Persecutn of gay people Nazi Germany - The Wiener Holot Library

Contents:

• THE PK TRIANGLE: FROM NAZI LABEL TO SYMBOL OF GAY PRI
• PERSECUTN OF GAY PEOPLE NAZI GERMANY
• GAY RIGHTS
• GAY MEN UNR THE NAZI REGIME

THE PK TRIANGLE: FROM NAZI LABEL TO SYMBOL OF GAY PRI

In 2017, Germany’s Cabet approved a bill that would expunge the nvictns of tens of thoands of German men for “homosexual acts” unr that untry’s anti-gay law known as “Paragraph 175. Partly drivg this new era of tolerance were the doctors and scientists who started lookg at homosexualy and “transvtism” (a word of that era that enpassed transgenr people) as a natural characteristic wh which some were born, and not a “rangement. And the fact that was almost impossible to nvict anyone unls he nfsed to such a crime urt meant that police jt kept a watchful eye on gay bars and events, and Germany end up beg home to a vibrant gay muny.

PERSECUTN OF GAY PEOPLE NAZI GERMANY

Historian Robert Beachy argu that, ironilly, the law spurred scientific tert the study of sexual preferenc, and that rearch tend to enurage a more scientific unrstandg of human sexualy, which further allowed the ia of gay rights to flourish. Durg that perd, gay-iendly bars and clubs started beg shut down, thori burned the books at a major rearch stutn voted to the study of sexualy, and gay aternal anizatns were shuttered. The efforts only creased after the Night of the Long Kniv, the 1934 purge of Nazi lears who were acced of tryg to overthrow Hler; they clud Storm Troopers lear Ernst Röhm, whom the SS murred, later cg his homosexualy as jtifitn for his murr.

Some were ed as guea pigs var medil experiments to fd a cure for typh fever and a cure for homosexualy, the latter of which led the SS to ject them wh ttosterone to see if would make them straight. As one of the USHMM’s curators has poted out, even as the Allied powers refully worked to scb Nazism om Germany, they left that part alone — perhaps bee they had anti-gay and anti-sodomy laws of their own. As the gay liberatn movement grew Ameri the ’70s and the ’80s, so did awarens of the persecutn of gays durg the Holot, as books and data about perd started beg published.

Data on the victims started to be ced 1977, after a statistil analysis by soclogist Rudiger Ltmann of Bremen Universy claimed that as many as 60% of the gay men sent ncentratn mps may have have died. The first reference to pk triangl TIME also appeared that year, a story about gay-rights activists Miami who attached the symbols to their cloth as a show of solidary while prottg a vote to repeal a law protectg gay people om hog discrimatn. In 1979, Mart Sherman’s play Bent, spired by Heger’s memoir, opened on Broadway; the play, one of the characters tras his pk triangle for a yellow star, “which giv him preferential treatment over the homosexuals, ” as TIME’s review put .

GAY RIGHTS

The activists who formed the anizatn ACT-UP to raise awarens about this public health crisis cid to e the pk triangle as a symbol of their mpaign and allud to s history when they clared, their manifto, that “silence about the opprsn and annihilatn of gay people, then and now, mt be broken as a matter of our survival. Earlier this year, Fkelste said that the op-ed was a “galvanizg moment, ” at a time when there was “public discsn of puttg gay men to ncentratn mps to keep the epimic om spreadg. ” Three months later, the German parliament voted unanimoly to pardon gay men nvicted of homosexualy durg World War II, awardg €3, 000 to the 5, 000 men still livg, and €1, 500 for each year they were imprisoned.

As part of their missn to racially and culturally “purify” Germany, the Nazis arrted thoands of LGBT dividuals, mostly gay men, whom they viewed as Uned Stat Holot Memorial Mm timat 100, 000 gay men were arrted and between 5, 000 and 15, 000 were placed ncentratn mps. )Corbis/Getty ImagHomosexual prisoners at the ncentratn mp at Sachsenhsen, Germany, wearg pk triangl on their uniforms on December 19, the mps, gay men were treated pecially harshly, by guards and fellow prisoners alike.

“There was no solidary for the homosexual prisoners; they belonged to the lowt ste, ” Pierre Seel, a gay Holot survivor, wrote his memoir I, Pierre Seel, Deported Homosexual: A Memoir of Nazi timated 65 percent of gay men ncentratn mps died between 1933 and 1945. Horac Villalobos/Corbis/Getty ImagMemorial plaqu for homosexuals, Jehovah's Wns and Wehrmacht serters are placed where once stood one of the molished barracks Buchenwald ncentratn mp near Weimar, Germany. In 1986, six New York Cy activists created a poster wh the words SILENCE = DEATH and a bright pk upward-facg triangle, meant to ll attentn to the AIDs crisis that was cimatg populatns of gay men across the untry.

GAY MEN UNR THE NAZI REGIME

It’s been a way for to both signal to thori that we have polil power and agency, but also for gay, lbian, and transgenr people to see that they are a have the protts changed over the years? It’s important to realize that beg gay or lbian was a crime the Uned Stat up to 2003, and was also thought of as a mental illns that [people] uld be stutnalized and subjected to electroshock treatment for.

So for the people to publicly make a statement that they were gay or lbian was this enormo risk for them — they uld have lost of the statement that was beg ma the early march was the refal to be an visible mory. The Saturday prott was one of more than 25 agast drag events the Uned Stat so far 2023, acrdg to the Gay and Lbian Alliance Agast Defamatn (GLAAD), the largt LGBTQ+ advocy group the least six of those anti-drag cints have taken place Oh 2023, acrdg to GLAAD. LGBTQ artwork created by a stunt an elementary school was taken down after an admistrator allegedly pared the art to hangg a Nazi flag the stunt's drawg featured rabow lors and the words "Gay Is OK, " wrten unr an umbrella.

"It is betiful, a remr to each of this time of great divi that there is hope, that love abounds, that acceptance is paramount– and all om the ey of a child: "Gay is okay, " Athens Pri wrote on Facebook. To mark LGBTQ+ History Month, Dr Barbara Warnock looks at the persecutn faced by gay people Nazi Germany, and some of the documents The Wiener Holot Library’s Internatnal Tracg Service digal archive that nta evince about their experienc. The Scientific Humanarian Commtee had worked sce s tablishment 1897 to overturn sectn 175, and 1919, one of s foundg members, Magn Hirschfeld, set up the Instute for Sexual Rearch, a pneerg anisatn s approach to gay and transgenr rights.