HOMOSEXUALS

UNITED STATES

HOLOCAUST

MEMORIAL

MUSEUM
As part of the Nazis’ attempt to purify

German society and propagate an“Aryan master race,” they condemnedhomosexuals as “socially aberrant.” Soon after taking office on January 30,1933, Hitler banned all homosexual and lesbian organizations. Brownshirtedstorm troopers raided the institutionsand gathering places of homosexuals.Greatly weakened and driven underground, this subculture had flourished in the relative freedom of the 1920s, inthe pubs and cafes of Berlin, Hamburg,Munich, Bremen, and other cities.

Cover: A portrait of

two companions. 

Berlin, Germany,

1926. Schwules

Museum, Berlin.
On May 6, 1933, Nazis

ransacked the “Institute for Sexual Science” inBerlin; four days later aspart of large public burnings of books viewed as “un-German,” thousands of books plundered from theInstitute’s library werethrown into a huge bonfire.The institute was founded in 1919 by Dr. MagnusHirschfeld (1868–1935). It sponsored research and discussion on marital problems, sexually transmitteddiseases, and laws relatingto sexual offenses, abortion,and homosexuality. Theauthor of many works,Hirschfeld, himself a homosexual, led efforts for threedecades to reform laws criminalizing homosexuality. (In1933 Hirschfeld happened to be in France, where heremained until his death.) 

In 1934, a special Gestapo

(Secret State Police) divisionon homosexuals was set up.One of its first acts was toorder the police “pink lists”from all over Germany. The police had been compiling these lists of suspectedhomosexual men since 1900.On September 1, 1935, aharsher, amended version of Paragraph 175 of theCriminal Code, originallyframed in 1871, went intoeffect, punishing a broadrange of “lewd and lascivious” behavior between men.In 1936 Nazi leaderHeinrich Himmler created aReich Central Office for theCombating of Homosexualityand Abortion: Special Office (II S), a subdepartment ofExecutive Department II ofthe Gestapo. The linking ofhomosexuality and abortionreflected the Nazi regime’s

HOMOSEXUALS: VICTIMS OF THE NAZI ERA

Auschwitz mug shot

of homosexual August

Pfeiffer, a servant, who

was born August 8,

1895, in Weferlingen,

Germany. He arrived

at Auschwitz on

November 1, 1941,

and died there

December 28, 1941. 

Mug shot of

Friedrich Althoff, a

waiter from

Düsseldorf, who was

born May 16, 1899.

He was arrested on

charges of homosexuality. Düsseldorf,

Germany, January

25, 1939. 

witz, Oswiecim, Poland. (Bottom) Nordrhein

hiv, Düsseldorf, RW 58-61940.
Then came the thunderbolt of the 30 January 1933, and we 

knew that a change of political climate had taken place. What wehad tried to prevent, had taken place.

Over the years, more and more of my political friends disappeared, of my Jewish and of my homosexual friends. Fear came

over us with the increasingly coordinated pressure of the Nazis.For heaven’s sake not to attract attention, to exercise restraint.1933 was the starting-point for the persecution of homosexuals.Already in this year we heard of raids on homosexual pubs andmeeting places. Maybe individual, politically uneducated homosexuals who were only interested in immediate gratification didnot recognize the significance of the year 1933, but for us homosexuals who were also politically active, who had defended theWeimar Republic, and who had tried to forestall the Nazi threat,1933 initially signified a reinforcing of our resistance.

In order not to mutually incriminate ourselves, we decided to

no longer recognize each other. When we came across each otherin the street, we passed by without looking at one another. Therewere certain possibilities for us to meet, but that never happenedin public.

For a politicized homosexual, visiting places which were part of

the homosexual subculture was too dangerous. Friends told methat raids on bars were becoming more frequent. And someonehad written on the wall of the subway tunnel of the Hamburg SBahn between Dammtor station and the main station, “Street ofthe Lost.” That was some sort of film or book title. We found thisgraffiti very amusing, for most of us tried to cope with the thing bydeveloping a sort of gallows humor.

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Germany in 1928. Between1933–45, an estimated100,000 men were arrestedas homosexuals, and ofthese, some 50,000 officiallydefined homosexuals weresentenced. Most of thesemen spent time in regularprisons, and an estimated5,000 to 15,000 of the totalsentenced were incarceratedin concentration camps. 

How many of these 5,000

to 15,000 “175ers” perishedin the concentration campswill probably never beknown. Historical researchto date has been very limited.One leading scholar,Ruediger Lautmann,believes that the death rate for “175ers” in thecamps may have been as high as sixty percent.

