During the World War II a lot of people were forcefully castrated by the SS. This audio file, which was recorded at the Sachsenhausen concentration camp gives some information about the “treatment” of victims. Listen above!

Op donderdag zijn naar het voormalig concentratiekamp Sachenshausen geweest. De dag begon met een uitleg van de gids over wanneer het concentratiekamp gebouwd was en hoe het gebouwd was. Namelijk op een manier zodat ze vanuit 1 toren alle gevangen in de gaten konden houden. Na deze uitleg gingen we naar buiten op het terrein waar het concentratiekamp was. De gids vertelde ons heel veel informatie over wat we zagen. Zoals de barakken waarvan er nog twee over zijn. Een van de barakken was ook nog ingericht zoals in de Tweede wereldoorlog. Met hele smalle stapelbedden van drie hoog. En ook de ‘badkamers’ waar alle gevangen zich ’s ochtends in een heel kort tijdsbestek moesten wassen. Wat wel heel belangrijk was want met het harde werken en de vele mensen (tussen de 70 en 100 mensen per barak) werd hygiene erg belangrijk omdat je niet ziek wilde worden.

Further on we saw also the monument they build overthere, it is a tower which is symbolic build higher than the highest post the Campleaders used to have for they’re overview on the prisoners. Also in Sachenhausen you can find lots of information about what happenend in the second world war. For example they have an exhebition about sickness around the concentration camp, how the sick people get a treatment and so on. And in the same building you can find information about the medical experiments that they did on the prisoners and the castrations a lot of prisoners (most homosexuals) were forced to.

Verder hebben we ook het monument gezien dat na de oorlog is gebouwd. Het is een toren die symbolisch hoger is gebouwd dan het punt waar de kampleiders hun uitkijkpost hadden om het overzicht te houden over alle gevangen. In Sachenhausen kun je naast de overblijfselen van het concentratiekamp ook veel informatie vinden over wat er is gebeurd in de tweede wereldoorlog. Zo is er bijvoorbeeld een tentoonstelling over hoe er werd omgegaan met zieken in het concentratiekamp. En in hetzelfde gebouw kun je informatie vinden over de medische experimenten die werden uitgevoerd op gevangenen en de gedwongen castraties die veel gevangen (vaak homoseksuelen) moesten ondergaan.

In the afternoon we got time to visit the camp on our own. The guided tour was really interesting, but in the afternoon I realised more and more what really happened there. And that was such a strange feeling… Thinking how people ‘lived’ there under such terrible circumstances. But also I tried to understand how the campleaders could live with thereselves after doing such crazy things. How it came this far? And I had such a hard time with imagining it…

In de middag kregen we tijd om het kamp te bezoeken zonder gids. De toer was heel interessant, maar in de middag realiseerde ik me pas meer en meer wat er nu echt was gebeurd daar, op de grond waar ik liep. En dat was echt een vreemd gevoel… Denken over hoe de mensen daar leefden, onder zulke verschrikkelijke omstandigheden. Maar ik heb ook geprobeerd om te begrijpen hoe de kampleiders met zichzelf konden leven, nadat ze zulke verschrikkelijke dingen uitvoerden. Hoe het zo ver heeft kunnen komen? En het was zo moelijk om me dit allemaal voor te stellen…

Well I think you can imagine that the feeling after this was kind of depressed, but I think it’s good I experienced it. I tried to describe the things I saw, but it’s to much to put on in words (espescially in English words). Though it’s possible on this website to see some photo and video impressions of Sachsenhausen also.

Ik denk dat u zich kan voorstellen dat we ons best depressief voelde na deze ervaring. Maar ik denk ook dat het goed is om meegemaakt te hebben. Ik heb geprobeerd om te beschrijven wat ik heb gezien in Sachenhausen, maar het is teveel om op te schrijven en/of in woorden te vangen. Wel is het mogelijk om wat foto’s en video’s van het kamp te bekijken op deze website.

Seventy years ago nobody couldn´t know what will happen… And I´m afraid there are still some people who don´t know it unfortunately so far!

It´s necessary to talk about it and not even talk…! We have to realize all these breakpoints that were the cause of all these terrible things that passed.

We shouldn´t try to find the offender(s) of it… of things we´re not able to replace and change. We should rather concentrate on present (and of course learn from the mistakes in past).

