Did the Nazis target lesbian women as harshly as they went after gay men? We weren’t there, so we don’t know! But smarter historians than we say the answer is, flatly, no, so they don’t want the Holocaust memorial in Berlin to suddenly start recognizing lesbian attacks.
As with anything involved with the Holocaust and questioning history, this is a touchy subject. Currently the monument, installed in May 2008 next to the Jewish memorial, lets visitors peer into a concrete block to watch an infinitely-looping video showing two men kissing. It’s to honor the estimated 15,000 gay men imprisoned by the Nazis; some 60 percent of them are believed to have died during detainment. But the original plans for the memorial called for the video to be swapped out every two years, with a video of two women kissing. Cue controversy.
Under the original plans, the video is to change every two years to feature two women locked in an embrace, meaning the switch is due in May. But Alexander Zinn, a board member of the foundation that maintains the former Nazi concentration camps near Berlin, said such a move would distort history as there were no known Holocaust victims targeted for being lesbian. “Historical truth must remain the focus,” Zinn told AFP.
He has banded together with other Holocaust experts and fired off a letter of protest to Culture Minister Michael Neumann and Berlin’s openly gay mayor, Klaus Wowereit. Neumann defended the plans as true to the original concept of the memorial in addressing present-day discrimination against lesbians and gays as well as the plight of homosexuals at the hands of the Nazis. “The option of using a lesbian film motif in the memorial is in no way meant to put on the same level the persecution of homosexual men and women under the Nazi regime,” he said in a statement. “Research shows that the persecution of lesbian women by the Nazi regime was not comparable to that of homosexual men. This is also clearly explained in a plaque on the memorial.”
This is the video currently playing since the memorial’s debut:
Listen. Were some lesbian women targeted by the Nazis? Almost certainly. Were they targeted as heavily as gay men? Perhaps not. Does that mean we should these women from history and deny them remembrance? Of course not. Give the gals their two years.
How about we take this to the next level?
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Xerxes
Lesbianism was not illegal in Nazi Germany, but male homosexuality was.
Observer1000
Here’s a solution to the problem. Replace the male-male film with a female-female film and display the male-male film on a huge billboard outside the Governor’s mansion in Virginia. Maybe another one in Kampala, Uganda, Vilnius, Lithuania, Orange County, Ohio, Alberta, Jerusalem, Riyadh, Long Island, Lakewood, NJ, etc … well you get the idea. Promise to take it down in those places 2 years and replace it with the female-female film.
Mike in Asheville, nee "in Brooklyn"
Hmmm, Queerty, you open with: Did the Nazis target lesbian women as harshly as they went after gay men? We weren’t there, so we don’t know! But smarter historians than we say the answer is, flatly, no”
And then you conclude with: “Were some lesbian women targeted by the Nazis? Almost certainly. Were they targeted as heavily as gay men? Perhaps not. Does that mean we should these women from history and deny them remembrance? Of course not. Give the gals their two years.”
So, you weren’t there, you don’t know, and yet you are certain that what you don’t know because you weren’t there is that it did happen? Yikes, perhaps Queerty, when you yourselves tell us you don’t know something, it would be best to leave conclusions up to those who do know because they were there, or least, are of the community that does know.
Leave it up the the holocaust historians OR, if there must be a political influence, task the historians: “Were women who were identified as lesbians rounded up and labeled with pink triangles?” If the answer is yes, then they must be included as part of the historical record. If the answer is no, then it would be inappropriate to include them in the historical record.
Certainly lesbians have been subjected to discrimination in Germany as gay men have been. Should recognition of the plight of all LGBT be illuminated, absolutely. But that is not necessarily the same as inclusion within Holocaust memorials. And should there not be an appropriate inclusion of lesbians within the Holocaust memorials, then it is of all the more importance to embark on new recognitions of the plight of discrimination against lesbians.
DR
I have to agree with Queerty’s conclusion. This isn’t a numbers game of “who was persecuted worse by the Nazis”, but a recognition that many groups were persecuted by the Nazis. Whether it was comparable or not is irrelevant; the fact of the matter is that they were, and that ought to be recognized.
