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Speech by Dr. Christina Weiss, Minister of State to the Federal Chancellor,on the occasion of the debateMr. President, Ladies and Gentleman, the street sign with a blue backgroundshowing the way is plain to see; “Homo-Monument” is written on it,quite simply and casually as if the hand of the people had guided the pen.This signpost does not – unfortunately not yet – lead to the south-easternedge of Großer Tiergarten, but to the Westermarkt in Amsterdam. TheMemorial to the Murdered Homosexuals on Keizersgracht has been theresince 1987, incidentally with an inscription which is highly moving. “Such anunlimited longing for friendship”. No more and no less.The large, triangular marble slabs which form the memorial can be seenfrom a distance. They soar like ice floes that have been broken open, shimmeringpink, causing passers-by stop and pause. It was the very first monumentto recall the humiliation, the persecution and murder of those stigmatisedby having to wear the pink triangle in the Third Reich. The “Homo-Monument” is dignified. But it is also a call to be vigilant. It is a call for condemningexclusion and making a stand against every form of discriminationin everyday life.We in Germany, must also keep this memory alive and need a goodmeasure of vigilance. Admittedly, tours of the former Buchenwald, Dachauand Sachsenhausen concentration camps have for many years now alsoincluded accounts of the sufferings of their homosexual inmates, but so fara visible sign of mourning these destroyed lives in a prominent place hasbeen lacking. This is why we should follow the example set by Amsterdam.However, I must confess that I am not sure whether the German authoritieswould actually have the courage to put “Homo-Monument” on a street sign.I am glad that the German Bundestag is today again addressing the questionof this memorial site. Our debate comes late. This topic has unfortunatelybeen evaded or suppressed for a long time in debates on history. Wein Germany, first needed a movement of emancipation and self-assertion tomake it possible to respect this way of living, to put it on equal footing, totreat it as what, in the words of Klaus Mann, is, after all “not better, notworse, has just as many great, moving, melancholic, grotesque, beautifuland trivial aspects as love between a man and a woman”. It was a strugglewhich took years. This German government has finally taken real steps toaccepting homosexual citizens as part of society and integrating them intosociety – with duties and also with rights long denied them.When we speak of sincerity in the way we deal with each other, this alsoapplies to the past in a special way. Anyone who reads the diaries of homosexualprisoners, anyone who is aware of the fate of individual homosexualshas a notion of the horrors they experienced in the concentrationcamps, the special status allotted to them and their position at the very bottomof the hierarchy of prisoners. Werner Koch, a political prisoner at theSachsenhausen camp, writes:However, the homosexuals, who have to wear a pink triangle, are evenmore despised and isolated than the asocial inmates.The so-called 175ers suffered humiliating treatment, brutal torture andhorrific ordeals and were, in particular, at the utter mercy of the arbitrary170