean anything or is it just a meaningless statistic? Being gay, a Jew, or a Gypsy in Europe during the war was a death sentence." Growing up in Poland Radoms was told what happened to such people in his district by his grandfather. "He used to tell us about the local ghetto, about the places in the forest where sick and handicapped people were killed, about the persecution of local Jews. I still remember those places in my home town and those sad stories. It is impossible to forget. I am thankful that he told me about the events that happened in the war. More people need to know and understand the pain and suffering people went through to ensure it does not happen again. Lest we forget." For those who organised the Concentration Camp party, and those who planned to attend, Radoms has a simple message: "I find it difficult to believe that you do not understand what happened to gay men under the Nazis!" This incident, and several others recently in which young school students have used Nazi and concentration camp regalia as props for partying and tomfoolery, make him worry about the mindset of young people in NZ. "Do they really know about the history, do they really care? What type of parents will they become, what is the future of this country." "We cannot have parties like this," says Radoms. "This is a serious matter. We have to talk about it and educate people. If we forget and put our heads in the sand it will happen again, history will be repeated." FREEDOM IS PRECIOUS Gay Wellingtonian Paul Franken, a small child during the worst of World War 2 in his native Holland, remembers "processions of people being herded through our streets on their way to the concentration camps... I remember people crying... I remember the degradation meted out by the Germans, especially the SS." How such degradation and oppression could engender a party atmosphere is beyond his comprehension. "It's just so thoughtless, so foul and so wrong," he says, reflecting on the way young gays and lesbians are still being persecuted in schools. "Persecution can lead to suicide... creating entertainment out of persecution is wrong!" His message to the party organisers is: "persecution is nothing to be joked about. You are joking about taking freedom away, but freedom is precious." For a moment Franken tries to see it through the party organiser's eyes. "Yes, 'camp' is us, it is a style, we have adopted it..." But he can't make the link between camp as an attitude and the significance of concentration camps work. "Concentration camps were about taking people's rights away, it is so terrible and it still happens." CRUEL REALITIES Gay Wellington historian Tony Simpson is another who is shaking his head in amazement. "Do they think that concentration camps were a party place? Thousands of gay men were killed at Auschwitz concentration camp. I find partying around that reality particularly offensive." Simpson despairs that as the years pass by only historians will remember the cruel realities of concentration camps. "Most people these days don't have a recollection of it," he notes. He believes the controversy surrounding the party is a good reminder that people should "go away and do some reading... we have to keep reminding ourselves about what happened in and around those concentration camps," he says. "We must understand the appalling atrocity concentration camps were and are." For decades after World War 2, amidst an outpouring of sympathy for the Nazi holocaust's many and various victims, homosexuals were rarely if ever mentioned. Our forebears' suffering and deaths were airbrushed out of the official records and counted for nothing. It was not until the 1980s that governments around the world began to gradually acknowledge this episode of glbt history, and not until 2002 that the German government finally apologized to the gay community. In 2005, a full sixty years after the war finished and the concentration camp gates were opened to a stunned world, the European Parliament adopted a resolution on the Holocaust which included the persecution of homosexuals. For anybody interested in this aspect of gay history Paul Radoms recommends movies such as: A Love To Hide, Fateless, and Bent. Paul Franken recommends Shoah. After this article was posted Nathanial, a reader in Canada, suggested the movie Paragraph 175. Or as a starting point Radoms suggests clicking here: Wikipedia: Persecution of homosexuals in Nazi Germany and the Holocaust Jay Bennie - 21st October 2009