Yad Vashem Ceremony for Gays is Marred by Protest, Violence

Holocaust survivors and a visiting international group of gay men and lesbians clashed at the Yad Vashem Holocaust Memorial here Monday as the gay community held a ceremony to honor homosexuals who perished under the Nazis.

Holocaust survivors greeted the group of about 100 gay activists with protest banners as they arrived at the memorial. But worse was to come inside the cavernous Hall of Remembrance after a Reform rabbi, himself gay, began reciting the Kaddish memorial prayer.

A bearded man with a heavy Russian accent screamed, “My grandfather was killed for refusing to have sexual relations with the camp commandant. You are desecrating this place, you homos!”

The gay group did its best to continue, reciting the Kaddish and singing Hannah Senesh’s “Eli, Eli” poem, many of them in tears. Some were attacked by the protesters and had to be restrained by their friends from fighting back.

The ceremony marked the first time the Nazi persecution of homosexuals had been commemorated at Yad Vashem, and it had aroused controversy in the days leading up to it. A full-page advertisement placed in the Jerusalem Post last Friday by a group of 19 rabbis called the ceremony an “abomination” and threatened a boycott of the Holocaust memorial.

Monday’s ceremony was sponsored by the Society for the Protection of Personal Rights, Israel’s principal gay rights group, as the kickoff for a month of events for gay men and lesbians.

Many of the participants, here for the World Congress of Gay and Lesbian Jewish Organizations, were deeply upset by the reception they received at Yad Vashem.

A young delegate from England said bitterly: “This makes us feel very much at home in Israel!”