Stockholm -- Representatives of Tupilak (Nordic rainbow culture workers) and the ILGCN (international rainbow culture network) Information Secretariat-Stockholm joined with Dr. Anna Hájková, Czech/UK from her home in England with a Zoom connection, presenting some of her research into "Queer History in the Holocaust" -- describing the challenges and the difficulties in finding materials and working in areas not always supported by universities and other institutions.
The September 15, 2020 event also included the award to Dr. Hájková of the ILGCN's "Orfeo Iris 2020" award honoring "outstanding contributions to research on LGBT people in Nazi and neo Nazi times."
The motivation reads: "for the crucial, often ignored research -- also with books and numberous articles -- on the fate of LGBT people in the Nazi death camps."
The award is named after "iris" -- the rainbow, and the ancient Greek musician, Orpheus, whose powerful music could calm elven the demons of the underworld and who was proud of his male lovers, including Calais -- a fellow sailor on the Argos.
Earlier winners of the Orfeo Iris include the U.S. Holocaust Museum which had a gay researcher stationed in Europe to carry out work on homosexuals in the Holocaust, the Malmö City Museum in southern Sweden -- for arranging an exhbition on neo Nazi attacks and murders of homosexuals and immigrants, a controversial German ex-priest and author - revealing discrimination of LGBT people in the Catholoic Church, German and Austrian university students carrying out research on homophobic atrocities by the Nazis -- defying professors who insisted such work was unimportant, and the Museum of Auschwitz in Poland -- for including homosexuals in the list of those imprisoned and murdered there -- unlike many other museums, exhibitions, documentaries, news programs and anniversary events leaving out LGBT people in their lists of victims of the Nazis.
One of the important paricipants in the Zoom was Barbara Frölich of the Anti-Fascist organization in Vienna -- who will meet Dr. Hájková during her October visit to the Austrian capital.
The Zoom event was arranged since the virus has made planned travel to Sweden impossible at this time, but Dr. Hájková will come to Stockholm next year -- for more discussions and face-to-face questioning.
The Tupilak/ILGCN presentations planned for September 16 as part of the "Holocaust" event -- including comments on the Swedish-led LGBT official visit to Auschwitz 20 years ago, Franco's gay concentration camp Tefiá on Fuerteventura 10 years after Auschwitz was liberated, and the recent gay concentration camps in Checnya -- will be delivered in Stockholm on October 17 -- as part of the 5th National Rainbow History & Culture Month.
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More information: bill@tupilak.org facebooks "Tupilak" "ILGCN"
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Photos/art: Orpheo and his Calais, Anna Hájkova, award dip
