85th Anniversary of Nazi Book Burning

"Where they burn books, they will ultimately also burn people."
-Heinrich Heine, 1920 

85 years ago today Nazi Germany committed a crime against knowledge. 

After conducting a May 6 raid on the Magnus Hirschfeld Institute which since 1919 had been doing pioneering research on trans and gay people, on May 10, 1933 the institute's 20,000 books and 500 images along with other 'unGerman' books went up in flames in the Opernplatz (now called the Bebelplatz) as Nazi Propaganda Minister Joseph Goebbels spoke in front of a crowd of 40,000 people.

The other critical thing that was seized in that May 6 raid was the Institute's lists of names and addresses.   Some historians assert the list was used by the Gestapo and SS to launch the 1934 purge against the Ernst Rohm led SA and round up of the German TBLGQ people left in the country called Operation Hummingbird. 

Marking the spot in the Bebelplatz where our TBLGQ history and knowledge went up in flames along with other books deemed 'unGerman' by the Nazi regime is a plaque with the Heine quote and a glass panel.   It's a window that allows you to peer into an underground room with empty bookshelves, symbolizing the knowledge and history that went up in flames on that day. 

We are dangerously close in the United States to not heeding the lessons of the rise of Nazi Germany and repeating its deadly to marginalized peoples mistakes.

Conservatives are quick to call any news story or article criticizing them as 'fake news' and even call any news outlets critical to them 'lugenpresse'.

That needs to stop before it does damage to our country we can't fix in a few election cycles .

Hertha Berlin Takes A Knee In Germany

The NFL players taking a knee just got additional support from their fellow athletes across The Pond who play the other football.

The German soccer club Hertha Berlin took a knee yesterday before their Bundesliga match with Schalke which unfortunately for them was a 2-0 loss   The Hertha Berlin starters linked arms and took a knee on the pitch while their coach Pal Dardai, General Manager Michael Preetz and the rest of the Hertha team kneeled on the sidelines before kickoff in solidarity with NFL players.

"We wanted to take a stand against racism," said Hertha captain Per Skjelbred in an interview after their 2-0 loss

The symbolism of this 'take a knee' protest was magnified because Hertha Berlin plays its home games in the renovated Olympiastadion, which was built for the 1936 Olympic Games by Nazi Germany.

Germany in recent years post reunification has also had their problems with racism rearing its ugly head there as the country becomes more diverse.

The Olympiastadion stadium announcer said to the more that 50,000 fans in attendance, "Hertha Berlin stands for diversity and against violence.  For this reason we are joining the protest by American athletes and setting a sign against discrimination."

Hertha Berlin also said in a statement on the team's Twitter account "Hertha BSC stands for tolerance and responsibility!  For a tolerant Berlin and an open minded world now and forever."

Hertha Berlin's players were unanimous in their support for yesterday's action and admitted they were inspired to do so by the NFL protests. 'We stand against racists and that's our way of sharing that  We are always going to fight against this kind of behavior as a team and as a city," said Hertha Berlin forward Salomon Kalou.

This is just another undeniable sign that the NFL players are on the right side of history.  The rest of the world is watching the unjust things you do, and are commenting on it.

And in some cases, thy are doing so by taking a knee.

What's Kim Petras Up To?

Watching that Deutsche Welle Afro Germany documentary and perusing the results of the recent German federal elections made me wonder what has been going on with Kim Petras lately..

Kim was the youngest person in Germany at age 12 to begin her transition, and the now 24 year old has been busy building her music career in her birth nation and in Europe. 

She now has her sights set on conquering the US music market and has released a new song entitled 'I Don't Want It At All'

She also hasn't forgotten her trans status and feeling she needs to be a roleodel for tne trans kids

Black and German

One of the little known things about me is I took German in high school, and I have a cousin who is German. 

Black people have lived in Germany for 400 years, and there are an estimated 1 million Afro Germans in the nation today.  I was aware of that history because of the late EBONY managing editor Hans Massaquoi and his book about growing up Black in Nazi Germany called Destined to Witness.

Massaquoi, while being a naturalized American citizen, still considered Germany home.

That's one reason why I was thrilled to discover the Deutsche Welle documentary by German journalist Jana Pareigis (who is yes, Black and German) discussing the Afro German community

Pareigis is also a history maker.   She is the first Afro German to be a commentator on German television for the German news network Deutsche Welle and now is a co host on ZDN's morning show


   

President Obama and Chancellor Merkel Speak At Kirchentag

President Obama journeyed to Berlin at the invitation of German Chancellor Angela Merkel, the leader of the free world, for the Kirchentag, the German Protestant Church Congress.

