User:Zartesbitter/Commemorative Sphere for the Persecuted and Murdered Lesbian Women and Girls in the Former Women’s Concentration Camp Ravensbrück and Uckermark
The memorial sphere for the persecuted and murdered lesbian women and girls in the former Ravensbrück Women's Concentration Camp and Uckermark is a memorial symbol in the form of a clay sphere that was permanently installed in the Ravensbrück Memorial and Museum in 2022. The “Autonomous Feminist Women and Lesbians Initiative of Germany and Austria” first introduced a memorial sphere to the new memorial site in 2015. Since the mid-1990s, the initiative has organized their own memorial ceremonies on-site to commemorate lesbian women and girls who were imprisoned, murdered, and persecuted during the time of National Socialism in the Ravensbrück Women's Concentration Camp and the Uckermark Youth Concentration Camp for girls and young women. The memorial sphere is currently the only memorial symbol that commemorates lesbian concentration camp prisoners at the site of their suffering.
historic context
In the Ravensbrück Women's Concentration Camp, the largest concentration camp for women in the Third Reich, an estimated 132,000 women were imprisoned, including lesbian women. Since the 1980s, efforts have been made by lesbian groups, organizations, historians, and activists to create a memorial site at the Ravensbrück Memorial and Museum, in order to commemorate the lesbian women who were persecuted and murdered in the Ravensbrück Women's Concentration Camp and the Uckermark Youth Concentration Camp for girls and young women. (W. Jake Newsome: “We Died There, Too” Commemoration and the Construction of a Transatlantic Gay Identity. In: Pink Triangle Legacies Coming Out in the Shadow of the Holocaust. p. 168.)
During the times of the German Democratic Republic (GDR), the East Berlin group "Lesben in der Kirche" (Lesbians in the Church) publicly commemorated the lesbian victims of National Socialism. On March 8, 1984, International Women's Day, they traveled to the Ravensbrück Memorial to pay tribute.[1] They laid a wreath with the inscription, "In memory of the women of the former Ravensbrück concentration camp, especially our lesbian sisters," and wrote entries in the guestbook, which were later removed after a short time. Despite their efforts to raise awareness of their issues, they were criminalized, and all active participants were subject to surveillance and repression by the Stasi (East German secret police).[2] The Ministry for State Security of the GDR classified the group as a "terrorist organization."[3] [[Category:Monuments and memorials to the victims of Nazism]] [[Category:LGBT history in Germany]] [[Category:Ravensbrück concentration camp]]
- ^ Maria Bühner (2018-09-13). "Feministisch, lesbisch und radikal in der DDR: Zur Ost-Berliner Gruppe Lesben in der Kirche". www.digitales-deutsches-frauenarchiv.de. Retrieved 2022-12-21.
- ^ Sophie Krüger (2022-07-12). "Nachruf auf DDR-Aktivistin Bettina Dziggel: Leben für die Freundschaft". www.berliner-zeitung.de (in German). Retrieved 2022-12-21.
- ^ Jana Demnitz (2023-06-23). "East Pride in Berlin: Homosexualität als positive und friedensstiftende Kraft". www.tagesspiegel.de. Retrieved 2023-06-26.