Under the revised Paragraph 175 and the creation of Special Office II S, the number of prosecutions increased sharply, peaking in the years 1937-1939. Half of all convictions for homosexual activity under the Nazi regime occurred during these years. The police stepped up raids on homosexual meeting places, seized address books of arrested men to find additional suspects, and created networks of informers to compile lists of names and make arrests.
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.
How many of these 5,000 to 15,000 "l7Sers" perished in the concentration camps will probahlii never be known. Historical research to date has been very limited. One leading schblar, Ruediger Lautmann, believes that the death rate for "l7Sers" 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 functionarCHNKWKS JøÿÿÿÿTEXTTEXTÖ5FDPPFDPP8FDPCFDPC:STSHSTSH<hSTSHSTSHh=¢SYIDSYID
@SGP SGP @INK INK "@BTEPPLC &@BTECPLC >@FONTFONTV@pTOKNPLC Æ@ÌSTRSPLC ’C:PRNTWNPRÌC#FRAMFRAMïGˆTITLTITLwHDOP DOP ‰H.The NAZI Party and Homosexuals
The Nazi campaign against homosexuality targeted the more than one million German men who, the state asserted, carried a "degeneracy" that threatened the "disciplined masculinity" of Germany. Denounced as "antisocial parasites" and as "enemies of the state," more than 100,000 men were arrested under a broadly interpreted law against homosexuality. Approximately 50,000 men served prison terms as convicted homosexuals, while an unknown number were institutionalized in mental hospitals. Others perhaps hundreds were castrated under court order or coercion. Analyses of fragmentary records suggest that between 5,000 and 15,000 homosexual men were imprisoned in concentration camps, where many died from starvation, disease, exhaustion, beatings, and murder.
In the racist practice of Nazi eugenics, women were valued primarily for their ability to bear children. The state presumed that women homosexuals were still capable of reproducing. Lesbians were not systematically persecuted under Nazi rule, but they nonetheless did suffer the loss of their own gathering places and associations.
Nazi Germany did not seek to kill all homosexuals. Nevertheless, the Nazi state, through active persecution, attempted to terrorize German homosexuals into sexual and social conformity, leaving thousands dead and shattering the lives of many more.
In 1934, a special Gestapo (Secret State Police) division on homosexuals was set up. One of its first acts was to order the police "pink lists" from all over Germany The police had been compiling these lists of suspected homosexual men since 1900. 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 "lewies 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. Conditions in the camps were generally harsh for all inmates, many of whom died from hunger, disease, exhaustion, exposure to the cold, and brutal treatment. Many survivors have testified that men with pink triangles were often treated particularly severely by guards and inmates alike because of widespread biases against homosexuals. As was true with other prisoner categories, some homosexuals were also victims of cruel medical experiments, including castration. At Buchenwald concentration camp, SS physician Dr. Carl Vaernet performed operations designed to convert men to heterosexuals: the surgical insertion of a capsule which released the male hormone testosterone. Such procedures reflected the desire by Himmler and others to find a medical solution to homosexuality.
The vast majority of homosexual victims were males; lesbians were not subjected to systematic persecution. While lesbian bars were closed, few women are believed to have been arrested. Paragraph 175 did not mention female homosexuality. Lesbianism was seen by many Nazi officials as alien to the nature of the Aryan woman. In some cases, the police arrested lesbians as "asocials" or "prostitutes.:' One woman, Henny Schermann, was arrested in 1940 in Frankfurt and was labeled "licentious Lesbian" on her mug shot; but she was also a "stateless Jew," sufficient cause for deportation. Among the Jewish inmates at Ravensbrück concentration camp selected for extermination, she was gassed in the Bernburg psychiatric hospital, a "euthanasia" killing center in Germany, in 1942.
Homosexuality outside Germany (and incorporated Austria and other annexed territories) was not a subject generally addressed in Nazi ideology or policy; the concern focused on the impact of homosexuality on the strength and birthrate of the Aryan population. During the war years, 1939 to 1945, the Nazis did not generally instigate drives against homosexuality in German-occupied countries.