This one was taking place not only during the 500th anniversary of the Reformation, but with a looming German federal election in September that you know the Russians are just itching to mess with.

The invitation to speak came last year, so it's a coincidence that the former POTUS is here in Europe as the same time as 45 is on his problematic first international trip in which he's Making America Look Bad Again..

And President Obama is still very popular in Germany.   He visited Germany six times, with the initial trip happening during his 2008 campaign in which 200,000 Germans gathered to hear him speak in front of Berlin's Siegessaule (Victory Column).

Here's the video from today's event with Chancellor Merkel

25th Anniversary Of The Fall Of The Berlin Wall

Like the Cold War and Jim Crow segregation, the Berlin Wall was a part of the world when I was born in 1962.   It was erected in August 1961 to stop the flow of East Germans fleeing their 'worker's paradise' to West Germany and came down in dramatic fashion on November 9, 1989.

For something that seemed like it was going to have a permanent place during my time on Earth to the point it was a tourist attraction and two US presidents made speeches near it, the stunning way events unfolded 25 years ago that brought The Wall down and several months later on October 3, 1990 led to the reunification of Germany are still mindboggling at times to me as a Cold War baby.

The Berlin Wall was such a reality in my world that I used it as a visual example of my determination NOT to do something.   I would say to peeps, "That will happen when the Berlin Wall falls."

And now, within my lifetime, before the close of the 20th century, it was beginning to happen before my very eyes.   The official dismantling of the Wall didn't start until the summer of 1990 and was completed in 1992

But happen it did, and the process got started 25 years ago on this date.

Berlin Book Burning 80th Anniversary

"Where they burn books they will also ultimately burn people.'   Heinrich Heine

Today is the 80th anniversary of the day that 20,000 'un-German' books and 5000 images were burned in 1933 in what is now known as the Bebelplatz in Berlin. 

So what does that day have in common with us TBLG people? 

Many of those books that went up in flames that night as Nazi Propaganda Minster Joseph Goebbels spoke to a crowd of 40,000 that evening came from the recently raided sex institute of Magnus Hirschfeld.

Hirschfeld was fortunately out of the country on a lecture tour in the United States when it happened, but he was doing much of the pioneering transsexual research there at the Berlin based institute and it went up in flames.   It's also speculated that the client lists and names seized in that Institute raid led to the murderous Operation Hummingbird purge against the Ernst Rohm led SA by the Gestapo and the SS a year later. 

And as a trans person, you are also left to ponder the question had Hirschfeld's institute and those books and papers survived, how much futher along trans related medical care and research wpuld be if it hadn't been burned that night in the Bebelplatz?
 
 

40th Anniversary Of The Munich Olympic Massacre

If you younglings are wondering why security is a major issue at every Olympic Games and what the moment of silence kerfluffle was about in the runup to the recently concluded London Games, it's because of what happened during the XX Olympic Games in Munich 40 years ago today.

On this date 11 members of the Israeli Olympic delegation and a German policeman died during a failed attempt to end the hostage standoff and rescue nine athletes being held in two helicopters at the NATO Fürstenfeldbruck airbase.  Five of the eight PLO terrorists also died during the failed rescue mission with three survivors being captured..

When Munich won the Olympic bid on April 26, 1966 to host the Games over Madrid, Montreal and Detroit concerns were expressed over the facts this would be the first Summer Olympics held in Germany since the 1936 Berlin Games and Munich was where the Nazi Party was founded and headquartered.

The (West) Germans were extremely sensitive to that history and when the Games opened on August 26, 1972 they wanted to make certain they took every opportunity to present an optimistic, happy, non-militaristic and democratic Germany to the world. 

But there were stormy political clouds intruding on that sunny picture the Germans planned to present to the world.  The IOC denied a request by the Palestine Liberation Organization for it to send a Palestinian team to the Olympic Games, and in response chatter started that retaliation would take place during the Games. There were rumblings and intelligence warnings before the Munich Games started that were unfortunately ignored that some kind of terrorist attack would take place as late as September 2. 

The Israeli Olympic delegation was understandably nervous in the runup to the Munich Games, had asked to have their own security team present, a request that for some reason was denied.   They were concerned during the Games about the lack of armed security guards patrolling the fences surrounding the Olympic Village and lax security procedures to enter and exit it once the Games started on August 26. 

In the early morning hours of September 5 eight members of the PLO terrorist group Black September scaled the two meter (six foot) fence surrounding the Olympic Village dressed in track suits, made it to the apartment building at 31 Connollystrasse housing the Israeli Olympic team, broke in, killed Youssef Romano and Moshe Weinberg, two members of the team that tried to resist the apartment invasion and took the remaining nine members hostage.  Fortunately the female members of the Israeli team were housed in a separate section of the Olympic Village, and the team members participating in the sailing events were 400 km away in Kiel.

