History of gay people in Nazi Germany and the Holocaust
Encyclopedia
In the 1920s, homosexual
people in Germany
, particularly in Berlin
, enjoyed a higher level of freedom and acceptance than anywhere else in the world. However, upon the rise
of Adolf Hitler
, gay men and, to a lesser extent, lesbian
s, were two of the numerous groups targeted by the Nazi Party and were ultimately among Holocaust victims
. Beginning in 1933, gay organizations were banned, scholarly books about homosexuality, and sexuality
in general, were burned
, and homosexuals within the Nazi Party itself were murdered. The Gestapo
compiled lists of homosexuals, who were compelled to sexually conform to the "German norm."
Between 1933–45, an estimated 100,000 men were arrested as homosexuals, of which some 50,000 were officially sentenced. Most of these men served time in regular prisons, and an estimated 5,000 to 15,000 of those sentenced were incarcerated in Nazi concentration camps
. It is unclear how many of the 5,000 to 15,000 eventually perished in the camps, but leading scholar Ruediger Lautman believes that the death rate of homosexuals in concentration camps may have been as high as 60%. Homosexuals in the camps were treated in an unusually cruel manner by their captors.
After the war, the treatment of homosexuals in concentration camps went unacknowledged by most countries, and some men were even re-arrested and imprisoned based on evidence found during the Nazi years
. It was not until the 1980s that governments began to acknowledge this episode, and not until 2002 that the German government
apologized to the gay community
. This period still provokes controversy, however. In 2005, the European Parliament
adopted a resolution on the Holocaust
which included the persecution of homosexuals
.
In late February 1933, as the moderating influence of Ernst Röhm
weakened, the Nazi Party launched its purge of homosexual (gay, lesbian, and bisexual; then known as homophile
) clubs in Berlin, outlawed sex publications, and banned organized gay groups. As a consequence, many fled Germany (e.g., Erika Mann
, Richard Plaut). In March 1933, Kurt Hiller
, the main organizer of Magnus Hirschfeld
's Institute of Sex Research, was sent to a concentration camp.
On May 6, 1933, Nazi Youth of the Deutsche Studentenschaft made an organised attack on the Institute of Sex Research. A few days later the Institute's library and archives were publicly hauled out and burned in the streets of the Opernplatz. Around 20,000 books and journals, and 5,000 images, were destroyed. Also seized were the Institute's extensive lists of names and addresses of homosexuals. In the midst of the burning, Joseph Goebbels
gave a political speech to a crowd of around 40,000 people. Hitler initially protected Röhm from other elements of the Nazi Party which held his homosexuality to be a violation of the party's strong anti-gay policy. However, Hitler later changed course when he perceived Röhm to be a potential threat to his power. During the Night of the Long Knives
in 1934, a purge of those whom Hitler deemed threats to his power took place. He had Röhm murdered and used Röhm's homosexuality as a justification to suppress outrage within the ranks of the SA. After solidifying his power, Hitler would include gay men among those sent to concentration camps during the Holocaust.
Himmler had initially been a supporter of Röhm, arguing that the charges of homosexuality against him were manufactured by Jews. But after the purge, Hitler elevated Himmler's status and he became very active in the suppression of homosexuality. He exclaimed, "We must exterminate these people root and branch... the homosexual must be eliminated." (Plant, 1986, p. 99).
Shortly after the purge in 1934, a special division of the Gestapo was instituted to compile lists of gay individuals. In 1936, Heinrich Himmler
, Chief of the SS
, created the "Reich Central Office for the Combating of Homosexuality and Abortion".
Nazi Germany thought of German gay men as part of the "Master Race" and sought to force gay men into sexual and social conformity. Gay men who would or could not conform and feign a switch in sexual orientation
were sent to concentration camps under the "Extermination Through Work" campaign.
More than one million gay Germans were targeted, of whom at least 100,000 were arrested and 50,000 were serving prison terms as convicted gay men. Hundreds of European gay men living under Nazi occupation were castrated under court order.
Some persecuted under these laws would not have identified themselves as gay. Such "anti-homosexual" laws were widespread throughout the western world until the 1960s and 1970s, so many gay men did not feel safe to come forward with their stories until the 1970s when many so-called "sodomy laws" were repealed.
Lesbians were not widely persecuted under Nazi anti-gay laws, as it was considered easier to persuade or force them to comply with accepted heterosexual behavior. However, they were viewed as a threat to state values.
.
Gay men suffered unusually cruel treatment in the concentration camps. They faced persecution not only from German soldiers but also from other prisoners, and many gay men were beaten to death. Additionally, gay men in forced labor camps routinely received more grueling and dangerous work assignments than other non-Jewish inmates, under the policy of "Extermination Through Work". SS soldiers also were known to use gay men for target practice, aiming their weapons at the pink triangles their human targets were forced to wear.
The harsh treatment can be attributed to the view of the SS guards toward gay men, as well as to the homophobic attitudes
present in German society at large. The marginalization of gay men in Germany was reflected in the camps. Many died from beatings, some of them caused by other prisoners. Nazi doctors often used gay men for scientific experiments in an attempt to locate a "gay gene
" to "cure" any future Aryan children who were gay.
Experiences such as these can account for the high death rate of gay men in the camps as compared to the other "anti-social groups." A study by Rüdiger Lautmann
found that 60% of gay men in concentration camps died, as compared to 41% for political prisoners and 35% for Jehovah's Witnesses
. The study also shows that survival rates for gay men were slightly higher for internees from the middle and upper classes and for married bisexual men and those with children.
Homosexual concentration camp prisoners were not acknowledged as victims of Nazi persecution. Reparations and state pensions available to other groups were refused to gay men, who were still classified as criminals — the Nazi anti-gay law was not repealed until 1994, although both East and West Germany
liberalized their criminal laws against adult homosexuality in the late 1960s.
"Gay Holocaust" survivors could be re-imprisoned for "repeat offences", and were kept on the modern lists of "sex offenders". Under the Allied Military Government of Germany, some homosexuals were forced to serve out their terms of imprisonment, regardless of the time spent in concentration camps.
The Nazis' anti-gay policies and their destruction of the early gay-rights movement were generally not considered suitable subject matter for Holocaust historians and educators. It was not until the 1970s and 1980s that there was some mainstream exploration of the theme, with Holocaust survivors writing their memories, plays such as Bent
, and more historical research and documentaries being published about the Nazis' homophobia and their destruction of the German gay-rights movement.
Since the 1980s, some European and international cities have erected memorials to remember the thousands of homosexual people who were murdered and persecuted during the Holocaust. Major memorials can be found in Berlin, Amsterdam
(Netherlands
), Montevideo
(Uruguay
), and San Francisco. In 2002, the German government issued an official apology to the gay community.
