Contact: Jaime Balboa, Director of Public Education (+415-553-5512) jaime@iglhrc.org

BERLIN--The Pink Triangle Coalition (PTC), of which the International Gay and Lesbian Human Rights Commission (IGLHRC) is a founding member, together with the Heinrich Böll Foundation, will sponsor a two-day Pink Triangle Colloquium on February 12 and 13, 2000 in Berlin. Planet Out (www.planetout.com) is the colloquium media sponsor. "This is truly an historic event," said Jaime Balboa, colloquium co-director and Director of Public Education at IGLHRC. "A great number of excellent speakers are lined up, including Nazi survivors and scholars Gad Beck, Pierre Seele, Claudia Schoppmann, and James Steakley. Our colloquium has been in the works for several months now, but with the recent extreme right-wing victory in Austria, it couldn't be more timely," Balboa continued, referring to the prominence of Jorg Haider, a public admirer of Hitler, in Austria's recently formed coalition government.

The purpose of the colloquium is to bring scholars, activists, advocates, and gay survivors of Nazi persecution together to discuss new trends in research and advocacy and to hear first-hand the accounts of gay people who survived the twelve years of Nazi rule. "Time is our enemy," said Todd Presner, a doctoral candidate at Stanford University who will moderate two of the panels at the colloquium. "It has been over 55 years since Hitler's defeat, and those who survived his treachery won't be with us much longer," he continued. Gad Beck, a gay Jew who led an underground resistance movement in Berlin, and Pierre Seele, who was sent to a concentration camp because he is gay, will both address the colloquium.

The PTC was formed two years ago in Berlin with two major objectives in mind: (1) to ensure and coordinate representation of gay victims of the Nazis vis-a-vis various national and international funds with a view to maximizing resources for educational projects and ensuring fair distribution of any resources; and (2) to collect and disseminate information about Nazi persecution of gay men and lesbians while involving other non-governmental organizations in facilitating a structured approach. "The Pink Triangle Coalition has had some important successes. We successfully lobbied to attend the London Conference on Nazi Gold and the Washington Conference on Holocaust Era Assets. But is has been an uphill battle. We were most recently denied access to the Stockholm Holocaust Forum for Education which happened in January. With this colloquium we hope to raise public awareness about the extent of homophobia both within the Third Reich and beyond," said Balboa.

The colloquium will take place at the Deutsches Architekturzentrum in Berlin. Organizers are asking 20 DM for students and low-income attendees and 40 DM for regular tickets. Tickets include plenary meals with the colloquium speakers and Pink Triangle Coalition members.

To attend the colloquium, contact Michael Stognienko (stognienko@boell.de) or Marianne Zepp (zepp@boell.de) at the Böll Foundation +30-285-34-201.

IGLHRC's mission is to protect and advance the human rights of all people and communities subject to discrimination or abuse on the basis of sexual orientation, gender identity, or HIV status. Learn more about IGLHRC at www.iglhrc.org.