How many gay men where killed in the holocaust
Men Persecuted for Queer Activity
Held at the Dachau Concentration Camp
Digital Studies of The Holocaust
This collaborative research project aims to introduce the process of statistics analysis to Holocaust studies to design new ways of seeing and remembering the Holocaust.
Nils H. Roemer, Director, Ackerman Center for Holocaust Studies
Katie Fisher, Explore Assistant, Belofsky Fellow
Yannis Soonjung Kwon, Undergraduate Research Apprentice
As Nazis in Germany sought to build an empire upon notions of racial purity, genetic supremacy, and a defined homeland they displaced, attacked, and eliminated groups they saw as a threat. One such group was men who were suspected of engaging in homosexual exercise. In an seek to discourage unapproved activity, Nazi officials made the regulation prohibiting homosexual outing stricter. Known as Paragraph 175, the law had been on the write down since the German Empire in 1871 and was expanded upon and applied with utmost severity during the Nazi regime. In 1935, a new version of the statute was written to punish men with prison sentences and broaden the range of acts considered violations. Paragraph 175 was part of Section Thirteen of t
Return to Witnesses
Homosexuals in the Holocaust faced a disturbing reality, as an estimated 500,000 were killed. Coming out of the 1920’s which was a more open time for homosexuals in the Weimar Republic, that gave way to the brutality of the 1930’s and the Holocaust to come.
Homosexuality and the Holocaust – Bibliography
Gays, the Holocaust, and the Pink Triangle
Commons License for Photo
Homosexuals in the Holocaust
“A few remarks are in order about the various sex relationships in concentration camps. I start out with the homosexuals since they were accorded a special category among the inmates and `merited’ a separate, pink triangle. …
Very little has been written about the tens of thousands of homosexuals who were the damnedest of the damned, the outcasts among the outcasts in the concentration camps.
There are really only estimates of figures. During the twelve years of Nazi control, nearly 50,000 were convicted of the crime of homosexuality.
The majority ended up in concentration camps, and virtually all of them perished. According to a recent study, `at least 500,000 gays died in the Holocaust.’
As Stefan Lorant obse
In Poland, no one writes about the tragic fate of homosexuals during the Nazi era. Nothing has been published about the thousands of Polish homosexuals who became death camp victims. Ordinary embarrassment is the reason that scholars remain silent about Nazism’s homosexual victims.
Germany’s Golden Years The nineteenth century was the first period when voices openly defending homosexuality and refusing to condemn it were heard on a broad scale. The Napoleonic Code of 1804 served as the model for this kind of progress. Under the influence of the French Revolution, Bavaria repealed in 1813 the statute that imposed penalties on homosexual unions. The government of Hannover soon followed suit. The German Reich, with Bismarck heading its government, was proclaimed in 1871, following the Franco-Prussian War. Article 175 of the unified legal code stated that “any guy who permits indecent relations with another man, or who takes part in such relations, shall be subject to punishment by imprisonment.”
The Berlin physician Magnus Hirschfeld zealously opposed Article 175. In 1897, he founded the Scientific-Humanitarian Committee, which campaigned for the repeal
LGBTQ People: Germany's long-forgotten victims of the Nazis
"Now you're a gay pig and you've lost your balls." That was how Otto Giering was taunted by a guard in August 1939 after his forced castration in the Sachsenhausen concentration camp. Even before his deportation to the concentration camp, the 22-year-old had been convicted twice for homosexual contact and sent to a labor camp.
The harrowing story of the Hamburg-born journeyman tailor can be read in the book "Medicine and Crime," published by the Brandenburg Memorials Foundation, to which the Sachsenhausen concentration camp memorial and museum belongs.
Otto Giering survived the ordeals, but his health was ruined: "Due to the concentration camp imprisonment he had heart problems, stomach problems, suffered from headaches and migraines," the book recounts.
Later, his application for compensation was rejected, and he did not come home for days and was reported missing. "The police start him confused and disoriented," the book says.
Otto Giering died in 1976, a few months before his 60th birthday. He was one of an estimated 10,000 to 15,000 homosexual men who were deported to German concentration camps by the end of the Na
Homosexuality and the Holocaust
In the Fall of 1933, the first transport of homosexuals arrived at Fuhlsbüttel concentration camp in Hamburg, Germany, a small Nazi camp that has an estimated 500 victims. Over the course of the war about 5,000-10,000 homosexuals were killed in concentration camps and an estimated 100,000 were arrested. The basis for sending thousands of naive people to concentration camps was Article 175 which stated, “An unnatural sex act committed between persons of male sex -- is punishable by imprisonment; the loss of civil rights might also be imposed.” This would later be extended in a way that made the definition of an unnatural sex act vague and up to interpretation by the SS and Gestapo.
Tel Aviv, Israel: Meir Park ‘14
The number of charges made for violating Article 175 rose from 853 in 1933 to 8,562 in 1938. Article 175 was never extended to include queer woman relationships as Heinrich Himmler, commander of the SS, didn’t see women as a threat to his ideals. This does not mean that there were no lesbians in the concentration camps, just that there were much fewer. Article 175 remained in the DDR until 1967, and in West Germany until 1969. After th