It triggered an almost 18 hour standoff between the Black September terrorists and German authorities in which the PLO terrorists demanded the release of over 200 of their comrades in Israeli jails, Germany release the notorious Red Army Faction founders Andreas Baader and Ulrike Meinhof and be given safe passage out of the country in exchange for the Israeli hostages.

Later that evening the terrorists and their hostages were helicoptered to Fürstenfeldbruck airbase  to ostensibly be transported by air to Egypt but in reality were flying into a planned German ambush that went horribly wrong.

A firefight ensued with Anton Fliegerbauer, one of the undermanned German police team members snipers conducting the rescue operation being shot and killed in the control tower along with five of the eight Black September terrorists. 

When the remaining terrorists saw armored cars being deployed they realized their chances of holding out were over.  They shot four of the Israeli hostages on one of the helicopters and then detonated a grenade that resulted in their incineration.   The five remaining Israeli hostages on the second helicopter were then machine-gunned by another terrorist.



In the wake of the attack and amongst mounting international pressure to do so, the IOC suspended Olympic competition for 24 hours and a memorial service was held September 6 in the Olympic stadium for the slain athletes.  The three captured surviving terrorists were later released by the German government October 29 in response to demands by terrorists who hijacked Lufthansa Flight 615.  

Two of the released Munich Massacre terrorists were later allegedly assassinated by Israeli Mossad agents and Jamal Al-Gashey, the surviving Munich Black September attacker is alleged to be still in hiding somewhere in Syria or an unnamed North African nation.

In addition to the Munich Olympic Massacre leading to heightened security at every subsequent Olympic Games, the failed rescue mission led to a German government reassessment of their anti-terrorism policies and forming the elite GSG-9 unit in response to the multiple failures of September 5.  

The Israelis in addition to the Mossad unleashed an anti-terrorism campaign called Operation Act of God with the goal of assassinating individuals in the PLO either directly or indirectly involved with the 1972 Munich Massacre.   

September 5, 1972 still remains 40 years later one of the most horrific days ever for the modern Olympic movement.  I agree with many people including the widows of those 11 Israeli athletes there should have been a moment of silence at the London Games opening ceremony.

Andre Spitzer, Kehat Shorr, Youssef Gutfreund, Amitzur Shapira, Yakov Springer, David Berger, Ze'ev Friedman, Mark Slavin and Eliezer Halfin, those of us who remember what happened on that horrific September 5 day, the world shall never forget you.  

Youssef Romano and Moshe Weinberg, we'll never forget your heroism in sacrificing your lives and giving enough of a warning to your teammates that it allowed several members of your delegation to escape. 

German police officer Anton Fliegerbauer also gave his life in order to rescue the Israeli Olympians.

And shame on you IOC for not taking the time during these just concluded games to remember the September 5 attack and all the people who died in it.

Berlin Trans Rights Panel Discussion

This panel discussion I'm posting was organized by the Heinrich Boll Foundation and took place in Berlin on October 5.  It was discussing the Transrespect Vs Transphobia (TvT) Project and included panelists from several nations and different regions of the world. 

One of the panelists I was delighted to discover as I watched this unfold was Naomi Fontanos, the chairwoman of STRAP, the Society of Transsexual Women of the Philippines.   STRAP is the world renowned premier trans rights and trans empowerment organization based in the Philippines and Fontanos spoke about the situations of transpeople in East and Southeast Asia.

50th Anniversary Of The Berlin Wall Erection

I wrote about it last year, but today is the 50th anniversary of the day that at midnight East Germany began building what they called their 'Antifascist Protection Barrier'.   The rest of the world came to know it as the Berlin Wall.  

As I wrote last year, that structure was a part of the world I grew up in as a tangible symbol of the Cold War tensions that split a city and a nation in two    

Chancellor Angela Merkel, who grew up in East Germany, will attend the dedication and opening of a memorial and museum to The Wall at Bernauer Strasse, which was cut in two by the construction of the wall that stood for 28 years.   There are disputed claims as to just how many people died trying to cross it.   The count ranges from 138 to the 700 claimed by victim's rights groups.  The first victim is believed to be Guenter Liftin, who was killed on August 24, 1961 and the last was Chris Gueffroy on February 6, 1989.

Two US presidents made speeches in front of it.

JFK's 1963 'Ich Bin Ein Berliner' speech.


