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"First they came for Socialists, and I did not
speak out - because I was not a Socialist. Then they
came for the trade unionists, and I did not speak out - because I
was not a trade unionist. Then they came for the Jews, and I did not
speak out - because I was not a Jew. Then they came for me -
and there was no one left to speak for me.
Rev Martin Niemoeller (1892-1984)
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Oklahoma’s unique opportunity The Holocaust was the systematic, bureaucratic, state-sponsored persecution and murder of approximately six million Jews by the Nazi regime and its collaborators. "Holocaust" is a word of Greek origin meaning "sacrifice by fire." The Nazis, who came to power in Germany in January 1933, believed that Germans were "racially superior" and that the Jews, deemed "inferior," were "life unworthy of life." During the era of the Holocaust, the Nazis also targeted other groups because of their perceived "racial inferiority": Roma (Gypsies), the handicapped, and some of the Slavic peoples (Poles, Russians, and others). Other groups were persecuted on political and behavioral grounds, among them Communists, Socialists, Jehovah's Witnesses, and homosexuals. The Oklahoma Holocaust Remembrance Exhibition brings together for the first time two nationally renowned exhibitions and two widely acclaimed documentary films. Many people are familiar with the Nazi regime’s persecution and murder of six million Jews. They are often unaware, however, that many other groups were deemed “inferior,” and suffered a similar fate. Many people are also unaware of people who risked everything – their own lives and the lives of their families – to save Jews from the Holocaust. The Oklahoma Holocaust Remembrance Exhibition examines some of these lesser known aspects of the Holocaust.
The pink triangle (second column from right) was the badge imposed on the estimated 5,000 to 15,000 male homosexual prisoners who suffered in Nazi concentration camps. Under the practice of “protective custody,” the Gestapo seized without warrants and confined in camps suspected homosexual men, political opponents, and others—particularly Jews after 1938—who “offended” the German nation. Homosexual detainees, easily identified by their pink triangles, bore vicious physical abuse from the SS camp guards. Fellow prisoners shunned the homosexuals, leaving them isolated and powerless within the prisoner hierarchy. Dokumentationsarchiv des Österreichischen Widerstandes, Vienna.
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