Lamar
Nah, women have never been persecuted for homosexuality even as remotely as men so no. Anyway what about blacks and the disabled surely they should be recognized too using this logic?
ewe
Replace the film with 2 Lesbian women kissing when they include Muslim’s dying alongside Jews in the Camps. That’ll be the day. Sometimes Political Correctness is so over the top as to be defined as pointless and rediculous. The truth is very important but as we all know, history is written by those that triumphed.
ewe
How about putting 2 gay guys from Guam in the video exhibition next time round? If the truth can be distorted a first time, imagine what it will be a hundred years from now. Why not just put F2M so no one will be offended.
Justin
I did a pretty extensive paper on Nazi persecution for my English class so while I’m certainly not a historian, I do have a good amount of knowledge on the subject.
The Nazis hated male homosexuality primarily because it slowed down the birthrate of the perceived master race. They believed, just like many right-wing nutjobs do today, that homosexuality could be cured through “therapy,” although through this their “cure” was internment at Buchenwald of Sachsenhausen. Their persecution of homosexuals applied exclusively to “Aryan” men. Men found to be gay of Untermensch descent (i.e. Polish, Russian, Greek, etc.) were never singled out for this harsh treatment due to their attraction to other men because their supposed race was not one the Nazis wished to see increase.
The stated goal set forth by Nazi Germany was that all single Aryan women were to father at least four illegitimate children by an Aryan father, as their “duty” to the Fatherland. I know it sounds very odd, but they believed that Aryan women, even those attracted to other women, would still find the blond haired blue eyed, tall Aryan man irresistible and would carry out their duty. In short, they almost didn’t see lesbianism as real, more just a phase certain women had, while they viewed male homosexuality as a valid threat to the survival of the Aryan race.
Hyhybt
@Justin: Did you mean to say that women were supposed to *father* children?
—
As I see it, gay and lesbian are essentially the same thing. That the Nazis only or primarily punished males is immaterial.
JR
I could use a kiss like that right now!!!!!!!!!!!!
Lanjier
Including lesbians would send a bold message that the Holocaust museum wants to use memory to stop future oppression, not simply to live in the stone dead past.
Justin
@Hyhybt Yeah lol my bad.
@Lanjier I like that idea
ChrisM
Lanjier puts it perfectly. There should be no controversy over this.
Drake
This is an issue for the historians, not the political correctness revisionists. I have read extensively on the subject (although I am no historian), and I have not found any evidence to support the notion that lesbians as a group were persecuted in Nazi Germany. Gay men were most certainly. Over 100,000 were tried and convicted of “homosexuality”. The penalty for at least 50,000 included castration. All were tossed into concentration camps in the “extermination through work” programs. In the meticulous records of the nazis, not a single prisoner was ever noted to be there on charges of lesbianism. In the hellish concentration camps, prisoners with pink triangles (male gays) were often brutally raped by other prisoners. The US Holocaust Memorial (Holocaust Museum ) in Washington DC also states that lesbians were not singled out for persecution.
Marky
“It’s to honor the estimated 15,000 gay men imprisoned by the Nazis”
Wrong. It was 15 000 gay men sent to the camps. There were 100 000 arrested, 50 000 imprisoned. Most chose castration to avoid the camps.
Marky
There are only five known cases of lesbians being sent to the camps. The movie should reflect the suffering of the gay men and not some modern LGBTQ agend. But change the men in the movie every two years. The current two are not representitive.
Michael @ LeonardMatlovich.com
Justin, you were doing great until you bought into Lanjier saccharine [that’s “fake sugar”] suggestion.
Most of what Drake wrote is correct, though through my extensive reading, including translations of original Nazi documents, I don’t recall any number as high as 50,000 being castrated. And, of those 100,000 arrested, many went to civil prisons solely, while others went to camps after prison.
Yes, lesbian bars were shut down, their social circles intimidated into disbanding, but, as stated, the motive was to encourage making babies through discouraging time spent with other women. Out of a sexist misunderstanding of all women’s sexuality, lesbian sex has never been against the law in most countries, and an attempt by a ranking Nazi official to criminalize it failed.
There were even a few instances of gay men being released from the camps after successfully having sex with camp prostitutes. The Nazis, as most Germans at the time, didn’t see male homosexuality so much as an identity as a set of acts. One Nazi official even complained about the “unfair” use of entrapment to round them up. Paging George Michael.
