January 27th, 2010 marks the 65th anniversary of the liberation of the concentration camp in Auschwitz-Birkenau by Soviet troops. Since 2006, the day has been designated by the United Nations General Assembly as “International Holocaust Remembrance Day“.

Commemorative events will be held around Europe and around Ireland tomorrow. In Israel, the blueprints from Aushwitz-Birkenau were available for viewing as of yesterday at Yad Vashem.

In Cork, a talk will be held in UCC’s Boole Lecture Theatre 3 at 7pm, featuring Holocaust survivor Mrs Suzi Diamond and the screening of the film “The Sonderkommando”. More from Indymedia:

Mrs.Suzi Diamond is a survivor of the Bergen-Belsen concentration camp.She and her brother Terry Samuels were born in Hungary and brought to Ireland from Bergen-Belsen by Dr Bob Collis. They were eventually adopted by an Irish Jewish family.
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The Sondercommando was a special group of prisoners that operated cremmatoria in Auschwitz as well as in other Nazi death camps.Someone selected for the sonderkommando had a choice: die then or die in four months time since the prisoners employed in it were murdered every several months and replaced with new workers.However,a few members of the sonderkommando managed to survive and told their stories…

In Dublin, The Office of the Minister for Integration is hosting an event on Sunday, January 31st. Applications for invitations closed in December, but for the curious, the event will be held at the Mansion House on Dawson St, and will include the lighting of six candles to commemorate the six million Jews who died in concentration camps as well as candles for the other victims, choral and musical interludes, and talks by survivors.

In Derry, The Tower Museum is hosting the screening of a Holocaust-themed film tomorrow.

The Holocaust Educational Trust Crocus Project distributes crocus bulbs to school children who plant the bulbs to commemorate the children who died in the Holocaust. When the yellow flowers bloom in late January, it coincides with International Holocaust Memorial Day.

What is still only quietly discussed is the presence of homosexuals in the concentration camps. Germany’s government first apologised to the gay community in 2002. While known lesbians may have been few due to the general invisibility of lesbian identity (they were as likely to be imprisoned for feminism), gay men were treated especially badly in concentration camps and were more likely to be killed than other non-Jewish groups. They were also likely to be experimented upon, assaulted by other men and were given some of the worst jobs.

The reason the gay survivors of the Holocaust have only more recently been recognised is partially because the idea of imprisoning people for being gay wasn’t all that unusual when the Holocaust ended, in many of the countries that made up the Allied forces. While the camps were definitely more cruel and lethal than a regular prison, a lot of people would have felt that gay people were legitimately incarcerated.

From the International Association of Lesbian & Gay Children of Holocaust Survivors:

The Nazis forced concentration camp inmates to wear various symbols on their uniforms. The Jews wore a yellow “Jewish Star” (made of two inverted yellow triangles). The homosexual inmates wore an inverted “Pink Triangle”. {In some camps, such as Schirmeck, homosexuals wore blue bars on their uniforms.} This chart from the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum’s archives depicts the various other groups and their respective colors; such as black for “A-socials” (including lesbians and feminists), purple for Jehovah’s Witnesses, red for political prisoners, green for criminal prisoners, brown (maroon) for gypsies.