A gray concrete slab with a window
through which viewers can watch a video of two men kissing served as
memorial to the thousands of gays persecuted and tortured by the
Nazis. The monument has been vandalized for the second time in only
four months, reports The
Associated Press.
According to the report, Berlin police
say someone broke the window that allows visitors to peer into the
monument and watch the video.
In August, vandals also broke the
window and damaged a nearby fence.
The monument sits in the center of
Berlin, along the Tiergarten Park across from the much larger
memorial to Jewish victims of the Holocaust.
Estimates claim that up to 50,000 gays
were labeled criminals and outcasts by Germany's Nazi party after
Hitler outlawed homosexuality in 1936, calling it “unnatural”
behavior unbecoming of the Aryan “master race.” As many as
15,000 gays were tortured and died of hunger, disease, or abuse in
Nazi concentration camps, where they were identified with a pink
triangle.
Openly gay Berlin Mayor Klaus Wowereit
and about 100 protesters staged a protest after the first attack to
denounce homophobia.
Homophobia had kept the German
government from officially recognizing the Nazi's homosexual victims
until last year, when the German Parliament agreed to pay $1 million
dollars to fund the memorial.
The memorial was inaugurated in May.