Consequently, the vast majority of homosexuals arrested under Paragraph 175 were Germans or Austrians. Unlike Jews. men arrested as homosexuals were not systematically deported to Nazi-established ghettos in eastern Europe. Nor were they transported in mass groups of homosexual prisoners to Nazi extermination camps in Poland.
It should be noted that Nazi authorities sometimes used the charge of homosexuality to discredit and undermine their political opponents. Charges of homosexuality among the SA (Storm trooper) leadership figured prominently among justifications for the bloody purge of SA chief Ernst Röhm in June 1934. Nazi leader Hermann Göring used trumped-up accusations of homosexual improprieties to unseat army supreme commander Von Fritsch, an opponent of Hitler's military policy, in early 1938. Finally, a 1935 propaganda campaign and two show trials in 1936 and 1937 alleging rampant homosexuality in the priesthood, attempted to undercut the power of the Roman Catholic Church in Germany, an institution which many Nazi officials considered their most powerful potential enemy.
ality. Lesbianism was @DÀ
Ä
È
Ð7Ò7Ô7Ö7øôôôôôôÌÌ(2‚"'(Š Û) @·S < :"0œ¶˜¦|'–'°/Ê/Ð7Ö7Î h h h h h h ^" 8
"PS" $Š 08."ÿ.
"PS" $Š 082
"PS" $Š 08T
¬�å88>b†�š¤®¸ÂÖð
4ÿÿÿÿDefinition TermDefinition ListH1H2H3H4H5H6Address
Blockquote
Preformattedz-Bottom of Form
z-Top of FormŽ¬¹p~†”œª¸ÎØèò
0:JTdlzŽ¾DP‚
"ð
"
"ð
"
"ð
"ø|
" ¦"ø|
"
"ø|"
"
"ˆ¶"
"
"
"
"ð"
"
"àŒ"
"
"ð"
"ð
"ø|
"ø|,
"ð$Š 08)P2‚J'
(Š@ ÅJ Š• Oà +%( Ùu.0 žÀ78 c
A@ (VJH í SP ²ë\.
"àŒ$Š 08Ùu.
"àŒ$Š 08Ùu
ttÖ78Ö7:\´�š8
0LTimes New Roman
Courier NewArial
ÿÿ�‘N L
¾Øé"@"
"þÿÿÿ"
"
"
"
"
"
"
"
"
"
Ûal¾f¼)http://www.holocaust-trc.org/parag175.htm(http://www.holocaust-trc.org/himmler.htm*http://www.holocaust-trc.org/parag175a.htm(http://www.holocaust-trc.org/recalls.htm*http://www.holocaust-trc.org/parag175b.htm*http://www.holocaust-trc.org/parag175c.htmÿé
"
"
"¤øÃ
qhh****¸CEPSON Stylus S20 Seriesœ›€ š
4dhh EPSON Stylus S20 Seriesÿÿ´€@Open cfg file 4š
hhL
hh
q****
q****dÿ2+winspoolEPSON Stylus S20 SeriesUSB001Fÿÿ"-
"€Æš"p_"$c"ð` "ð`""A."@ÿÿ"-
"ðù"p_"$c"ð` "ð`"."Untitled."0Ms" %£"ë
"ð^
(" )" priesthood, attempted to undercut the power of the Roman Catholic Church in Germany, an institution which many Nazi officials considered their most powerful potentþÿ
ÿÿÿÿ²Z¤
žÑ¤ÀO¹2ºQuill96 Story Group Classÿÿÿÿô9²qy°y°/y°°y°°¶y°Ã°\y°e°¦y°ª°/ y°8 °¾
y°Ç
°
y°
°
y°(
°)
y°1
°Å
y°Ë
…°à
y°ä
°å
y°ë
°y° °xy°€° y°¥°¦y°¯°Ûy°â°ky°v°¼y°Ä°òy°ø°ðy°ù‘°ÿy°‘°&y°,