The US Holocaust Museum has a good overview:
http://www.ushmm.org/education/resource/hms/homosx.php
But last time I looked through their links they, unfortunately, included at least one to an article making up bullshit about lesbians during the Third Reich, falsely claiming that lesbians were assigned black triangles, that Henny Schermann was sent to Ravensbrueck because she was a lesbian when it was because she was Jewish.
I was in Berlin in November, and shocked to see that, at first glance, the memorial looks even more in person than in photographs, by its design and placement, like a concrete public toilet.
It’s loathsome. Equating treatment of lesbians by the Nazis to their genocide of gay males will just add moral and intellectual insult to symbolic injury.
jason
Exactly right to the posters who said that female homosexuality was not banned by law whereas male homosexuality was. This was also the case in Queen Victoria’s England and is also currently the case in Singapore.
Male homosexuality has been dealt with far more harshly than female homosexuality. Female homosexuals have been able to exploit the biological properties of their bodies to “hide” or disguise themselves amongst the general population. For instance, a lesbian is biologically capable of having sex with a man even when she’s not aroused. A heterosexual woman is also capable of having sex with a man even if she’s not aroused; it’s the biological, physical nature of a woman’s body which allows her to do this.
A man, on the other hand, must be physically aroused erection-wise to complete the sex act. There is much less chance of fakery with men.
Also, women in general have exploited the bisexual double standard throughout history. This double standard says that girl-girl is “hot” and guy-guy is “gross”. Don’t underestimate the role of this double standard and the way women have exploited it in order to get preferential treatment through history.
Paschal
@Hyhybt: You’re missing the point. Of course lesbians have been discriminated against but memorials about the disgusting acts commited during the Nazi Germany should just reflect what ACTUALLY happened. It is a FACT that gay men, along with communists, Jews, Slavs, Romani people, Poles, disabled and mentally ill people, left-wing people, Freemasons and Jehovah Witnesses, were targeted by the Nazis. Lesbians, however, were not targeted like gay men were in Nazi Germany.
mattsmith
This is like the memorial of the white firefighters who held up the flag at 9/11. When the city wanted to put up a statue to honor them it became a black man, a latino and a white man. It’s a contest to see who the biggest victim can be. You got AIDS well women get breast cancer – see were victims too. Don’t like history just re-write it. Why don’t we say that AIDS hit gay men and women equally?
Daniel
And why doesn’t the film simply show two men kissing followed by two women kissing and then back to two men kissing and so forth? Is the film limited to only a certain short length?
Missanthrope
Actually Lesbians were labeled as “asocial” and had to ware the black triangle.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Black_triangle_%28badge%29
It disputable if lesbians were targeted for strictly being lesbian, just like many gays were not just strictly targeted for being gay. But it certainly didn’t help the lesbian woman who were targeted for other reasons (political, jewish or otherwise) who got it doubly rough in the camps.
Hyhybt
@Paschal: No, I understand the point fine. I just don’t completely agree. But it’s a long way down the list of things I’d be willing to argue over.
Michael @ LeonardMatlovich.com
@ #22:
If you’re going to cite crap er Wikipedia as your source, you might at least read it more carefully:
“In the Nazis’ METICULOUS records there is NO WORD of the black triangle having been imposed on lesbians, OR of lesbians as a group being confined to concentration camps. However, some have REASONED that since the Nazis believed strongly in a traditional social role for women, lesbians and other sexually unconventional women MIGHT logically have been considered “asocial” from the Nazis’ point of view.
The archive of the memorial site of Ravensbrück has evidence of four women with an ADDITIONAL remark of being lesbians: two of them had been persecuted FOR POLITICAL REASONS, two FOR BEING JEWISH. One of the Jewish inmates was given a black triangle due to sexual contacts with non-Jewish persons.
It is possible that Playing for Time, (‘Sursis pour l’orchestre’) a holocaust memoir by Frenchwoman Fania Fénelon, helped create the BELIEF that the black triangle was worn by lesbians. Fénelon’s memoir includes lesbian themes, and describes an evening of entertainment in the asocials’ barracks as the “Black Triangles’ Ball.”
Four, count them, FOUR out of tens of thousands, and, then, only as secondarily recorded characteristics, like age, height, weight, origin.