In 2005, the European Parliament
marked the 60th anniversary of the liberation of the Auschwitz camp with a minute's silence and the passage of a resolution which included the following text:
An account of a gay Holocaust survivor, Pierre Seel
, details life for gay men during Nazi control. In his account he states that he participated in his local gay community in the town of Mulhouse
. When the Nazis gained power over the town his name was on a list of local gay men ordered to the police station. He obeyed the directive to protect his family from any retaliation. Upon arriving at the police station he notes that he and other gay men were beaten. Some gay men who resisted the SS had their fingernails pulled out. Others were raped with broken rulers and had their bowels punctured, causing them to bleed profusely. After his arrest he was sent to the concentration camp at Schirmeck. There, Seel stated that during a morning roll-call], the Nazi commander announced a public execution. A man was brought out, and Seel recognized his face. It was the face of his eighteen-year-old lover from Mulhouse. Seel states that the Nazi guards then stripped the clothes of his lover, placed a metal bucket over his head, and released trained German Shepherd dogs
on him, which mauled him to death.
Rudolf Brazda, believed to be the last surviving person who was sent to a Nazi concentration camp because of his homosexuality, died in France in August 2011, aged 98. Brazda was sent to Buchenwald in August 1942 and held there until its liberation by U.S. forces in 1945. Brazda, who settled in France after the war, was later awarded the Legion of Honour.
, the idea of a “Gay Holocaust” was first explored in the early 1970s. However, extensive research on the topic was impeded by a continuation of Nazi policies on homosexuals in post-war East and West Germany and continued western notions of homophobia.
The civil rights movement
, which began with Black movements in the United States as well as Women’s movements in Europe and the Americas was adopted by gay and lesbian organizations throughout the West, and yielded the first exploration of homosexuals within the context of the Holocaust. The idea of homosexuals as specific targets of Hitler’s final solution was however not salient with Zionist notions of victimhood during the Nazi regime and was also met with opposition within The United States during the conservative revival of the Reagan era and at the onset of the HIV/AIDS pandemic.
The word “genocide
” was generated from of a need for new terminology in order to understand the gravity of the crimes committed by the Nazis. First coined by Raphael Limkin in 1944, the word became politically charged when The Genocide Act was enacted by the United Nations on December 9, 1948, which created an obligation for governments to respond to such atrocities in the future. The debate on the “Gay Holocaust” is therefore a highly loaded debate which would result in an international acknowledgement of state sponsored homophobia as a precursor to genocide should the proponents of the “Gay Holocaust” succeed. However the United Nations
definition does not include sexual orientation (or even social and political groups) within its qualifications for the crime. Genocide by the U.N. definition is limited to national, ethnical, racial or religious groups and as this is the only accord to which nations have pledged allegiance, it stands as the dominant understanding of the term. It is, however, what Michel-Rolph Trouillot terms “an age when collective apologies are becoming increasingly common” as well as a time when the established Holocaust discourse has settled and legitimized claims of the Jewish, Roma and mentally ill victims of Nazi persecution so it would seem an appropriate time to at least bring attention to the debate of the Gay Holocaust, even if the issue is not to be settled.
A lack of research means that there is relatively little data on the dispersion of gay men throughout the camps however Heger suggests in his book The Men with The Pink Triangle that they were subjected to harsher labor than smaller targeted groups, such as the political prisoners, and furthermore suffered a much higher mortality rate. They also lacked a support network within the camps and were ostracized in the prison community. Homosexuals, like the mentally ill and many Jews and Roma, were also subjected to medical experimentation in the hopes of finding a cure to homosexuality at the camp in Buchenwald.
The conception of Jewish exclusivity in the Holocaust went unchallenged in the early years of study on the subject. It is undeniable that the Jews suffered the greatest death toll, and entire communities were obliterated in Eastern Europe and to a great extent in western countries. The notion of exclusivity however is challenged by the existence of similar forces working against different social and ethnic groups such as homosexuals and the Roma, which resulted in the victimization and systematic destruction of homosexual lives and lifestyles, as well as those of the Roma. An inclusion of social groups in a definition of genocide would further challenge the notion of the Jewish genocide as unique within the context of the Holocaust. While statistically speaking Jew suffered much more at the hands of the Nazis, Ellie Weisel’s belief that “a focus on other victims may detract from the Judaic specificity of the Holocaust” fosters a misrepresentation of history and devalues the suffering of other victims of Nazi atrocities. Simon Wiesenthal argues that “the Holocaust transcended the confines of Jewish community and that there were other victims.” In the mid-1970s new discourses emerged that challenged the exclusivity of the Jewish genocide within the Holocaust, though not without great resistance.
of North America in the 1970s saw an emergence of victim claims through revision
and appropriation of historical narratives. The shift from the traditionally conservative notion of history as the story of power and those who held it, social historians
emerged with narratives of those who suffered and resisted these powers. African American
s created their own narrative, as firmly based on evidence as the discourses already in existence, as part of a social movement towards civil rights based on a history of victimization and racism
. Along similar lines, the gay and lesbian movement
in the United States also utilized revisionism to write the narrative that had only just garnered an audience willing to validate it.
There were two processes at work in this new discourse, revisionism and appropriation, which Arlene Stein teases out in her article “Whose Memory, Whose Victimhood?” both of which were used at different points in the movement for civil rights. The revisionist project was taken on in a variety of mediums, historical literature being only one of many. The play Bent
and a limited number of memoirs, which recall The Diary of Anne Frank
coincided with the appropriation of the pink triangle
as a symbol of the new movement and a reminder to “never forget.” While the focus of these early revisions was not necessarily to determine the Nazi policy on homosexuals as genocidal, they began a current towards legitimizing the victimization of homosexuals under the regime, a topic that had not been addressed until the 1970s.
Historical works eventually focused on the nature and intent of Nazi policy. Heinz Heger
, Gunter Grau and Richard Plant all contributed greatly to the early Holocaust discourse which emerged throughout the 1970s and early 1980s. Central to these studies was the notion that statistically speaking, homosexuals suffered greater losses than many of the smaller minorities under Nazi persecution such as the Jehovah’s Witnesses and within the camps experienced harsher treatments and ostracization as well as execution at the hands of firing squads and the gas chamber
s.
These early revisionist discourses were joined by a popular movement of appropriation, which invoked the global memory of the Holocaust] to shed light on social disparities for homosexuals within the United States. Larry Kramer
who was one of the founders of ACT UP
, an HIV
/AIDS
activist group that used shock tactics to bring awareness to the disease and attention to the need for funding popularized the AIDS-as-Holocaust discourse. “The slowness of government response at federal and local levels of government, the paucity of funds for research and treatment, particularly in the early days of the epidemic stems, Kramer argued, from deep-seated homophobic impulses and constituted ‘intentional genocide’.”
While the appropriation of the Holocaust discourse helped to grab the attention needed for an appropriate response to the pandemic
it is highly problematic and perhaps counterproductive to the historical discourse of the time. The notion of AIDS-as-Holocaust and the accompanying notion of AIDS-as-genocide greatly oversimplify the meaning and the intention of genocide as a crime. While parallels can be drawn such as specific group experiencing disproportionate mortality resulting from a seeming neglect by the institutions designed to protect them, the central factors of intention and systematic planning are absent and the use of the word dilutes the severity of the act.
