Gay victims of Nazis to be honoured in Berlin.....

This is long overdue....

A monument with the video footage of two men kissing will be unveiled Tuesday in Berlin in memory of the thousands of homosexuals persecuted, tortured and murdered by the Nazis between 1933 and 1945.

Laborers completed the last preparations around the memorial, an imposing gray concrete slab about four meters high near the Brandenburg Gate, opposite the main Holocaust memorial. At eye level inside the monument, designed by Norwegian-Danish duo Ingar Dragset and Michael Elmgreen at a cost of 450,000 euros, is a gap containing a television screen showing two men kissing.

Tuesday's official inauguration ceremony follows years of controversy. The commemoration of homosexuals' persecution, the monument's location near the Holocaust memorial and its design has all been subject to public debate in Germany in recent years.

The monument's unveiling will be attended by Berlin's openly gay mayor Klaus Wowereit, Culture Minister Bernd Neumann and representatives of Germany's Jewish and Roma communities.

No survivors will attend, however. The last known survivor, Pierre Seel, a Frenchman deported in 1941 when he was 17 years old, died in November 2005. He described in his memoirs how his first love, 18-year-old Jo, was torn apart by dogs in front of other prisoners.