So it began, February 23, 1933.

“We must exterminate these people root and branch…the homosexual must be eliminated.”

…..Heinrich Himmler, Chief of the SS

The Eldorado one of the many gay bars closed by the Nazis.

Hitler’s rise to power was immediately followed by an anti-homosexual repression campaign. Goering in speaking about the bars and baths said this, “Such establishments can not be tolerated anymore. The revival of Germany depends, in the final analysis, on the moral revival of the German people.” (1) On February 23, 1933 Hitler banned pornography, homosexual bars and bath houses and all groups that promoted homosexual rights. Brown shirted storm troopers raided the institutions, gathering places, pubs and cafes. Not all the bars were closed at once. The police and the Nazis used these bars and baths to continue their surveillance of homosexuals. This was to gather names for what was called “The Pink List.” The Hamburg City Administration asked the Head of the Police to “pay special attention to transvestites and deliver them to the camps.” Homophobia in its many un-manners and forms is a very strange thing. Even everyone’s darling pastor, Martin Niemoller whose quote is recited over and over concerning how he didn’t speak up when they came for the communists, Jews, trade unionists and Catholics presents a falsehood,with his very selective memory. Niemoller leaves out any mention of homosexuals, those who took a very early hit from the Nazis. No wonder with people like the “good” reverend, running part of the show that this part of our history remained in the closet hidden away for many years until people such as Richard Plant began their research. (Niemoller began speaking his quote shortly after the war when he was asked “how could this happen?”.) Niemoller knew, I’ll bet you a buck but didn’t give a damn when it was homosexuals being oppressed. A strange man indeed who politically supported Hitler and the Nazis but spoke out when the Nazis began to terrorize the churches. He was arrested by the Nazis in 1937. Not only were our people brutalized and persecuted before and during the war by the Nazis but the victims were ignored after the war and forced by the Allies, after being liberated from the camps to remain in prison because of “their crime of homosexuality.” Reparations were never made to the persecuted homosexuals of Germany and Austria. In 1957, on the 34th anniversary of the ransacking and the burning of the library at the Institute for Sexual Science the post-Hitler government upheld the Nazi laws used to oppress the homosexuals and the Transgender communities stating that “homosexual acts unquestionably offend the moral feelings of the German people.” Very strange don’t you think? Apparently we offended more than gassing, burning, and slaughtering over 6 million people. I would gather to say that the German people really had no morals. The anti-homosexual law Paragraph 175 stayed on the books until 1968 in East Germany and 1969 in West Germany.

A first person account so stated in the book “The Radical State: Germany 1933-1945 talks about this period. “Then came the thunderbolt of the 30 January 1933 (Hitler assumed power on that day) and we knew that a change of political climate had taken place. What we had tried to prevent had taken place. Over the years, more and more of my political friends disappeared, of my Jewish and my homosexual friends. Fear came over us with the increasingly coordinated pressure of the Nazis. For heaven’s sake we had to, not to attract attention, we had to exercise restraint. The year 1933 was the starting point for the persecution of homosexuals. Already this year we heard of raids on homosexual pubs and meeting places. Maybe individual, politically uneducated homosexuals who were only interested immediate gratification did not recognize the significance of the year 1933 but for us homosexuals who were also politically active, who had defended the Wiemar Republic, and who had tried to forestall the Nazi threat, 1933 initially signified a reinforcing of our resistance. For a politicized homosexual visiting places which were part of the homosexual subculture was too dangerous. Friends told me that raids on the bars were becoming more frequent.”(4) The above photograph was taken on March 5, 1933 and is in the Landes archive Berlin.

