Yael Bartana's concept was chosen from among a total of 11 entries, the German Foundation Memorial to the Murdered Jews of Europe said in a statement on Thursday.
Michael Elmgreen and Ingar Dragset, the artist duo from Denmark and Norway respectively who created the Berlin Memorial to Homosexuals Persecuted Under Nazism, unveiled in 2008, had invited handpicked artists to participate in the closed competition. The German Culture Ministry is funding the film, the foundation said.
The new looped film is to start showing on June 3 in the framework of an official ceremony with German President Frank-Walter Steinmeier to mark the memorial's 10th anniversary.
The large grey concrete cuboid set up near the Holocaust Memorial in the heart of the German capital has a small square window on its front side, through which visitors can watch a short looped video that is swapped out every few years.
Read more: Gay Nazi victim Wolfgang Lauinger dies without state compensation
Eternal kiss
The very first film showed men locked in a kiss. It was replaced in 2012 by a film that showed people's reaction to kissing gay or lesbian couples. Since 2014, the original film has been showing again.
Kissing another man could land men in jail under the Nazis
The Israeli artist chosen to design the third film says on her homepage that her "films, installations and photographs explore the imagery of identity and the politics of memory."
Male homosexuality was a crime severely oppressed in Nazi Germany. A kiss was reason enough to persecute, and there were tens of thousands of convictions.
For a long time after World War II, homosexual victims of Nazi Germany were not officially recognized. Section 175 of the German criminal code that made homosexual acts between males a crime was only reformed in the early 1970s and finally abolished in 1994.
Read more: The long path toward same-sex marriage in Germany
In 2001, the initiative "Remember the Homosexual Victims of National Socialism" and the Lesbian and Gay Federation of Germany urged the creation of a memorial to the homosexuals persecuted by the National Socialist regime. Two years later, the German Bundestag pledged to build a memorial site.
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'Never Again': Memorials of the Holocaust
Dachau Concentration Camp Memorial Site
A large sculpture stands in front of Dachau. Located just outside Munich, it was the first concentration camp opened by the Nazi regime. Just a few weeks after Adolf Hitler came to power, it was used by the paramilitary SS Schutzstaffel to imprison, torture and kill political opponents of the regime. Dachau also served as a prototype and model for the other Nazi camps that followed.
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'Never Again': Memorials of the Holocaust
Wannsee House
The villa on Berlin's Wannsee lake was pivotal in the planning of the Holocaust. Fifteen members of the Nazi government and the SS Schutzstaffel met here on January 20, 1942 to devise what became known as the "Final Solution," the deportation and extermination of all Jews in German-occupied territory. In 1992, the villa where the Wannsee Conference was held was turned into a memorial and museum.
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'Never Again': Memorials of the Holocaust
Holocaust Memorial in Berlin
Located next to the Brandenburg Gate, Berlin's Memorial to the Murdered Jews of Europe was inaugurated 60 years after the end of World War II on May 10, 2005, and opened to the public two days later. Architect Peter Eisenman created a field with 2,711 concrete slabs. An attached underground "Place of Information" holds the names of all known Jewish Holocaust victims.
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'Never Again': Memorials of the Holocaust
Memorial to Persecuted Homosexuals
Not too far from the Memorial to the Murdered Jews of Europe, another concrete memorial honors the thousands of homosexuals persecuted by the Nazis between 1933 and 1945. The 4-meter high (13-foot) monument, which has a window showing alternately a film of two men or two women kissing, was inaugurated in Berlin's Tiergarten on May 27, 2008.
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'Never Again': Memorials of the Holocaust
Documentation center on Nazi Party rally grounds
Nuremberg hosted the biggest Nazi party propaganda rallies from 1933 until the start of World War II. The annual Nazi Party congress, as well as rallies with as many as 200,000 participants, took place on the 11-square-kilometer (4.25-square-mile) area. Today, the unfinished Congress Hall building serves as a documentation center and a museum.
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'Never Again': Memorials of the Holocaust
German Resistance Memorial Center
The Bendlerblock building in Berlin was the headquarters of a military resistance group. On July 20, 1944, a group of Wehrmacht officers around Colonel Claus von Stauffenberg carried out an assassination attempt on Hitler that ultimately failed. The leaders of the conspiracy were summarily shot the same night in the courtyard of the Bendlerblock. Today, it's the German Resistance Memorial Center.
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'Never Again': Memorials of the Holocaust
Bergen-Belsen Memorial
The Bergen-Belsen concentration camp in Lower Saxony was initially established as a prisoner of war camp before becoming a concentration camp. Prisoners too sick to work were brought here from other concentration camps, and many also died of disease. One of the 50,000 people killed here was Anne Frank, a Jewish girl who gained international fame after her diary was published posthumously.
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'Never Again': Memorials of the Holocaust
Buchenwald Memorial
Located near the Thuringian town of Weimar, Buchenwald was one of the largest concentration camps in Germany. From 1937 to April 1945, the National Socialists deported about 270,000 people from all over Europe to the camp and murdered 64,000 of them before the camp was liberated by US soldiers in 1945. The site now serves as a memorial to the victims.
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'Never Again': Memorials of the Holocaust
Memorial to the Sinti and Roma Victims
Opposite the Reichstag parliament building in Berlin, a park inaugurated in 2012 serves as a memorial to the 500,000 Sinti and Roma people killed by the Nazi regime. Around a memorial pool, the poem "Auschwitz" by Roma poet Santino Spinelli is written in English, Germany and Romani. "Gaunt face, dead eyes, cold lips, quiet, a broken heart, out of breath, without words, no tears," it reads.
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'Never Again': Memorials of the Holocaust
'Stolpersteine' — stumbling blocks as memorials
In the 1990s, artist Gunter Demnig began the project to confront Germany's Nazi past. The brass-covered concrete cubes placed in front of the former homes of Nazi victims show their names, details about their deportation, and murder, if known. As of early 2022, some 100,000 "Stolpersteine" have been laid in over 25 countries across Europe. It's the world's largest decentralized Holocaust memorial.
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'Never Again': Memorials of the Holocaust
Brown House in Munich
Right next to the "Führerbau," where Adolf Hitler had his office in Munich, was the headquarters of the Nazi Party, called the Brown House. A white cube now occupies the place where it once stood. In it, the "Documentation Center for the History of National Socialism" opened on April 30, 2015, 70 years after the defeat of the Nazi regime.
Author: Max Zander