What bitter irony that we’re left to trusting the meticulous records of the Nazis to disprove attempted hijackers of history vying for the title of Most Shat Upon.
hephaestion
I love and support my lesbian sisters, but I don’t think including lesbians in this memorial would be appropriate. Read the book “I, Pierre Seel, Deported Homosexual.” After you have read it, ask yourself if any lesbians endured the many years of Hell at the hands of the Nazis that he did. The answer is “no.” Sorry, the answer is “no, not even close.”
This is not to say that lesbians have not suffered enormously on this earth in so many ways, but that is a separate story from this Holocaust memorial.
jeffree
Why don’t we debate the issue of what race/ nationality/ religion is portayed in the film of the men kissing? Should Romani or Polish or Jewish or Czech or Catholic men be depicted? Is this just about gender?
Cerene
@Missanthrope:
“Actually Lesbians were labeled as “asocial” and had to ware the black triangle.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/B…..28badge%29″
Are you illiterate or just dishonest? The wiki page you linked to does not say that lesbians were labeled as asocial and had to wear the black triangle (Note the proper spelling of “wear” BTW.) It says:
“In the Nazis’ meticulous records there is no word of the black triangle having been imposed on lesbians, or of lesbians as a group being confined to concentration camps.” It goes on to say that feminists appropriated the symbol as their own and some of them assumed that lesbians might have been included in a larger group of people who wore the black triangle.
You can assume or imagine anything you want; that is not how we should record or honor history.
Moreover, if there were a few lesbians who were persecuted for other reasons, that doesn’t make lesbians the proper subject for a holocaust memorial. Some Jewish people who were sent to the camps were lawyers and plumbers. That doesn’t mean that we include a section on lawyers and plumbers as victims of the holocaust.
hlm
Other than being badly punctuated the article is just silly. Gay men were arrested for being gay men. There is no evidence that lesbians were arrested for being lesbian. That some women, who were lesbian, were arrested for other reasons, does not indicate that lesbians were persecuted, but just not as much—in indicates they weren’t being persecuted at all, simply for being lesbian.
Kevin
@jason: I think you’re misrepresenting things rather grandly by saying that “female homosexuals have been able to exploit the biological properties of their bodies” to pass as heterosexual, unless by “exploit” you mean “succumb to rape.” Lesbian women have a place among the victims of Nazism, but only as part of the larger narrative of crimes against women.
Wen
@18 Jason ‘Also, women in general have exploited the bisexual double standard throughout history. This double standard says that girl-girl is “hot” and guy-guy is “gross”. Don’t underestimate the role of this double standard and the way women have exploited it in order to get preferential treatment through history.’
Its not women who exploit this double standard, but maybe some do. I as a gay woman, loathe it, and many (gay) women do with me. You make a real strange, inacurrate, if not hateful, statement there.
@29 Kevin ‘Lesbian women have a place among the victims of Nazism, but only as part of the larger narrative of crimes against women.’
Agreed. Also some lesbians were given the black triangle, as were prostitutes and some other groups, deemed to be ‘antisocial’. So, in this sense, there is something to say for including them in the memorial. Eventhough they were not persecuted like gay men were, their life was made impossible and they could end up in a concentrationcamp and be killed as well (for being labeled antisocial).
Wen
@29 Kevin ‘I think you’re misrepresenting things rather grandly by saying that “female homosexuals have been able to exploit the biological properties of their bodies” to pass as heterosexual, unless by “exploit” you mean “succumb to rape.’
Exactly. Thats a disturbing statement Jason made.
Justin
One thing I forgot to mention, which is probably the worst part of it all.
As Nazi Germany caved in, some of the gay prisoners were actually arrested by Allied Armies. Homosexuality was illegal before the outbreak of the war in every country that ended up occupied by Germany with the exception of Denmark and they were viewed as criminals. They had no community (or in some cases, remnants of a community) to come back to like Jews or Jehovah’s Witnesses and many kept it quiet as to why they were interned or pretended it for another reason. Not a lot of cases of this overall, but some of the gay men imprisoned in camps actually stole Stars of David off the uniforms of dead Jewish prisoners to replace their pink triangles because it looked better.
Melanie Nathan
@Justin: good educated response. In fact the author of this post has barely looked into the subject. Queerty has quoted from another article and then shoots in its own assertion – which veers from the very point of the piece-
1. The mandate for this memorial says it MUST change every 2 years. It explains on the memorial its purpose.
2. Purpose is to speak against discrimination and persecution of any kind
3. The argument is – distortion of history vs. general anti-discrimination statement in modern context…
4. The distortion according to scholars is that lesbians misrepresent history as there is no documented proof that they were specifically targeted in the same way as men were.