The Holocaust frame was used again in the early 1990s this time in relation to right-wing
homophobic campaigns throughout the United States. The conservative response yielded a new discourse working against the “Gay Holocaust” academia which emphasized the gay and lesbian revisionism as a victimist discourse which sought sympathy and recognition as a pragmatic means of garnering special status and civil rights outside those of the moral majority. Arlene Stein identifies four central elements to the conservative reaction to the Gay Holocaust discourse, she argues that the right is attempt to dispel the notion that gays are victims, pit two traditionally liberal constituencies against one another (gays and Jews) thereby draw parallels between Jews and Christians and thereby legitimate its own status as an oppressed and morally upright group.
The victimist argument raises a central tenet as to the reasons for which the discourse of a “Gay Holocaust” has experienced so much resistance politically and popularly (in the conscious of the public). Alyson M. Cole addresses the anti-victim discourse that has emerged in western politics since the end of the 1980s. She asserts “anti-victimists transformed discussions of social obligation, compensations and remedial or restorative procedures into criticisms of the alleged propensity of self-anointed victims to engage in objectionable conduct.” Though she is clear that the anti-victimist discourse is not limited to right-wing politics, the case of the “Gay Holocaust” situates itself along these political boundaries and the anti-victim discourse is highly relevant to the debate on homosexual claims to genocide under the Third Reich
. Cole also identifies a central conflict within the anti-victim discourse, which sheds light on the weakness in the conservative argument against the Gay Holocaust. While anti-victimists shun the victim and target it for ridicule as a pity-seeking subject-person while simultaneously extolling the virtues of what Cole identifies as the true victim. The true victim holds certain personal qualities, which allow for it to be beyond the ridicule given to the victimist. Propriety, responsibility, individuality and innocence are the central attributes of the true victim and in the case of the Gay Holocaust discourse, the claims made for the recognition of genocide or genocidal processes under Nazi Germany allow the claimants to be relegated to the victimist status, making their claims bogus.
such as gender and sexuality within the context of social organization and political domination. Spurlin claims that these all functioned with one another in forming Germany’s social order and final solution to these social problems. Rather than being autonomous policies, “They were part of a much larger strategy of social disenfranchisement and the marking of enemies....” This discourse incorporates numerous disciplines including gender studies
, queer studies
, Holocaust studies and genocide studies to tease out the axis at which they meet in social control specifically under National Socialism in Germany.
The approach taken by Spurlin is highly effective as he cross-relates identity construction with enemy construction and analyzes the way that it functions within the institutions of social organization such as the medical institution and the camp. The study reveals that the homophobic impulse along with the anti-Semitic and other national threats seldom operated alone and that in terms of Nazi policy they were functioning on similar levels with differing opportunities to implement solutions, such as the Holocaust. This study is the most recent addition to the discourses of the “Gay Holocaust” and holds much promise in terms of generating a complete and interwoven understanding of where homosexuality factors into Nazi race policy and social organization. By re-evaluating the way in which National Socialism in Germany generated the other and how it functioned in terms of social organization, Spurlin asserts that homophobia
was one of many forces that generated the Hitler’s Final Solution
, along with anti-Semitism and misogyny
.
Homosexuality
Homosexuality is romantic or sexual attraction or behavior between members of the same sex or gender. As a sexual orientation, homosexuality refers to "an enduring pattern of or disposition to experience sexual, affectional, or romantic attractions" primarily or exclusively to people of the same...
people in Germany
Germany
Germany , officially the Federal Republic of Germany , is a federal parliamentary republic in Europe. The country consists of 16 states while the capital and largest city is Berlin. Germany covers an area of 357,021 km2 and has a largely temperate seasonal climate...
, particularly in Berlin
Berlin
Berlin is the capital city of Germany and is one of the 16 states of Germany. With a population of 3.45 million people, Berlin is Germany's largest city. It is the second most populous city proper and the seventh most populous urban area in the European Union...
, enjoyed a higher level of freedom and acceptance than anywhere else in the world. However, upon the rise
Hitler's rise to power
Adolf Hitler's rise to power began in Germany in September 1919 when Hitler joined the political party that was known as the Deutsche Arbeiterpartei . This political party was formed and developed during the post-World War I era...
of Adolf Hitler
Adolf Hitler
Adolf Hitler was an Austrian-born German politician and the leader of the National Socialist German Workers Party , commonly referred to as the Nazi Party). He was Chancellor of Germany from 1933 to 1945, and head of state from 1934 to 1945...
, gay men and, to a lesser extent, lesbian
Lesbian
Lesbian is a term most widely used in the English language to describe sexual and romantic desire between females. The word may be used as a noun, to refer to women who identify themselves or who are characterized by others as having the primary attribute of female homosexuality, or as an...
s, were two of the numerous groups targeted by the Nazi Party and were ultimately among Holocaust victims
Holocaust victims
While the term Holocaust victims generally refers to Jews, the Nazis also persecuted and often killed millions of members of other groups they considered inferior , undesirable or dangerous....
. Beginning in 1933, gay organizations were banned, scholarly books about homosexuality, and sexuality
Human sexuality
Human sexuality is the awareness of gender differences, and the capacity to have erotic experiences and responses. Human sexuality can also be described as the way someone is sexually attracted to another person whether it is to opposite sexes , to the same sex , to either sexes , or not being...
in general, were burned
Book burning
Book burning, biblioclasm or libricide is the practice of destroying, often ceremoniously, books or other written material and media. In modern times, other forms of media, such as phonograph records, video tapes, and CDs have also been ceremoniously burned, torched, or shredded...
, and homosexuals within the Nazi Party itself were murdered. The Gestapo
Gestapo
The Gestapo was the official secret police of Nazi Germany. Beginning on 20 April 1934, it was under the administration of the SS leader Heinrich Himmler in his position as Chief of German Police...
compiled lists of homosexuals, who were compelled to sexually conform to the "German norm."
Between 1933–45, an estimated 100,000 men were arrested as homosexuals, of which some 50,000 were officially sentenced. Most of these men served time in regular prisons, and an estimated 5,000 to 15,000 of those sentenced were incarcerated in Nazi concentration camps
Nazi concentration camps
Nazi Germany maintained concentration camps throughout the territories it controlled. The first Nazi concentration camps set up in Germany were greatly expanded after the Reichstag fire of 1933, and were intended to hold political prisoners and opponents of the regime...
. It is unclear how many of the 5,000 to 15,000 eventually perished in the camps, but leading scholar Ruediger Lautman believes that the death rate of homosexuals in concentration camps may have been as high as 60%. Homosexuals in the camps were treated in an unusually cruel manner by their captors.
After the war, the treatment of homosexuals in concentration camps went unacknowledged by most countries, and some men were even re-arrested and imprisoned based on evidence found during the Nazi years
Nazi Germany
Nazi Germany , also known as the Third Reich , but officially called German Reich from 1933 to 1943 and Greater German Reich from 26 June 1943 onward, is the name commonly used to refer to the state of Germany from 1933 to 1945, when it was a totalitarian dictatorship ruled by...
. It was not until the 1980s that governments began to acknowledge this episode, and not until 2002 that the German government
Politics of Germany
The Federal Republic of Germany is a federal parliamentary republic, based on representative democracy. The Chancellor is the head of government, while the President of Germany is the head of state, which is a ceremonial role but with substantial reserve powers.Executive power is vested in the...
apologized to the gay community
Gay community
The gay community, or LGBT community, is a loosely defined grouping of LGBT and LGBT-supportive people, organizations and subcultures, united by a common culture and civil rights movements. These communities generally celebrate pride, diversity, individuality, and sexuality...