Reagan's 1987 'Tear down this wall' speech
 


Indeed, just two years later, that Brandenburg Gate area was filled with deliriously happy people doing precisely that.  

May 10, 1933

Dr.Magnus Hirschfeld in 1919 founded the Institut für Sexualwissenschaft (Institute for Sexual Research) in Berlin.   It became renowned not only for its immense library collection, it also provided medical consultations, treatment and educational services for the 20,000 people a year who visited it.  

In addition to its research, the Institute treated STD's, advocated for sex education and contraception and the human rights and social acceptance of gay and trans people

The Institute was also doing pioneering research on trans people.   Some of the first trans surgeries were performed in the early 1930s under its auspices.  Trans people were on its staff and part of its clientèle.  Dr. Harry Benjamin, who would later expand on trans concepts he would learn there in the United States was a colleague of Dr. Hirschfeld.   .  .

But unfortunately the rise to power of the Nazi party would bring that progress to a screeching halt.    As Ernst Rohm's moderating influence weakened, the Nazis launched a campaign in February 1933 that shut down GLB clubs, banned gay rights organizations and outlawed sex publications.  The pressure got stepped up another notch a month later when Kurt Hiller, the main administrator of the institute, was sent to a concentration camp.

On May 6 while Dr. Hirschfeld was on a lecture tour in the United States, the Deutsche Studentenschaft raided the Institute, seized its extensive list of names and addresses and looted its archives and library.   Four days later in the Opernplatz (now the Bebelplatz) the 20,000 books and 5000 images from it were burned along with the works of other 'un-German' books as Joseph Goebbels spoke to a crowd of 40,000 people.

Hirschfeld never returned to Germany and tried to rebuild his beloved institute in Paris, but died of a heart attack on his birthday in 1935.

In 1934 Hitler launched Operation Hummingbird, the murderous purge against the Ernst Rohm led SA by the Gestapo and the SS.   Aided by what some historians believe was the address list that was confiscated from the Institute, followed up recently passed harsh anti gay laws with round ups of gay people that hadn't already fled Germany.   Many people caught in this dragnet ended up incarcerated in slave labor or death camps.

One of the books that was burned that day in the Opernplatz was Heinrich Heine's Almansor.   It had a chillingly prophetic line in it in which he states, "Where they burn books, they will ultimately also burn people."

The tragedy of the May 10, 1933 book burning is that not only did Heine's quote tragically come true a few years later, a lot of research and a major chunk of TBLG history went up in flames.that day which will never be recovered.

You are also as a transperson left to wonder how far along SRS research and gender studies would be if it had been able to build on Magnus Hirschfeld's work.

The 1378 (km) Video Game-History Teaching Tool Or Tasteless?

I've talked about the 'Anti fascist Protection Barrier' as the dearly departed Deutsche Demokratische Republik euphemistically used to call the fortified border separating themselves from their West German cousins during the Cold War.  I immediately thought about it as a Kennedy baby in the context of Republican calls for the US to build a fortified border wall sarcastically called the 'Tortilla Curtain' to slow down the flow of undocumented crossings from Mexico.

The Cold War era border is back in the news in the wake of the 20th anniversary of German reunification.  A video game that was set to be released on that October 3 date has caused controversy in Germany..

As part of his university degree studies at the University of Design, Media and Arts, 23 year old Jens Stober created 1378 (km).   The title of the game refers to the length in kilometers of the old fortified Inner German Border and is set in 1976, when the IGB received one of its deadly upgrades..


1378 (km) is a first person shooter game in which up to 16 people can play taking the roles of either the East German Grenztruppen or East Germans trying to escape. 

"Becoming an East German escapee or border guard enables players to identify with these figures," Stober  said. "It's a novel way of encouraging young people to take an interest in coming to terms with recent German history."


Rainier Wagner, the chairman of the Association for Victims of Communist Tyranny, has a different view of the game.   He was arrested trying to cross the wall and spent two years in an East German prison for attempting to do so.   He's one of a long list of critics that include German politicians who are offended by the game.

Wagner is quoted in a BBC article on the game that 1378 (km) is worse than other first person shooting games because you are shooting at unarmed civilians instead of armed enemies.

Stober counters that the game later skips to the year 2000 and the border guards have to face trials for what they've done in the name of the East German regime. 

Stober's Karlsruhe based university, while releasing a statement apologizing to the people who lost family members attempting to flee East Germany, is standing behind and offering support to Stober. 

Whether 1378 (km)  is a new way of exposing kids to recent German history or a tasteless shoot-em-up, one thing that is guaranteed is the internal debate in Germany about the game will be a fierce, emotional one.