Because now we ourselves are responsible…

By Marek Vimr, Czech Republic

We were very lucky to meet two guys on the cemetery who happened to know lots about the LGBT aspect of this cemetery, and they gave us a very spontaneous but extremely informative tour around. They are a part of the organisational effort of Efeu e.V., and one of their projects is called “Kreuze & Queer” that involves making a comprehensive folder over all the LGBT graves in the cemetery.

The LGBT culture has a tendency of being very expressive, and they want to be able to show that their lives were special, and that they were different from other people. For example, there was one grave that had a big poster instead of a gravestone on the grave, and the poster was a picture of a desk that contained many personal momentums like letters, diplomas and gay buttons.

There are also more traditional graves that aren’t that expressive, but yet differ from normal graves. We discovered a grave of a young man whose grave was very personal, and was kept by his friends. They had for example placed a small bench adjacent the grave, and a sort of postbox that people could use to put photos and letters into. They had also placed a small box under the bench where you could find tools and objects for people who wanted to take care of the grave.

There was a grave that had three names on it, and at first it may seem that there were three people buried here, but our guides told us that there was only one person actually buried here at the moment, and that the other two had reserved places on the very same grave for when they would die and have to get buried as well. Reserving a location for a grave before one dies is an increasingly more popular thing to do, but the trend is not mainstream at all.

The beautiful thing about this cemetery was that although there were many new and alternative things going on, the main goal was to also preserve the atmosphere of the cemetery. They encourage people to take over other peoples graves and to renovate the old monuments, so that the history and the ornamental beauty of the cemetery isn’t lost.

One last project to mention is a collaborative effort between the evangelical and catholic church, which is a service that provides a cheap space for people who cannot afford normal graves and cremations.

On the national evening of the Dutch participants they informed the others about the situation of the LGBT people in the Netherlands. The speech consisted of two parts: the legal situation and the social acceptation of LGBT’s in the Netherlands.

Legal situation

The legal situation of the Dutch LGB’s is among the best situations there is worldwide. In 1998, partnership laws were introduced. Three years later, the civil marriage was also opened for two people of the same gender. On the first day of april 2001, Job Cohen, the mayor of Amsterdam, closed the first marriage between two gays and the first marriage between two women in international history. This was an important milestone for the gay rigths movement in the Netherlands. But then, the legal situation could be improved a lot more. This spring, a bill passed the parlement, which granted lesbian mums who are having a baby together, the same rights as heterosexual couples.

Unfortunately, the legal situation of transgenders in the Netherlands is lacking behind. To change the gender in the passport, one has to have had a full sex change operation. It is also not possible to be in between male or female; eveyone has to make an explicit choice. Financial issues and legislation are also not clear, and a code of practice like the one that is there in England, does not exist.

Social acceptation

It’s a pity to ruin the ideas that other countries have of the LGBT life in the Netherlands, but the Netherlands aren’t LGBT heaven. The good legislation does not automatically lead to social acceptation and an LGBT friendly atmosphere. Not everyone embraces sexual diversity. For example, a recent Dutch study shows that 22 percent of the Dutch population rejects gay marriage, one-third thinks that gays should not be able to adopt children and between 30 and 50 percent of the population finds it offending when two men or two women kiss each other on the streets, while only 8 percents considers these acts offending when it concerns a heterosexual couple.

Also, in the Netherlands the reports of antigay violence are rising. For example, after the gay pride of 2007, some gays got beaten up in Amsterdam and Haarlem, and a month before that there was a violent encounter between some heterosexual men and a lesbian couple in Nijmegen.

Much less is known about the social acceptability of bisexual people living in the Netherlands and the attitudes towards transgenders. Survey studies do not include any questions about these issues up till now. The sad news it that we did have a transgender murder last year, although the circumstances were not totally clear. The murder did woke up, in some way, the gay community.

Conclusion

To summarize the preceding, we concluded on the Dutch evening that the legal situation of the Netherlands is better than the ones of the other participants. But, unfortunetely, good laws do not garuantee a discrimination-free and diversity-embracing atmosphere. Social acceptance remains an important and hard-to-reach goal. The social situation of the bisexual and trandgenders is unclear at the moment due to a lack of research, and definitely in need of attention. For the last group, the legal situation is not good, and should be improved in the near future.

The Animal Groups were used to divide the tasks of dealing with the catering and being responsible for the Media Diary work.