. This period still provokes controversy, however. In 2005, the European Parliament
European Parliament
The European Parliament is the directly elected parliamentary institution of the European Union . Together with the Council of the European Union and the Commission, it exercises the legislative function of the EU and it has been described as one of the most powerful legislatures in the world...
adopted a resolution on the Holocaust
The Holocaust
The Holocaust , also known as the Shoah , was the genocide of approximately six million European Jews and millions of others during World War II, a programme of systematic state-sponsored murder by Nazi...
which included the persecution of homosexuals
Violence against gays, lesbians, bisexuals, and the transgendered
Persecution of homosexuals may occur either via legislation prohibiting homosexual acts, or by ad hoc intimidation, mobbing, assault or lynching motivated by homophobia ....
.
Purge
Ernst Röhm
Ernst Julius Röhm, was a German officer in the Bavarian Army and later an early Nazi leader. He was a co-founder of the Sturmabteilung , the Nazi Party militia, and later was its commander...
weakened, the Nazi Party launched its purge of homosexual (gay, lesbian, and bisexual; then known as homophile
Homophile
The word homophile is an alternative to the word for homosexual or gay. The homophile movement also refers to the gay rights movement of the 1950s and '60s....
) clubs in Berlin, outlawed sex publications, and banned organized gay groups. As a consequence, many fled Germany (e.g., Erika Mann
Erika Mann
Erika Julia Hedwig Mann was a German actress and writer, the eldest daughter of novelist Thomas Mann and Katia Mann.-Life:...
, Richard Plaut). In March 1933, Kurt Hiller
Kurt Hiller
Kurt Hiller also known as Keith Lurr and Klirr was a German essayist of high stylistic originality and a political journalist from a Jewish family. A socialist, he was deeply influenced by Immanuel Kant and Arthur Schopenhauer, despising the philosophy of G. W. F...
, the main organizer of Magnus Hirschfeld
Magnus Hirschfeld
Magnus Hirschfeld was a German physician and sexologist. An outspoken advocate for sexual minorities, Hirschfeld founded the Scientific Humanitarian Committee, which Dustin Goltz called "the first advocacy for homosexual and transgender rights."-Early life:Hirschfeld was born in Kolberg in a...
's Institute of Sex Research, was sent to a concentration camp.
Joseph Goebbels
Paul Joseph Goebbels was a German politician and Reich Minister of Propaganda in Nazi Germany from 1933 to 1945. As one of Adolf Hitler's closest associates and most devout followers, he was known for his zealous oratory and anti-Semitism...
gave a political speech to a crowd of around 40,000 people. Hitler initially protected Röhm from other elements of the Nazi Party which held his homosexuality to be a violation of the party's strong anti-gay policy. However, Hitler later changed course when he perceived Röhm to be a potential threat to his power. During the Night of the Long Knives
Night of the Long Knives
The Night of the Long Knives , sometimes called "Operation Hummingbird " or in Germany the "Röhm-Putsch," was a purge that took place in Nazi Germany between June 30 and July 2, 1934, when the Nazi regime carried out a series of political murders...
in 1934, a purge of those whom Hitler deemed threats to his power took place. He had Röhm murdered and used Röhm's homosexuality as a justification to suppress outrage within the ranks of the SA. After solidifying his power, Hitler would include gay men among those sent to concentration camps during the Holocaust.
Himmler had initially been a supporter of Röhm, arguing that the charges of homosexuality against him were manufactured by Jews. But after the purge, Hitler elevated Himmler's status and he became very active in the suppression of homosexuality. He exclaimed, "We must exterminate these people root and branch... the homosexual must be eliminated." (Plant, 1986, p. 99).
Shortly after the purge in 1934, a special division of the Gestapo was instituted to compile lists of gay individuals. In 1936, Heinrich Himmler
Heinrich Himmler
Heinrich Luitpold Himmler was Reichsführer of the SS, a military commander, and a leading member of the Nazi Party. As Chief of the German Police and the Minister of the Interior from 1943, Himmler oversaw all internal and external police and security forces, including the Gestapo...
, Chief of the SS
Schutzstaffel
The Schutzstaffel |Sig runes]]) was a major paramilitary organization under Adolf Hitler and the Nazi Party. Built upon the Nazi ideology, the SS under Heinrich Himmler's command was responsible for many of the crimes against humanity during World War II...
, created the "Reich Central Office for the Combating of Homosexuality and Abortion".
Nazi Germany thought of German gay men as part of the "Master Race" and sought to force gay men into sexual and social conformity. Gay men who would or could not conform and feign a switch in sexual orientation
Sexual orientation
Sexual orientation describes a pattern of emotional, romantic, or sexual attractions to the opposite sex, the same sex, both, or neither, and the genders that accompany them. By the convention of organized researchers, these attractions are subsumed under heterosexuality, homosexuality,...
were sent to concentration camps under the "Extermination Through Work" campaign.
More than one million gay Germans were targeted, of whom at least 100,000 were arrested and 50,000 were serving prison terms as convicted gay men. Hundreds of European gay men living under Nazi occupation were castrated under court order.
Some persecuted under these laws would not have identified themselves as gay. Such "anti-homosexual" laws were widespread throughout the western world until the 1960s and 1970s, so many gay men did not feel safe to come forward with their stories until the 1970s when many so-called "sodomy laws" were repealed.
Lesbians were not widely persecuted under Nazi anti-gay laws, as it was considered easier to persuade or force them to comply with accepted heterosexual behavior. However, they were viewed as a threat to state values.
Homosexuality and the SS
According to Geoffrey J. Giles (mentioned earlier) the SS, and its leader Heinrich Himmler, were particularly concerned about homosexuality. More than any other Nazi leader, Himmler's writing and speeches denounced homosexuality. However, despite consistently condemning homosexuals and homosexual activity, Himmler was less consistent in his punishment of homosexuals. In Geoffrey Giles' article "The Denial of Homosexuality: Same-Sex Incidents in Himmler's SS", several cases are put forward where members of the Nazi SS are tried for homosexual offences. On a case by case basis, the outcomes vary widely, and Giles gives documented evidence where the judges could be swayed by evidence demonstrating the accused's "aryan-ness" or "manliness", that is, by describing him as coming from true Germanic stock and perhaps fathering children. Reasons for Himmler's leniency in some cases may derive from the difficulty in defining homosexuality, particularly in a society that glorifies the masculine ideal and brotherhood.Concentration camps
Estimates vary widely as to the number of gay men imprisoned in concentration camps during the Holocaust, ranging from 5,000 to 15,000, many of whom died. In addition, records as to the specific reasons for internment are non-existent in many areas, making it hard to put an exact number on exactly how many gay men perished in death camps. See pink trianglePink triangle
The pink triangle was one of the Nazi concentration camp badges, used to identify male prisoners who were sent there because of their homosexuality. Every prisoner had to wear a downward-pointing triangle on his or her jacket, the colour of which was to categorise him or her by "kind"...
