On Jan. 27, 1945, Soviet troops from the 60th Army of Marshal Ivan Konev’s 1st Front liberated the Polish Nazi extermination camp Auschwitz
January 27 marks World Holocaust Remembrance Day, which commemorates the Nazi holocaust against Jews, Gypsies, the disabled, the mentally handicapped, Jehovah’s Witnesses, Catholics, and political opponents such as members of the German Communist Party, and homosexuals.
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The Holocaust was a tragedy for Germany’s internal LGBQT+ community that should not be forgotten.
The German LGBTQ+ community between 1933 and 1945 suffered brutal repression by the Nazi regime. It is estimated that between the advent and collapse of the Nazi regime, 100,000 German citizens were arrested on charges of being homosexual.
Most of those arrested were sentenced to prison, while between 5,000 and 15,000 of them were sent to concentration camps.
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The Nazi regime’s first attack on Germany’s gay community is dated May 6, 1933, when the Nazis raided the Institute for Sexual Research (Institut fur sexualwissenschaft). In that violence, the Nazis destroyed over 200,000 publications, including books and journals on gender theories, and arrested all those people who did not please the regime.
According to the Nazi regime, sexual relations were to “be aimed at the reproductive process, their purpose being the preservation and continuation of the existence of the Volk (people), rather than the realization of the pleasure of the individual.”
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So those who could not procreate, so to speak, were to be physically eliminated in concentration camps. Especially homosexuals. And so on June 28, 1935, the regime expanded the infamous Paragraph 175 (an article of the German Criminal Code that criminalized all same-sex relationships) to include anyone who could even be suspected of being homosexual.
At that point, homosexuals were required to circulate with the inverted pink triangle in order to be recognized, as for Jews the yellow Star of David. And next was deportation to the death camps, built in the territories occupied by Nazi Germany.
Segregated from other inmates because they were deemed contagious of homosexuality. Forced into inhumane work to correct their ‘deviant nature,’ as well as being tortured and killed during absurd scientific experiments to turn them into heterosexuals.
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Even with the liberation by the Red Army on January 27, 1945, the nightmare continued for the pink triangle prisoners. In fact, they went from death camps to prison, and all ‘thanks’ to Paragraph 175.
Section 175 went into effect on May 15, 1871, was reformed in 1935 by the Nazi regime, and remained in force for many years.
The GDR (German Democratic Republic) returned to the old version in 1950, limiting its scope to sex with minors under the age of 18 (1968), and then finally abolished it in 1989.
West Germany kept Section 175 in the Nazi version until 1969 and then limited it to “qualified cases.” Mitigated in 1973, it was not abolished until 1994 with German reunification.
We cannot and should not forget what happened during Adolf Hitler’s regime to the German homosexual community.
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