Pride 2024: LGBTQ+ History during the Holocaust, Part One
June marks Pride Month - each Pride, we remember and honour those who came before us and those who were persecuted by the Nazi regime because of their sexual or gender orientation.
Paragraph 175 was the statute of Imperial Germany’s criminal code, which criminalised sexual relationships between men. Despite the lack of mention of women in this statute, lesbians and trans people did not escape persecution and suffering under the Nazis. The years of the Weimar Republic brought a considerable degree of political turmoil and economic upheaval. Part of this social transformation was the challenging of accepted gender and sexual norms. A less restrictive climate emerged and many groups actively advocated for the decriminalisation of sexual relations between men, including the German Democratic Party, the German Communist Party, and the Social Democrats. Due to the political deadlock of the Weimar era, Paragraph 175 remained on Germany’s statute books. Nevertheless, queer communities enjoyed a degree of cultural and artistic freedom. Berlin’s gay community was particularly prominent, with venues such as the Eldorado, the Mikado and the Monokel forming the heart of the city’s gay nightlife.
With the advent of the Nazi Party, so too came the closure of venues like these. Underground meeting places remained but increased police surveillance made it far more difficult for gay men to connect with each other. Gay newspapers and publishing houses were forced to close, as was Magnus Hirschfeld’s Institute for Sexual Sciences. From the mid 1930s, persecution of gay men was intensified and, under the guise of ‘reducing criminality’, the Gestapo began to arrest those accused of being gay. Between 5,000 and 10,000 men were imprisoned in concentration camps and were required to wear a pink triangle on their camp uniforms. According to numerous survivor accounts, gay men were among the most abused groups in the camps. Other prisoners avoided being associated with gay men for fear of reprisals from camp officers. In Buchenwald concentration camp, some gay men were subject to medical experiments and forced castration. Even after liberation, gay men were still required to finish their sentences as violators of Paragraph 175. It was only in the 1990s that the German government acknowledged the persecution of gay men under the Nazi regime. In 2002, the German government overturned Nazi-era convictions for Paragraph 175.