.
Gay men suffered unusually cruel treatment in the concentration camps. They faced persecution not only from German soldiers but also from other prisoners, and many gay men were beaten to death. Additionally, gay men in forced labor camps routinely received more grueling and dangerous work assignments than other non-Jewish inmates, under the policy of "Extermination Through Work". SS soldiers also were known to use gay men for target practice, aiming their weapons at the pink triangles their human targets were forced to wear.
The harsh treatment can be attributed to the view of the SS guards toward gay men, as well as to the homophobic attitudes
Homophobia
Homophobia is a term used to refer to a range of negative attitudes and feelings towards lesbian, gay and in some cases bisexual, transgender people and behavior, although these are usually covered under other terms such as biphobia and transphobia. Definitions refer to irrational fear, with the...
present in German society at large. The marginalization of gay men in Germany was reflected in the camps. Many died from beatings, some of them caused by other prisoners. Nazi doctors often used gay men for scientific experiments in an attempt to locate a "gay gene
Gene
A gene is a molecular unit of heredity of a living organism. It is a name given to some stretches of DNA and RNA that code for a type of protein or for an RNA chain that has a function in the organism. Living beings depend on genes, as they specify all proteins and functional RNA chains...
" to "cure" any future Aryan children who were gay.
Experiences such as these can account for the high death rate of gay men in the camps as compared to the other "anti-social groups." A study by Rüdiger Lautmann
Rüdiger Lautmann
Rüdiger Lautmann is a German sociologist and one of the most prominent LGBT scholars in Germany.- Biography :Born in Koblenz, Lautmann lived during his childhood in Düsseldorf, where he went to school. He studied first German law. After he finished his law studies, he started a second study in...
found that 60% of gay men in concentration camps died, as compared to 41% for political prisoners and 35% for Jehovah's Witnesses
Jehovah's Witnesses
Jehovah's Witnesses is a millenarian restorationist Christian denomination with nontrinitarian beliefs distinct from mainstream Christianity. The religion reports worldwide membership of over 7 million adherents involved in evangelism, convention attendance of over 12 million, and annual...
. The study also shows that survival rates for gay men were slightly higher for internees from the middle and upper classes and for married bisexual men and those with children.
Post-War
West Germany
West Germany is the common English, but not official, name for the Federal Republic of Germany or FRG in the period between its creation in May 1949 to German reunification on 3 October 1990....
liberalized their criminal laws against adult homosexuality in the late 1960s.
"Gay Holocaust" survivors could be re-imprisoned for "repeat offences", and were kept on the modern lists of "sex offenders". Under the Allied Military Government of Germany, some homosexuals were forced to serve out their terms of imprisonment, regardless of the time spent in concentration camps.
The Nazis' anti-gay policies and their destruction of the early gay-rights movement were generally not considered suitable subject matter for Holocaust historians and educators. It was not until the 1970s and 1980s that there was some mainstream exploration of the theme, with Holocaust survivors writing their memories, plays such as Bent
Bent (play)
Bent is a 1979 play by Martin Sherman. It revolves around the persecution of gays in Nazi Germany, and takes place during and after the Night of the Long Knives....
, and more historical research and documentaries being published about the Nazis' homophobia and their destruction of the German gay-rights movement.
Since the 1980s, some European and international cities have erected memorials to remember the thousands of homosexual people who were murdered and persecuted during the Holocaust. Major memorials can be found in Berlin, Amsterdam
Amsterdam
Amsterdam is the largest city and the capital of the Netherlands. The current position of Amsterdam as capital city of the Kingdom of the Netherlands is governed by the constitution of August 24, 1815 and its successors. Amsterdam has a population of 783,364 within city limits, an urban population...
(Netherlands
Netherlands
The Netherlands is a constituent country of the Kingdom of the Netherlands, located mainly in North-West Europe and with several islands in the Caribbean. Mainland Netherlands borders the North Sea to the north and west, Belgium to the south, and Germany to the east, and shares maritime borders...
), Montevideo
Montevideo
Montevideo is the largest city, the capital, and the chief port of Uruguay. The settlement was established in 1726 by Bruno Mauricio de Zabala, as a strategic move amidst a Spanish-Portuguese dispute over the platine region, and as a counter to the Portuguese colony at Colonia del Sacramento...
(Uruguay
Uruguay
Uruguay ,officially the Oriental Republic of Uruguay,sometimes the Eastern Republic of Uruguay; ) is a country in the southeastern part of South America. It is home to some 3.5 million people, of whom 1.8 million live in the capital Montevideo and its metropolitan area...
), and San Francisco. In 2002, the German government issued an official apology to the gay community.
In 2005, the European Parliament
European Parliament
The European Parliament is the directly elected parliamentary institution of the European Union . Together with the Council of the European Union and the Commission, it exercises the legislative function of the EU and it has been described as one of the most powerful legislatures in the world...
marked the 60th anniversary of the liberation of the Auschwitz camp with a minute's silence and the passage of a resolution which included the following text:
- "...27 January 2005, the sixtieth anniversary of the liberation of Nazi Germany's death camp at Auschwitz-Birkenau, where a combined total of up to 1.5 million Jews, Roma, Poles, Russians and prisoners of various other nationalities, and homosexuals, were murdered, is not only a major occasion for European citizens to remember and condemn the enormous horror and tragedy of the Holocaust, but also for addressing the disturbing rise in anti-SemitismAnti-SemitismAntisemitism is suspicion of, hatred toward, or discrimination against Jews for reasons connected to their Jewish heritage. According to a 2005 U.S...
, and especially anti-Semitic incidents, in Europe, and for learning anew the wider lessons about the dangers of victimising people on the basis of race, ethnic origin, religion, social classification, politics or sexual orientation...."
An account of a gay Holocaust survivor, Pierre Seel
Pierre Seel
Pierre Seel was a gay Holocaust survivor and the only French person to have testified openly about his experience of deportation during World War II due to his homosexuality.-Biography:...
, details life for gay men during Nazi control. In his account he states that he participated in his local gay community in the town of Mulhouse
Mulhouse
Mulhouse |mill]] hamlet) is a city and commune in eastern France, close to the Swiss and German borders. With a population of 110,514 and 278,206 inhabitants in the metropolitan area in 2006, it is the largest city in the Haut-Rhin département, and the second largest in the Alsace region after...
. When the Nazis gained power over the town his name was on a list of local gay men ordered to the police station. He obeyed the directive to protect his family from any retaliation. Upon arriving at the police station he notes that he and other gay men were beaten. Some gay men who resisted the SS had their fingernails pulled out. Others were raped with broken rulers and had their bowels punctured, causing them to bleed profusely. After his arrest he was sent to the concentration camp at Schirmeck. There, Seel stated that during a morning roll-call], the Nazi commander announced a public execution. A man was brought out, and Seel recognized his face. It was the face of his eighteen-year-old lover from Mulhouse. Seel states that the Nazi guards then stripped the clothes of his lover, placed a metal bucket over his head, and released trained German Shepherd dogs
German Shepherd Dog
The German Shepherd Dog , also known as an Alsatian or just the German Shepherd, is a breed of large-sized dog that originated in Germany. The German Shepherd is a relatively new breed of dog, with its origin dating to 1899. As part of the Herding Group, the German Shepherd is a working dog...
on him, which mauled him to death.