This means author has missed the point…. should we reflect history clearly (that which is known by evidence) or should we be all inclusive in a modern context.http://lezgetreal.com/?p=29477
Melanie Nathan
//lezgetreal.com/?p=29477
technocub88
It is completely unfair to depict lesbians kissing in the memorial.
1. it is unfair to gay men. who were actually targeted and killed.
2. it is unfair to ex-nazis. there are still thousands of ex-nazis living in germany who experience the guilt of that era on a day to day basis. Why are you trying to pin someting on them that they didn’t do?
you can’t just scapegoat everything bad onto the nazis
that is what the nazis did to the jews, gypsies, and gays
lesbians have been persecuted else where, memorialize those event.
overit
Gosh, everyone loves to be a victim and have their memorial these days. How about recognizing that the Nazi party preyed on ,anything, that was against their total conquest. They were monsters.
Hyhybt
@overit: Does anyone seriously *not* recognize that?
overit
@ hythyb
I should hope so.
laura
Jason, your comment is disgusting and offensive.
bruce
My comments have nothing to do with rape. However, it’s a simple physical fact that a woman doesn’t have to be aroused in order to have sex with a man. From a woman’s perspective, the completion of the sex act requires that, at the very minimum, she can just like there with a frown on her face.
Men, on the other hand, need to be physically aroused in order to complete the sex act with a woman. If he doesn’t get physically aroused and complete the sex act, he is identified as gay by the mainstream. Therefore, there is a much higher bar to jump for men, no pun intended.
My point doesn’t change in essence: that lesbians have historically exploited this difference in order to hide amongst the heterosexual mainstream. It’s made them less of an identifiable target than gay men.
Melanie Nathan
@technocub88: Lol yeah I really feel bad for those feeling guilty ex-nazis – my goodness talk about distortion!
jason
My comments have nothing to do with rape. However, it’s a simple physical fact that a woman doesn’t have to be aroused in order to have sex with a man. From a woman’s perspective, the completion of the sex act requires that, at the very minimum, she can just lie there with a frown on her face.
Men, on the other hand, need to be physically aroused in order to complete the sex act with a woman. If he doesn’t get physically aroused and complete the sex act, he is identified as gay by the mainstream. Therefore, there is a much higher bar to jump for men, no pun intended.
My point doesn’t change in essence: that lesbians have historically exploited this difference in order to hide amongst the heterosexual mainstream. It’s made them less of an identifiable target than gay men.
Melanie Nathan
@jason: Jason all it takes is reading a damn magazine and you can do anything right?
Melanie Nathan
And it has everything to do with RAPE. If a woman is not aroused the sex organ should not go in !!!!! Get it arousal is tantamount to physical ( not verbal) consent. Lack of consent is rape by every legal definition. Now smarten up young man
Danzig "AKA B Yotch"
There is a simple solution to this issue. Create a video that merges the two seperate videos. You would see a male couple kissing for a few minutes, then the female couple kissing for a few minutes. The loop repeats. Why this 2 year thing of one or the other? That’s nonsense. Merge the two. This will honour BOTH sides of our Community- TOGETHER.
Melanie Nathan
http://lezgetreal.com/?p=29477
Wen
jason & bruce being the same person= misogynist. Flagged.
jeffree
The Nazis targeted Jews, homosexual men, ethnic minorities (Slavs, Romani, etc) & people with disaboilities. Sounds like the jury is still out about Lesbians….
Should other targets be represented as well, as opposed 2 just two unspecified status men kissing? Can a Romani man be shown kissin another Romani man or a Jewish man?
