Berlin Pays Tribute to Gay-Rights Activist Persecuted by Nazis

A stretch of the Spree River in central Berlin was named after gay-rights activist and sexual researcher Magnus Hirschfeld in a dedication ceremony on Tuesday, May 6.

On the same day 75 years ago, the Nazis plundered his offices and later burned hundreds of his books.

Hirschfeld had founded the world's first institute dedicated to fighting discrimination against homosexuals. He went into exile in France and died there in 1935.

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Traveling exhibit explores Nazi persecution of gays

SOUTH KINGSTOWN, R.I. - In Nazi Germany, some gay men were castrated and prosecuted under draconian laws prohibiting homosexuality. Others were subjected to crude medical experiments designed to "correct" their sexual orientation. Gay men in concentration camps were singled out with distinctive pink triangle badges and assigned backbreaking labor that often killed them.

A traveling exhibit from the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum uses photographs, documents and artwork to chronicle the Nazis' arrests and persecution of tens of thousands of gay men from 1933 to 1945.

The exhibit, which is on display through the end of the month at the University of Rhode Island, gives voice to what its curator describes as "one of the lesser-known stories of the Nazi era."

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Gay Holocaust; memorials, documentaries and the pink triangle

If tolerance for difference is one of the lessons humanity is supposed to have learned from the Nazi era, the contemporary treatment of homosexuals around the world demonstrates that the lesson has not yet been learned.

87 countries currently maintain laws that prohibit or regulate sexual activity between consenting adults of the same sex. These laws are extremely broad in their scope and lend themselves to ideological interpretations which often serve as a pretext for the persecution of homosexuals.

Clearly, in different places throughout our contemporary world, much of the same discrimination and even some of the same crimes that occurred under the Nazi regime are currently being perpetrated against homosexual people.

The past is not past. History is repeating itself virtually every day. This is because the lessons of the Nazi persecution of homosexuals have not yet been taught or learned. We believe that one of the best ways to commemorate and historically legitimize those who were murdered by the Nazis is to prevent such atrocities from occurring again throughout the world.

The pink triangle was pinned on us by the Nazi's. Matt and Andrej ask that we not forget the reason we still wear the pink triangle. In memory of our brothers, murdered by the Nazi's while wearing a pink triangle.

I want to thank Matt and Andrej where I obtained much of this.

I loved their page titled: 8 Memorials to the Gay Holocaust

Other resources:

The book: The Pink Swastika

The documentary: Paragraph 175

It speaks with the 6 remaining gay holocaust survivors.

That wasn't a typo, 6 remaining gay holocaust survivors in the world!

HISTORY: Homosexuals and the Holocaust

Soon after taking office on January 30, 1933, Hitler banned all homosexual and lesbian organizations. Brownshirted storm troopers raided the institutions and gathering places of homosexuals.

On September 1, 1935, a harsher, amended version of Paragraph 175 of the Criminal Code, originally framed in 1871, went into effect, punishing a broad range of "lewd and lascivious" behavior between men. In some cases, castration was performed.

An estimated 1.2 million men were homosexuals in Germany in 1928. Between 1933-45, an estimated 100,000 men were arrested as homosexuals, and of these, some 50,000 officially defined homosexuals were sentenced. Most of these men spent time in regular prisons, and an estimated 5,000 to 15,000 of the total sentenced were incarcerated in concentration camps. Excerpts from Vera Laska, an eye witness.

How many of these 5,000 to 15,000 "175ers" perished in the concentration camps will probably never be known. Historical research to date has been very limited. One leading scholar, Ruediger Lautmann, believes that the death rate for "175ers" in the camps may have been as high as sixty percent.

All prisoners of the camps wore marks of various colors and shapes, which allowed guards and camp functionaries to identify them by category. The uniforms of those sentenced as homosexuals bore various identifying marks, including a large black dot and a large "175" drawn on the back of the jacket. Later a pink triangular patch (rosa Winkel) appeared.

After the war, homosexual concentration camp prisoners were not acknowledged as victims of Nazi persecution, and reparations were refused. Under the Allied Military Government of Germany, homosexuals were forced to serve out their terms of imprisonment, regardless of the time spent in concentration camps. The 1935 version of Paragraph 175 remained in effect in the Federal Republic (West Germany) until 1969, so that well after liberation, homosexuals continued to fear arrest and incarceration.