Rudolf Brazda, believed to be the last surviving person who was sent to a Nazi concentration camp because of his homosexuality, died in France in August 2011, aged 98. Brazda was sent to Buchenwald in August 1942 and held there until its liberation by U.S. forces in 1945. Brazda, who settled in France after the war, was later awarded the Legion of Honour.
Early Holocaust and genocide discourse
Arising from the dominant discourse of the Jewish suffering during the years of Nazi domination, and building on the divergence of differential victimhoods brought to light by studies of the Roma and the mentally ill, who suffered massively under the eugenics programs of the Third ReichAction T4
Action T4 was the name used after World War II for Nazi Germany's eugenics-based "euthanasia" program during which physicians killed thousands of people who were "judged incurably sick, by critical medical examination"...
, the idea of a “Gay Holocaust” was first explored in the early 1970s. However, extensive research on the topic was impeded by a continuation of Nazi policies on homosexuals in post-war East and West Germany and continued western notions of homophobia.
The civil rights movement
Civil rights movement
The civil rights movement was a worldwide political movement for equality before the law occurring between approximately 1950 and 1980. In many situations it took the form of campaigns of civil resistance aimed at achieving change by nonviolent forms of resistance. In some situations it was...
, which began with Black movements in the United States as well as Women’s movements in Europe and the Americas was adopted by gay and lesbian organizations throughout the West, and yielded the first exploration of homosexuals within the context of the Holocaust. The idea of homosexuals as specific targets of Hitler’s final solution was however not salient with Zionist notions of victimhood during the Nazi regime and was also met with opposition within The United States during the conservative revival of the Reagan era and at the onset of the HIV/AIDS pandemic.
The word “genocide
Genocide
Genocide is defined as "the deliberate and systematic destruction, in whole or in part, of an ethnic, racial, religious, or national group", though what constitutes enough of a "part" to qualify as genocide has been subject to much debate by legal scholars...
” was generated from of a need for new terminology in order to understand the gravity of the crimes committed by the Nazis. First coined by Raphael Limkin in 1944, the word became politically charged when The Genocide Act was enacted by the United Nations on December 9, 1948, which created an obligation for governments to respond to such atrocities in the future. The debate on the “Gay Holocaust” is therefore a highly loaded debate which would result in an international acknowledgement of state sponsored homophobia as a precursor to genocide should the proponents of the “Gay Holocaust” succeed. However the United Nations
United Nations
The United Nations is an international organization whose stated aims are facilitating cooperation in international law, international security, economic development, social progress, human rights, and achievement of world peace...
definition does not include sexual orientation (or even social and political groups) within its qualifications for the crime. Genocide by the U.N. definition is limited to national, ethnical, racial or religious groups and as this is the only accord to which nations have pledged allegiance, it stands as the dominant understanding of the term. It is, however, what Michel-Rolph Trouillot terms “an age when collective apologies are becoming increasingly common” as well as a time when the established Holocaust discourse has settled and legitimized claims of the Jewish, Roma and mentally ill victims of Nazi persecution so it would seem an appropriate time to at least bring attention to the debate of the Gay Holocaust, even if the issue is not to be settled.
A lack of research means that there is relatively little data on the dispersion of gay men throughout the camps however Heger suggests in his book The Men with The Pink Triangle that they were subjected to harsher labor than smaller targeted groups, such as the political prisoners, and furthermore suffered a much higher mortality rate. They also lacked a support network within the camps and were ostracized in the prison community. Homosexuals, like the mentally ill and many Jews and Roma, were also subjected to medical experimentation in the hopes of finding a cure to homosexuality at the camp in Buchenwald.
The conception of Jewish exclusivity in the Holocaust went unchallenged in the early years of study on the subject. It is undeniable that the Jews suffered the greatest death toll, and entire communities were obliterated in Eastern Europe and to a great extent in western countries. The notion of exclusivity however is challenged by the existence of similar forces working against different social and ethnic groups such as homosexuals and the Roma, which resulted in the victimization and systematic destruction of homosexual lives and lifestyles, as well as those of the Roma. An inclusion of social groups in a definition of genocide would further challenge the notion of the Jewish genocide as unique within the context of the Holocaust. While statistically speaking Jew suffered much more at the hands of the Nazis, Ellie Weisel’s belief that “a focus on other victims may detract from the Judaic specificity of the Holocaust” fosters a misrepresentation of history and devalues the suffering of other victims of Nazi atrocities. Simon Wiesenthal argues that “the Holocaust transcended the confines of Jewish community and that there were other victims.” In the mid-1970s new discourses emerged that challenged the exclusivity of the Jewish genocide within the Holocaust, though not without great resistance.
Changes with the civil rights movement
The civil rights movementsCivil rights movement
The civil rights movement was a worldwide political movement for equality before the law occurring between approximately 1950 and 1980. In many situations it took the form of campaigns of civil resistance aimed at achieving change by nonviolent forms of resistance. In some situations it was...
of North America in the 1970s saw an emergence of victim claims through revision
Historical revisionism
In historiography, historical revisionism is the reinterpretation of orthodox views on evidence, motivations, and decision-making processes surrounding a historical event...
and appropriation of historical narratives. The shift from the traditionally conservative notion of history as the story of power and those who held it, social historians
Social history
Social history, often called the new social history, is a branch of History that includes history of ordinary people and their strategies of coping with life. In its "golden age" it was a major growth field in the 1960s and 1970s among scholars, and still is well represented in history departments...
emerged with narratives of those who suffered and resisted these powers. African American
African American
African Americans are citizens or residents of the United States who have at least partial ancestry from any of the native populations of Sub-Saharan Africa and are the direct descendants of enslaved Africans within the boundaries of the present United States...
s created their own narrative, as firmly based on evidence as the discourses already in existence, as part of a social movement towards civil rights based on a history of victimization and racism
Racism in the United States
Racism in the United States has been a major issue since the colonial era and the slave era. Legally sanctioned racism imposed a heavy burden on Native Americans, African Americans, Asian Americans, and Latin Americans...
. Along similar lines, the gay and lesbian movement
LGBT social movements
Lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender social movements share inter-related goals of social acceptance of sexual and gender minorities. Lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender people and their allies have a long history of campaigning for what is generally called LGBT rights, also called gay...
in the United States also utilized revisionism to write the narrative that had only just garnered an audience willing to validate it.