All prisoners of the camps

wore marks of various colorsand shapes, which allowedguards and camp functionaries to identify them by category. The uniforms of those

A HOMOSEXUAL RECALLS 1933

From Hans-Georg Stümke and Rudi Finkler, Rosa Winkel, Rosa Listen,Homosexuelle und ‘Gesundes Volksempfinden’ von Auschwitz bisheute (Hamburg, 1981), trans. in Michael Burleigh and Wolfgang Wippermann,

The Racial State: Germany 1933–1945 (New York, 1991), pp. 182–83.

One man (right)recounts how theNazis’ assumption ofpower in 1933 limitedhomosexuals’ freedomand created an atmosphere of fear.
mits lewd and lascivious acts with another

f to be so abused for lewd and lascivious

by imprisonment. In a case of a participant

t the time of the commission of the act, the

 slight cases, refrain from punishment.

 a penitentiary not to exceed ten years

 circumstances, imprisonment for not less

 be imposed:

with force or with threat of imminent dan

mpels another male to commit lewd and

 or compels the other party to submit to

ivious acts;

by abuse of a relationship of dependence

nce of service, employment, or subordina

ale to commit lewd and lascivious acts

o being abused for such acts;

being over 21 years of age induces another

age to commit lewd and lascivious acts

o being abused for such acts;

professionally engages in lewd and lascivi

, or submits to such abuse by other men,

d and lascivious acts with other men.

vious acts contrary to nature between

mals shall be punished by imprisonment;

lso be imposed.

sentenced as homosexualsbore various identifyingmarks, including a largeblack dot and a large “175” drawn on the back of the jacket. Later a pink triangular patch (rosaWinkel) appeared.

Conditions in the camps

were generally harsh for allinmates, many of whom diedfrom hunger, disease,exhaustion, exposure to thecold, and brutal treatment.Many survivors have testified that men with pink triangles were often treatedparticularly severely byguards and inmates alikebecause of widespread biasesagainst homosexuals. As wastrue with other prisoner categories, some homosexuals were also victims of cruel medical experiments, including castration. AtBuchenwald concentrationcamp, SS physician Dr. CarlVaernet performed operations designed to convert

men to heterosexuals: thesurgical insertion of a capsule which released the male hormone testosterone.Such procedures reflectedthe desire by Himmler and others to find a medical solution to homosexuality.

The vast majority of homosexual victims were males;

lesbians were not subjectedto systematic persecution.While lesbian bars wereclosed, few women arebelieved to have been arrested. Paragraph 175 did notmention female homosexuality. Lesbianism was seen bymany Nazi officials as aliento the nature of the Aryanwoman. In some cases, thepolice arrested lesbians as“asocials” or “prostitutes.”One woman, HennySchermann, was arrested in1940 in Frankfurt and waslabelled “licentious lesbian”on her mug shot; but she wasalso a “stateless Jew,” sufficient cause for deportation.

PARAGRAPH 175

In 1935 the Nazi

regime revised

Paragraph 175 of the

German criminal code

to make illegal a very

broad range of 

behavior between men.

This is the text of 

the revised law (left).

en Johannson and William Percy in “Homosexuals in

esenthal Center Annual, Vol. 7 (1990).
Dr. Magnus

Hirschfeld, a Jew and

homosexual, founded

the Institute for Sexual

Sciences. Berlin,

Germany, 1928. 

The Institute forSexual Sciences during a Nazi raid.Berlin, Germany,May 6, 1933. (Top) Suddeutscher Verlag Bilderdienst, Munich, Germany. (Bottom) Akademieder Kunste, Berlin.

The closing of the

Eldorado, a club where 

homosexuals socialized.

Berlin, Germany,

March 5, 1933. 

exuals ~ Victims of the Nazi Era ~ 1933-1945
If you further take into account the facts I have not yet mentioned, namely that with a static number of women, we have 

two million men too few on account of those who fell in the war[of 1914–18], then you can well imagine how this imbalance oftwo million homosexuals and two million war dead, or in otherwords a lack of about four million men capable of having sex, has upset the sexual balance sheet of Germany, and will result in a catastrophe.

I would like to develop a couple of ideas for you on the question of homosexuality. There are those homosexuals who take the

view: what I do is my business, a purely private matter. However,all things which take place in the sexual sphere are not the privateaffair of the individual, but signify the life and death of the nation,signify world power or ‘swissification.’ The people which has manychildren has the candidature for world power and world domination. A people of good race which has too few children has a oneway ticket to the grave, for insignificance in fifty or a hundredyears, for burial in two hundred and fifty years....

Therefore we must be absolutely clear that if we continue to

have this burden in Germany, without being able to fight it, thenthat is the end of Germany, and the end of the Germanic world....