From this day, February 23 forward homosexuals were persecuted as “state enemies” and labelled as a “infection risk.” (3)

On February 27, 1933 the Reichstag caught fire and the Communists were blamed. On March 17 of the same year The German Morality League began its Campaign against Homosexuals, Jews, Blacks and Mongols. In March the first male homosexuals were sent to the camps. On April 1 a boycott of Jewish stores, doctors, lawyers and other business began by the Nazis. Six days later the “Law for the Restoration of the Professional Civil Service” was passed, banning Jews from being employed in the government. All positions were reserved for only “Aryan” Germans. May 2 brought about the abolishing of all trade unions and the arrests and deportation to the camps of the union leaders. On May 6 students lead by Storm Troopers looted Magnus Hirschfeld’s, “Institute for Sexual Sciences.” They ransacked the building and carted away the library. On the 10th of May these books and other books declared to be “un-German” were burned in Berlin’s Opera Square. Mobs carried a bust of Hirschfeld in an anti-homosexual anti-Semite demonstration. Homosexuals, Jews, and Marxists were portrayed as collaborators in the corruption of the German nation.

The Nazi’s established concentration camps in the early 1930’s and the number of inmates ranged in the thousands. It wasn’t until the 1940’s that the death camps and gas chambers would be implemented. (3)

The above is submitted as a small piece of our stories. We can take from it , each one as they may, and be on watch, read the signs of the times we live in and act with all our forces against those who would persecute us in any manner or form.

Reference:

1. A History of Homosexuality in Europe: Berlin, London, Paris 1919-1939, Vol.2. (The End of a Dream: The German Model Blows Up. Florence Tanague, Algora Publishing 2002.

2. Out of the Past, The Nazi Persecution of Homosexuals, Neil Miller, Vintage Books, 1995.

3. The Pink Triangle: The Nazi War Against Homosexuals. Richard Plant, New republic Books, 1986.

4. Translated in the Radical State: Germany 1933-1945, Michael Burleigh and Wolfgang Wipperman. NY 1991

5. In memoriam: Houston Transgender Day of Remembrance: Transgenders and Nazi Germany.

In July 1933 homosexual rights activist Kurt Hiller was arrested and sent to Orienburg concentration camp, where for nine months he was on the verge of death due to brutal mistreatment, until he was released and escaped, fleeing to Prague and then before the Nazi take over of Czechoslovakia in 1938 he fled to London. Hiller was a socialist, a pacifist, a Jew and a homosexual which placed him high on the Nazi’s list of degenerates. In 1921 Hiller gave a speech in which he stated, “In the final analysis, justice for homosexuals will only be the fruit of your own efforts. The liberation of homosexuals can only be the work of homosexuals themselves.” As a writer he coined the term “literary activism” to mean “literature in the service of political intervention. In 1922 he published, “Paragraph 175: The disgrace of the century.” This piece was used by the Scientific Humanitarian Committee as a major written work, widely distributed by committee in hopes to abolish the German Penal Code which criminalized homosexual conduct. These efforts failed as the Nazis came to power and all deliberations in favor of abolishing the code came to a halt.

The Eldorado was one of the most famous bars for homosexuals, lesbians, transvestites in the city of Berlin. This was one of the first establishments that was closed down by the Nazis. The banners say, “Vote for the Hitler Ticket.” The Eldorado today is once again a gay bar in a flourishing gay neighborhood.

In 1910 Dr. Magnus Hirschfeld published a work called Die Transvestiten (Transvestites)which was based on scientific method and featured case studies and analyses of these studies. At this time he coined the term transvestites. Dr. Hirschfeld had this to say in a chapter called, “Transvestism and the Law.” “Crossing-dressing in “free” England and America too, even if it does not disturb the peace, it is considered disturbing the peace. There, in general, of course, only men who are found out are punished, while women appearing as men come away with a reprimand or a warning.” Dr. Hirschfeld presided over the first male to female sex reassignment surgery in modern history in the year 1920. The Nazi’s generally lumped transsexuals and transvestites in with homosexuals. In 1938 the Institute of Forensic Medicine recommended that the “phenomena of transvestism” be “exterminated from public life.” (5)