If we need to make the kissing videos representational of nazi attrocities, then it’s getting complicated, but I don’t understand why the videos cannot express the vareity of victims of the Holocaust. Jut having the same two guys over and over seems 2 be missing out on a bigger chance to educate & inform.
mattsmith
Lets look beyond what the monsters did to us in Nazi Germany. Until we can both (gay men and women) go to our prom , serve openly our country, not loose our jobs being open , love who we want too – lets stick together gay men and women. I am a gay man and after reading all of these posts I am proud the memorial speaks to humanity – men and women – it’s not a contest – we are hated by too many from the outside. Lets stand together. In my heart this memorial helps celebrate my connection to the whole gay community – including my gay sisters who helped us when we were sick and dying – when few others would help –
Hyhybt
The problem, to me, isn’t who is in the video. It’s the whole nature of the memorial. A memorial should be something as durable and permanent as possible, not something electronic that has to be repaired and updated regularly. I know, I know, stone blocks with words carved in them, bronze statues, that sort of thing have been done to death, but there’s a good reason for that.
jason
Spam? Give me a break. Everything I say comes from the heart. I had erroneously typed in Bruce in the “name” section the first time. I re-posted under my correct name “Jason” and fixed a couple of typo’s. You’ll notice in the first post under “Bruce”, I typed “like there” instead of “lie there”, for instance.
I am very much an independent thinker and definitely not a spammer. I’ll take on board your suggestion that I shouldn’t repeat posts, even for the sake of fixing typo’s. I understand that bandwidth is precious and that I shouldn’t overdo it.
As for my overall position, I am very much a pro-lesbian person. The rights of women are just as important as the rights of men within our precious movement. But, in the context of this memorial, we have to keep in mind the historical facts.
Now, do I think lesbians are important in the modern gay rights movement? Absolutely and unequivocally.
Melanie Nathan
@bruce: Completion or non completion the legal definition of rape is penetration without consent. PERIOD! Dont try and swing it your way – it is what it is. Whether a man or woman climaxes does not define RAPE. Please do not comment about stuff you know diddly about thanks and YES
I agree with all that this ought not be a divisive male v female thing. Its about anti-hate…. and history and how to balance in a modern context – its about memorials and the purpose of this one in the eyes of the foundation that birthed it…
jason
Melanie Nathan,
I am simply referring to the fact that women are capable of agreeing to sexual activity without it necessarily reflecting a state of arousal on their part. The point is that, on the woman’s part, agreement to sex with a man is entirely possible even when the woman is not necessarily aroused. She’s agreeing to it even though she’s not aroused. Rape, on the other hand, is when there is no agreement.
If anything, you should take it up with the women who use their sexuality as a marketing ploy to obtain economic and financial security from men, even it means compromising their principles and accommodating patriarchal notions.
I would bet that there are many, many women who have had sex with men just to keep him “happy”. They do it because they can and because there’s a reward attached to it.
Therefore, I don’t resile one iota from my notion that lesbians have been able to mingle within the heterosexual mainstream to a far greater extent than gay men. Owing to their gender, they’ve been able to do it.
DR
Bruce Jason, forcing someone to “consent” in order to prove that she can be a good Aryan breeder is rape or sexual assault no matter how it gets spun. The fact that you can’t grasp or accept that boggles my mind. I can’t believe this has turned into a discussion on “who has it worse”. Ever been raped or sexually assaulted? I doubt you have any idea how that feels.
DR
*Bruce and Jason
Bill Perdue
This question is not who got the short end of the stick. It’s a question of how to proceed with movement building based on our common struggles with homohaters.
Mentioning our common struggle in no way detracts from honoring our dead. Hatred and bigotry can lead to the mass murder of GLBT folks and always leads to persecution and violence.
Christer, judaist and islamist cults promote anti-LGBT hatred to prop up reactionary states, especially those with imperial pretensions. In many countries lesbians have been subjected to death, imprisonment, rape and torture for their homosexuality. The same impulse, based on a need for cannon fodder, leads to persecutions of GLBT folks and draconian laws against abortions and sometimes divorce.
These are all examples of the cults interfering in civil life to bolster overseas military conquest and internal conformity.
Rightwing and unprincipled people in the GLBT movement sometimes reflect the backwardness and ugliness of homohating societies and contaminate our common struggle with tirades reflecting their transphobia, immigrant bashing, racism, islamophobia and misogyny. They degrade and create divisions in our movement based on their prejudiced insistence that one part of the movement is somehow more important than the rest.
They suffer from a form of ‘liberation sickness’ an inability to see that the same homohatred drives our common struggle. They have no role in our movements.
We must all hang together, or assuredly we shall all hang separately. , Benjamin Franklin at the signing of the Declaration of Independence, Philadelphia, July 4, 1776.
D'oh, The Magnificent
What ever the historical record shows is what should be shown.
That’s about as clear as one can make it. No bias either way.