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deported to Nazi-establishedghettos in eastern Europe.Nor were they transportedin mass groups of homosexual prisoners to Nazi extermination camps in Poland. 

It should be noted that

Nazi authorities sometimesused the charge of homosexuality to discredit andundermine their politicalopponents. Charges of homosexuality among theSA (Storm trooper) leadership figured prominentlyamong justifications for thebloody purge of SA chiefErnst Röhm in June 1934.Nazi leader HermannGöring used trumped-upaccusations of homosexualimproprieties to unseatarmy supreme commanderVon Fritsch, an opponent ofHitler’s military policy, inearly 1938. Finally, a 1935propaganda campaign andtwo show trials in 1936 and1937 alleging rampanthomosexuality in the priestIn a speech that Himmler gave before a conference of SS offi- cers on February 17, 1937, he included remarks on the ques- tion of homosexuality. NAZI LEADER HEINRICH HIMMLER ON THE “QUESTION OF HOMOSEXUALITY”

Translated in Michael Burleigh and Wolfgang Wipperman, The Racial State:Germany 1933–1945 (New York, 1991), pp. 192–93.
oszheim was arrested for the first time in

n, in a mass arrest of homosexuals in

on the Baltic Sea. In 1938 von Groszheim

ured, and given the choice between castra

camp. He submitted to the operation and

his story in 1992.

 Groszheim told his story on a new film in

an with English subtitles We Were Marked

Big A, which was shown at the United

 Holocaust Memorial Museum in 1993. 

eo of the film is available in the Museum

 Von Groszheim’s story is also one of nine

s of homosexual victims told on Museum

ty Cards; his identity card may be

sed at the Wexner Learning Center by

es on the menu and then keying in 5364.

ever acknowledged as a victim of the Nazi

going persecution of homosexuals in

 half a century before he broke his silence.

why he began to speak out: “I’m living

win. I’m aware of that every day. If I don’t

now the truth?”

Friedrich-Paul von

Groszheim, one of the

“forgotten victims” of

the Holocaust, recently

broke his silence to 

give testimony.

hood, attempted to undercutthe power of the RomanCatholic Church inGermany, an institutionwhich many Nazi officialsconsidered their most powerful potential enemy.

After the war, homosexual

concentration camp prisoners were not acknowledgedas victims of Nazi persecution, and reparations wererefused. Under the AlliedMilitary Government ofGermany, some homosexualswere forced to serve outtheir terms of imprisonment,regardless of the time spentin concentration camps. The 1935 version ofParagraph 175 remained ineffect in the Federal

Republic (West Germany)until 1969, so that well afterliberation, homosexuals continued to fear arrestand incarceration. 

Research on Nazi persecution of homosexuals was

impeded by the criminalization and social stigmatization of homosexuals inEurope and the UnitedStates in the decades following the Holocaust. Mostsurvivors were afraid orashamed to tell their stories.Recently, especially inGermany, new research findings on these “forgotten victims” have been published, and some survivorshave broken their silence togive testimony.

BREAKING THE SILENCE: 

FRIEDRICH-PAUL VON GROSZHEIM
E PERMANENT EXHIBITION

floor)

oor)

d floor): two pink triangular patches; “mug

NER LEARNING CENTER (2nd floor)

 TOPIC LIST. From the alphabetical list of

 OF VICTIMS: Nazi persecution of a mosaic

mosexuals” to learn more about the perse

 ID CARD. Type in the following numbers

riences of homosexuals who were perse

aust: 5364; 5894; 5664; 5863; 3864; 7264;

COLLECTIONS

Limited number of documents pertaining to arrest and incarceration of homosexuals.Numerous photographs, including those of groups, mug shots,individual portraits, gay/lesbian bars, public baths, and the raidon Institute for Sexual Sciences.

LIBRARY

Several recently published scholarly studies in German, in addition to older books in English, such as Heger’s and Plant’s, aimed at general readers.

RTHER INFORMATION MUSEUM HOLDINGS 
Wolfgang Wippermann. The Racial State:

mbridge, England, 1991).

ith the Pink Triangle (Boston, 1994).

 Christopher and His Kind (New York, 1976).

ay Prisoners in Concentration Camps as

’s Witnesses and Political Prisoners,” in

d., A Mosaic of Victims: Non-Jews Persecuted and

w York, 1990), pp. 200–221.

Triangle: The Nazi War against Homosexuals

 Hirschfeld: A Portrait of a Pioneer in Sexology

MMENDED READING
United States Holocaust Memorial Museum 

100 Raoul Wallenberg Place, SW Washington, D.C. 20024-2150