There were two processes at work in this new discourse, revisionism and appropriation, which Arlene Stein teases out in her article “Whose Memory, Whose Victimhood?” both of which were used at different points in the movement for civil rights. The revisionist project was taken on in a variety of mediums, historical literature being only one of many. The play Bent
Bent (play)
Bent is a 1979 play by Martin Sherman. It revolves around the persecution of gays in Nazi Germany, and takes place during and after the Night of the Long Knives....
and a limited number of memoirs, which recall The Diary of Anne Frank
The Diary of a Young Girl
The Diary of a Young Girl is a book of the writings from the Dutch language diary kept by Anne Frank while she was in hiding for two years with her family during the Nazi occupation of the Netherlands. The family was apprehended in 1944 and Anne Frank ultimately died of typhus in the Bergen-Belsen...
coincided with the appropriation of the pink triangle
Pink triangle
The pink triangle was one of the Nazi concentration camp badges, used to identify male prisoners who were sent there because of their homosexuality. Every prisoner had to wear a downward-pointing triangle on his or her jacket, the colour of which was to categorise him or her by "kind"...
as a symbol of the new movement and a reminder to “never forget.” While the focus of these early revisions was not necessarily to determine the Nazi policy on homosexuals as genocidal, they began a current towards legitimizing the victimization of homosexuals under the regime, a topic that had not been addressed until the 1970s.
Historical works eventually focused on the nature and intent of Nazi policy. Heinz Heger
Heinz Heger
Heinz Heger was the pen name used by Josef Kohout , an Austrian Nazi concentration camp survivor. Kohout had been imprisoned for his homosexuality, which the German penal code's Paragraph 175 made criminal...
, Gunter Grau and Richard Plant all contributed greatly to the early Holocaust discourse which emerged throughout the 1970s and early 1980s. Central to these studies was the notion that statistically speaking, homosexuals suffered greater losses than many of the smaller minorities under Nazi persecution such as the Jehovah’s Witnesses and within the camps experienced harsher treatments and ostracization as well as execution at the hands of firing squads and the gas chamber
Gas chamber
A gas chamber is an apparatus for killing humans or animals with gas, consisting of a sealed chamber into which a poisonous or asphyxiant gas is introduced. The most commonly used poisonous agent is hydrogen cyanide; carbon dioxide and carbon monoxide have also been used...
s.
These early revisionist discourses were joined by a popular movement of appropriation, which invoked the global memory of the Holocaust] to shed light on social disparities for homosexuals within the United States. Larry Kramer
Larry Kramer
Larry Kramer is an American playwright, author, public health advocate, and LGBT rights activist. He began his career rewriting scripts while working for Columbia Pictures, which led him to London where he worked with United Artists. There he wrote the screenplay for Women in Love in 1969, earning...
who was one of the founders of ACT UP
AIDS Coalition to Unleash Power
AIDS Coalition to Unleash Power is an international direct action advocacy group working to impact the lives of people with AIDS and the AIDS pandemic to bring about legislation, medical research and treatment and policies to ultimately bring an end to the disease by mitigating loss of health and...
, an HIV
HIV
Human immunodeficiency virus is a lentivirus that causes acquired immunodeficiency syndrome , a condition in humans in which progressive failure of the immune system allows life-threatening opportunistic infections and cancers to thrive...
/AIDS
AIDS
Acquired immune deficiency syndrome or acquired immunodeficiency syndrome is a disease of the human immune system caused by the human immunodeficiency virus...
activist group that used shock tactics to bring awareness to the disease and attention to the need for funding popularized the AIDS-as-Holocaust discourse. “The slowness of government response at federal and local levels of government, the paucity of funds for research and treatment, particularly in the early days of the epidemic stems, Kramer argued, from deep-seated homophobic impulses and constituted ‘intentional genocide’.”
While the appropriation of the Holocaust discourse helped to grab the attention needed for an appropriate response to the pandemic
Pandemic
A pandemic is an epidemic of infectious disease that is spreading through human populations across a large region; for instance multiple continents, or even worldwide. A widespread endemic disease that is stable in terms of how many people are getting sick from it is not a pandemic...
it is highly problematic and perhaps counterproductive to the historical discourse of the time. The notion of AIDS-as-Holocaust and the accompanying notion of AIDS-as-genocide greatly oversimplify the meaning and the intention of genocide as a crime. While parallels can be drawn such as specific group experiencing disproportionate mortality resulting from a seeming neglect by the institutions designed to protect them, the central factors of intention and systematic planning are absent and the use of the word dilutes the severity of the act.
The Holocaust frame was used again in the early 1990s this time in relation to right-wing
Right-wing politics
In politics, Right, right-wing and rightist generally refer to support for a hierarchical society justified on the basis of an appeal to natural law or tradition. To varying degrees, the Right rejects the egalitarian objectives of left-wing politics, claiming that the imposition of equality is...
homophobic campaigns throughout the United States. The conservative response yielded a new discourse working against the “Gay Holocaust” academia which emphasized the gay and lesbian revisionism as a victimist discourse which sought sympathy and recognition as a pragmatic means of garnering special status and civil rights outside those of the moral majority. Arlene Stein identifies four central elements to the conservative reaction to the Gay Holocaust discourse, she argues that the right is attempt to dispel the notion that gays are victims, pit two traditionally liberal constituencies against one another (gays and Jews) thereby draw parallels between Jews and Christians and thereby legitimate its own status as an oppressed and morally upright group.
The victimist argument raises a central tenet as to the reasons for which the discourse of a “Gay Holocaust” has experienced so much resistance politically and popularly (in the conscious of the public). Alyson M. Cole addresses the anti-victim discourse that has emerged in western politics since the end of the 1980s. She asserts “anti-victimists transformed discussions of social obligation, compensations and remedial or restorative procedures into criticisms of the alleged propensity of self-anointed victims to engage in objectionable conduct.” Though she is clear that the anti-victimist discourse is not limited to right-wing politics, the case of the “Gay Holocaust” situates itself along these political boundaries and the anti-victim discourse is highly relevant to the debate on homosexual claims to genocide under the Third Reich
Nazi Germany
Nazi Germany , also known as the Third Reich , but officially called German Reich from 1933 to 1943 and Greater German Reich from 26 June 1943 onward, is the name commonly used to refer to the state of Germany from 1933 to 1945, when it was a totalitarian dictatorship ruled by...
. Cole also identifies a central conflict within the anti-victim discourse, which sheds light on the weakness in the conservative argument against the Gay Holocaust. While anti-victimists shun the victim and target it for ridicule as a pity-seeking subject-person while simultaneously extolling the virtues of what Cole identifies as the true victim. The true victim holds certain personal qualities, which allow for it to be beyond the ridicule given to the victimist. Propriety, responsibility, individuality and innocence are the central attributes of the true victim and in the case of the Gay Holocaust discourse, the claims made for the recognition of genocide or genocidal processes under Nazi Germany allow the claimants to be relegated to the victimist status, making their claims bogus.
Post-revisionist framing of the "Gay Holocaust"
In recent years new work has been done on the Gay Holocaust and rather than emphasizing the severity of destruction to communities or the exclusivity of the genocidal process of the Nazi regime, it focuses on the intersections of social constructionsSocial constructionism
Social constructionism and social constructivism are sociological theories of knowledge that consider how social phenomena or objects of consciousness develop in social contexts. A social construction is a concept or practice that is the construct of a particular group...
such as gender and sexuality within the context of social organization and political domination. Spurlin claims that these all functioned with one another in forming Germany’s social order and final solution to these social problems. Rather than being autonomous policies, “They were part of a much larger strategy of social disenfranchisement and the marking of enemies....” This discourse incorporates numerous disciplines including gender studies
Gender studies
Gender studies is a field of interdisciplinary study which analyses race, ethnicity, sexuality and location.Gender study has many different forms. One view exposed by the philosopher Simone de Beauvoir said: "One is not born a woman, one becomes one"...
