Last Monday, we commemorated the victims of the Holocaust on the annual Holocaust Memorial Day. While many people may feel sufficiently informed on the topic, there is still improvement needed in terms of global awareness, reparations and research regarding the atrocities of the Holocaust. We need to fully commemorate and understand history, in order to keep it from happening again. Yet only 2 years ago, on this same day, the German parliament included LGBTQ+ victims of the holocaust in their memorial ceremony for the first time ever. In many ways, these stories had been erased from history, with queer people facing similar persecution in Germany even after the end of the Second World War. To honor the victims of the Holocaust and combat modern day discrimination, we need to be aware of the full scale of tragedy that was caused by the Nazi regime.
Germany’s first attempt at a Democracy was the Weimar Republic, which lasted from 1918 to 1933. Somehow, the ruins of the First World War provided an environment for progress to accelerate and flourish, turning German society into a culture rich with diversity, art and progressive ideas. Weimar-era Berlin came to be labeled as the “gay capital of the world”, harboring a rich queer nightlife as well as activist groups and social researchers. While homosexuality had technically been illegal under paragraph 175 since 1871, it only outlawed sexual intercourse between men, essentially requiring police to catch them in the act, which was seldom the case.
Among the queer activists, Dr. Magnus Hirschfeld stuck out with his determination to change the public perception of queer people through scientific research. He argued that homosexuality as well as transgenderism were natural and sought out to abolish paragraph 175. While partially pseudo-scientific and regressive, his research in the self-founded “Institute of Sexual Sciences” and his activism in queer rights groups granted queer people more opportunities and initiated the process of decriminalizing homosexuality. Hirschfeld was one of few advocates for transgender rights, performing gender-affirming surgeries and supporting the introduction of the “transvestite pass”, which allowed the owner to wear the clothes of their preferred gender identity without having to fear arrest for “indecent behavior” or “being a public nuisance”.
When the Nazis came into power, closing the institute was within their first actions. Hirschfeld’s publications were burned and banned and the Nazis officially declared homosexuals as public enemies, for their indecent behavior and failure to reproduce “racially pure” German children. They continued their purge by raiding LGBTQ establishments and arresting queer people in masses. Furthermore, they extended paragraph 175 to include any sexual relationship between two men, rendering even mere “suspicious” eye contact a sufficient evidence for imprisonment.
Under the enforcement of Paragraph 175, around 100,000 gay men were arrested by the police before the war ended, with approximately 10,000 to 15,000 being sent to concentration camps. Upon arrival in concentration camps, queer men were branded with a pink triangle, which was sown onto their clothing. The pink triangle was often lowest in the camp hierarchy, with gay prisoners enduring horrific abuses from other prisoners and guards alike. Many of them lived through sexual violence, castration and medical experiments. The survival rate for gay prisoners was bleak: around 65% were killed, and a significant, though undetermined, number likely committed suicide.
Homosexual women, however, did not experience the same persecution. Paragraph 175 was, despite many discussions, never extended to queer women. The Nazi regime did not concern itself with women’s sexuality, rather if they were capable of carrying “racially pure” offspring. German women that were deemed “pure” were encouraged or forced to procreate, the rest were persecuted under other charges. Accusations of lesbian relationships could nonetheless lead to arrest under the pretense of other charges, such as “anti-sociality” or “moral unsoundness”. This could lead to imprisonment in concentration camps as well. While lesbian prisoners were not marked with the pink triangle, their sexual identity was often remarked in their documents upon arrest, despite being charged with a different offense.
In the process of undoing the progress of the Weimar Republic, the Nazi government revoked the “transvestite pass”, as they wanted to return to strict gender roles, and saw transgenderism as a mental illness. The police once again arrested people for “public indecency” when expressing unconventional gender identity and most commonly categorized trans women as homosexual men, charging them with the same offenses. Yet trans women could face much harsher consequences than just those of paragraph 175 and 183 (public exhibitionism).
According to historian Laurie Marhöfer, when discussing the persecution of trans people, “the Nazi state reserved its worst violence for trans women.” Persecutors often argued that transgenderism was an aggravating factor, viewing it as something that made the case more serious and the defendant more deserving of a harsher punishment. Camp officials would treat trans women with particular contempt and engage in humiliation rituals such as stripping them out of their women’s clothing, insulting and beating them. In many cases, this treatment resulted in murder both inside and outside of the camps.
While documentation of these cases is sparse, the lives of trans men were even less documented. Nonetheless, there are records of trans men being sent to concentration camps as they were prosecuted in a similar manner as lesbian women.
The transgender community also diminished due to many cases of forced detransition, which was partially enforced through conversion therapy, were queer people were castrated and their identity denied in every way possible. Detransition to this day often leads to mental instability and would frequently result in suicide, though many of these instances remain undocumented.
After Germany’s loss in the war and the disbandment of concentration camps, queer prisoners were freed along with the rest of the concentration camps. Nonetheless, West Germany continued to use the Nazi version of paragraph 175 until 1969. Many gay men were forced to go back to prison and finish their sentence in West Germany after being convicted by the Nazi regime.
The discrimination and oppression queer people still faced after being freed from the Nazi regime caused their history to be eradicated. In many early studies of the Holocaust, there was no mention of pink triangle prisoners. To this day, people refuse to acknowledge the persecution of Romani, queer and trans people in the Holocaust.
