1990 HOMOSEXUALS, the HOLOCAUST, and UTAH 28 April 2005 Volume 2 Issue 9 Salt Lake Metro

Homosexuals, the Holocaust, and Utah

Anne Frank

Okay I admit I am a rabble rouser. I have been called worse. However, I feel that as a true educator, I must get people out of their comfort zone to get their attention. Perhaps that was all former Utah State Superintendent of Education, James Rex Moss, was doing when he informed the sponsors of the Anne Frank Holocaust Exhibit that mentioning homosexuals as victims of the holocaust to Utah school children was forbidden. But I doubt it.

In mid March 1990, as major snow storm blew into Utah, I snuggled in my cozy basement apartment and began to read the SL Tribune Sunday paper. My Sunday tranquility was shattered when I came across an article that made me blow my stack. The Anne Frank Holocaust Exhibit was coming to Salt Lake- but the sponsors of the exhibit were told by the State Office of Education that they could not mention that homosexuals were among the murdered millions.

According to the article, James Moss, state superintendent of education said, "Homosexuality is not a major feature of the holocaust....I think the major focus that certainly needs to be focused on was the religious and cultural prejudice."  Moss also claimed that “it is possible to teach children they should not be bigoted without having to include all groups that were targets of the Nazi's."  

Robert Austin 1990 Chair of GLCCU

As a 5th grade school teacher my blood now chilled. How will children ever learn not to be bigots when they are taught by bigots? I immediately called the officers of the Gay and Lesbian Community Council, (GLCCU), Robert Smith, Chuck Whyte and Robert Austin, because I felt this hypocrisy needed an immediate response from the community! Austin then called for an emergency meeting of the council and a strategy was put in place to protest the exclusion of homosexuality from the holocaust exhibit.

Joe Cannon

A loud protest from the Gay community and their friends had the state office saying it was all a “misunderstanding” the next day. After a furor of back tracking and press conferences, “where education officials, gay-rights advocates and others tried to sort out who said what to whom and when,” the final word from Joe Cannon was that material on the Nazi persecution of homosexuals was now to be included in the education packets about the exhibit. The state office had alleged that the corporate sponsor, Geneva Steel, (owned by the Cannon family), originally had deleted the information on homosexuals “at what the firm thought was the request of state education officials”.

Nazi Concentration Camp Homosexual Prison Camp Uniform

Apparently the real flap was over a page in the teacher’s supplement depicting a triangle with words "Gays Against Fascism." The Pink Triangle symbol had been developed by the Gay Liberation Movement as a tribute to the Gay victims of Nazi persecution. The Department of Education’s position was, "While the State Office of Education has no concern about teaching the historical facts about the terrible persecutions which affected homosexuals, there was concern about sending teachers information about a symbol which, while retaining some historical roots, has nothing to do with Anne Frank's era, but is a symbol for a potentially controversial contemporary social-political movement.”

James Moss spoke in private to offended community groups, including GLCCU about the controversy. Robert Austin, the then GLCCU chairman, speaking on behalf of the Community Council, agreed to not protest the exhibit, but instead planned to be a "witness" to the suffering of homosexuals at the hands of the Nazis. This "witnessing" was to include wearing pink triangles, carrying candles and distributing information.

The Anne Frank Holocaust Exhibit opened March 25, 1990 in Washington Square. On the day of the exhibit’s opening, an angry woman “outraged by the presence of Gay activists” kicked a box full of symbolic pink triangles down the steps of the Salt Lake City-County Building. Gay Community activists were offering these pink triangles to everyone who entered the exhibit, explaining that they were used by the Nazis to identify homosexuals. About half of those visiting the exhibit that day accepted the emblem. After a rally at the City-County Building east steps, about 100 Gays and their supporters later marched to St. Mark's Episcopal Cathedral for a memorial service honoring Holocaust victims.

Homosexual Prisoners

Teachers brought Utah school children to the exhibit by the thousands, but there was a reluctance to share the pages in the exhibits’ guidebook that were entitled The Fate of the Homosexuals Under Nazi Rule.”  Gay activists, through out the month long exhibit, handed out pink triangles, and distributed informational fliers relating some of the history of the persecution of homosexuals. It was noted in the flier that between 250,000 and 500,000 homosexuals were killed in Nazi death camps. "After the war, Allied troops liberated the camps and helped many of the survivors go back to European life," the flier said. "But the troops sent the homosexual survivors to German jails for being "criminals.' Almost all died there."

Later that year People for the American Way, a watchdog group concerned with constitutional liberties, selected the controversy surrounding the Anne Frank exhibit in Salt Lake City as an example of one of 244 incidents in the United States it believed amounted to school censorship during the 1989-90 school year. 

As for James R. Moss, he resigned as Superintendent shortly after the exhibit closed and died in an automobile accident at the Point of the Mountain. He had a heart attack in December 1990 at the age of 48 on route to a meeting.

Robert Austin today [2013] works as an Education Specialist at Utah State Office of Education.