, queer studies
Queer studies
Queer studies is the critical theory based study of issues relating to sexual orientation and gender identity usually focusing on lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender and intersex people and cultures. Universities have also labeled this area of analysis Sexual Diversity Studies, Sexualities...
, Holocaust studies and genocide studies to tease out the axis at which they meet in social control specifically under National Socialism in Germany.
The approach taken by Spurlin is highly effective as he cross-relates identity construction with enemy construction and analyzes the way that it functions within the institutions of social organization such as the medical institution and the camp. The study reveals that the homophobic impulse along with the anti-Semitic and other national threats seldom operated alone and that in terms of Nazi policy they were functioning on similar levels with differing opportunities to implement solutions, such as the Holocaust. This study is the most recent addition to the discourses of the “Gay Holocaust” and holds much promise in terms of generating a complete and interwoven understanding of where homosexuality factors into Nazi race policy and social organization. By re-evaluating the way in which National Socialism in Germany generated the other and how it functioned in terms of social organization, Spurlin asserts that homophobia
Homophobia
Homophobia is a term used to refer to a range of negative attitudes and feelings towards lesbian, gay and in some cases bisexual, transgender people and behavior, although these are usually covered under other terms such as biphobia and transphobia. Definitions refer to irrational fear, with the...
was one of many forces that generated the Hitler’s Final Solution
Final Solution
The Final Solution was Nazi Germany's plan and execution of the systematic genocide of European Jews during World War II, resulting in the most deadly phase of the Holocaust...
, along with anti-Semitism and misogyny
Misogyny
Misogyny is the hatred or dislike of women or girls. Philogyny, meaning fondness, love or admiration towards women, is the antonym of misogyny. The term misandry is the term for men that is parallel to misogyny...
.
See also
- Albrecht BeckerAlbrecht BeckerAlbrecht Becker was a production designer, photographer, and actor, who was imprisoned by the Nazi regime for the charge of homosexuality....
- L. D. Classen von NeudeggL. D. Classen von NeudeggL. D. Classen von Neudegg was a Holocaust survivor who was imprisoned in a Nazi concentration camp because of his homosexuality. He wrote about his experiences in 1954 in the German magazine Humanitas. His account is one of the most significant records of the experience of homosexuals during the...
- Heinz DormerHeinz DörmerHeinz Dörmer was a German man who was imprisoned by the Nazis for homosexuality under Paragraph 175. He was repeatedly released and rearrested, spending more than ten years in a variety of concentration camps and prisons.-Early life:...
- Karl GorathKarl GorathKarl Gorath was a gay man who was arrested in 1938 and imprisoned for homosexuality at Neuengamme and Auschwitz...
- Friedrich-Paul von GroszheimFriedrich-Paul von GroszheimFriedrich-Paul von Groszheim was a German man who was imprisoned by the Nazis for the crime of homosexuality under Germany's now-repealed Paragraph 175. He was born in Lübeck, Germany.- Three imprisonments :...
- Karl LangeKarl LangeKarl Lange was imprisoned by the Nazis for the then crime of homosexuality under the criminal code's Paragraph 175, which defined homosexuality as an unnatural act....
- Kurt von RuffinKurt von RuffinKurtis von Reidffin was a German actor and opera singer who was imprisoned by the Nazis for the crime of homosexuality.-Career:...
- Ernst RöhmErnst RöhmErnst Julius Röhm, was a German officer in the Bavarian Army and later an early Nazi leader. He was a co-founder of the Sturmabteilung , the Nazi Party militia, and later was its commander...
- Pierre SeelPierre SeelPierre Seel was a gay Holocaust survivor and the only French person to have testified openly about his experience of deportation during World War II due to his homosexuality.-Biography:...
- Paul Gerhard Vogel
- Gay and Lesbian MemorialGay and Lesbian MemorialThe Gay and Lesbian Memorial Project was founded by a group of community activists. Over the years they raised funds and decided, with South Sydney City Council, on the site at Green Park in Darlinghurst, in Sydney, Australia. Darlinghurst is considered the heart of Sydney's gay and lesbian...
- HistorikerstreitHistorikerstreitThe Historikerstreit was an intellectual and political controversy in late 20th-century West Germany about the historical interpretation of the Holocaust. The German word Streit translates variously as "quarrel", "dispute", or "conflict"...
- HomomonumentHomomonumentThe Homomonument is a memorial in the centre of Amsterdam, the capital of the Netherlands. It commemorates all gay men and lesbians who have been subjected to persecution because of their homosexuality...
- Homosexuality in Germany
- Nazi eugenicsNazi eugenicsNazi eugenics were Nazi Germany's racially-based social policies that placed the improvement of the Aryan race through eugenics at the center of their concerns...
- Paragraph 175Paragraph 175Paragraph 175 was a provision of the German Criminal Code from 15 May 1871 to 10 March 1994. It made homosexual acts between males a crime, and in early revisions the provision also criminalized bestiality. All in all, around 140,000 men were convicted under the law.The statute was amended several...
- Paragraph 175 (film)Paragraph 175 (film)Paragraph 175 is a documentary film released in 2000, directed by Rob Epstein and Jeffrey Friedman, and narrated by Rupert Everett. The film was produced by Rob Epstein, Jeffrey Friedman, Janet Cole, Michael Ehrenzweig, Sheila Nevins and Howard Rosenman. The film chronicles the lives of several gay...
- Sexuality of Adolf Hitler
- SS-Sturmbrigade DirlewangerSS-Sturmbrigade DirlewangerThe 36th Waffen Grenadier Division of the SS, better known as the SS-Sturmbrigade "Dirlewanger" , was an infamous military unit of the Waffen-SS during World War II. Originally formed for anti-partisan duties against the Polish resistance, it eventually saw action against the Soviet Red Army near...
External links
- Non-Jewish Victims of Persecution in Nazi Germany on the Yad VashemYad VashemYad Vashem is Israel's official memorial to the Jewish victims of the Holocaust, established in 1953 through the Yad Vashem Law passed by the Knesset, Israel's parliament....
website - Becker le marqué, Quasimodo
- Official Site Of German Government's Memorial For Gay Victims of the Holocaust in Berlin
- Sites of the NGO-initiatives for the official German memorial some short texts in english regarding the initiative and the art competition and Documentation of the Activities regarding the Memorial (only German)
- Night of the Long Knives – Murder of Ernst Röhm
- Boston Globe – Gay Holocaust Survivor Speaks
- BBC News – Berlin to Mark Nazis' Gay Victims
- The Independent – Survivors of a Forgotten Holocaust
- History of the Gay & Lesbian Experience During World War II
- The Nazi Persecution of Gays – Annotated Bibliography of Nonfiction Sources
- Pierre Seel – An Account of a Gay Holocaust Survivor
- Gays & the Holocaust
- Article On Various Experiments Conducted On Gay Men In Concentration Camps
- A Love to Hide, movie on gay holocaust