Posted on 06/13/2004 4:57:32 AM PDT by schaketo
As Houstonians celebrate Pride 2004, museum unveils exhibit about homosexuals living under Hitler’s Third Reich
They were only numerals, three of them, but the very mention of 175 could instill fear in the hearts of gays living in Nazi Germany.
Paragraph 175 of the German Criminal Code was all the authorities needed to detain homosexuals, throw them in prison, send them to concentration camps, conduct medical experiments on them and even kill them.
A new exhibit that opens today at the Holocaust Museum Houston offers a glimpse into what life was like for gay men in Adolf Hitler’s Third Reich.
The story of homosexuals in Nazi Germany is told through photos and through the words of survivors like Harry Pauly:
“When the Nazis came to power, they closed the gay bars,” he recalled. “Some homosexuals, especially those who were Jewish, were killed by Nazi hooligans; my friend ‘Susi,’ a drag queen, was stabbed to death.”
Collin Keel, director of changing exhibits at the museum, said Paragraph 175 was already in force when the Nazis, under Adolf Hitler, strengthened it in an effort to eradicate gays along with others considered to be counter to the goal of creating a master Aryan race.
The Nazis considered homosexuals to carry a “contagious degeneracy” that threatened the New World Order they were building.
“The Nazis rewrote 175 in 1935 when the persecution began,” he said.
Prior to that time, Keel said, homosexuals thrived in Germany’s larger cities, frequenting gay nightclubs and living more openly than they dared after the code’s revision.
The story of Richard Grune, whose artwork is a visual representation of the persecution of homosexuals, is also recounted in the exhibit. He was arrested in 1934 and imprisoned for being a homosexual.
After his release, he was arrested again and sent to Sachsenhausen concentration camp. Transferred to another camp in 1940, he managed to escape shortly before liberation.
One-third of gays arrested Of the estimated 350,000 gay men and lesbians living in Germany during World War II, Keel said, about 100,000 were arrested for being homosexual.
Thousands died in captivity either through forced labor programs that were so intense and debilitating they led to death or though the Nazi’s systemic campaign to eliminate those considered undesirable.
Though most who died were gay men, Keel said, five women were known to have died in captivity because they were identified as lesbians. One of them was Henny Schermann.
Schermann, a 24-year-old Jewish shop girl living in Frankfurt, was arrested in 1940 and deported to the Ravensbrueck concentration camp for women.
Written on the back of her prisoner identification are these words: “Jenny (sic) Sara Schermann, born February 19, 1912, Frankfurt am Main. Unmarried shopgirl in Frankfurt am Main. Licentious lesbian, only visited such [lesbian] bars. Avoided the name ‘Sara.’ Stateless Jew.”
She was gassed at Bernberg in 1942.
For the most part, Keel said, the Nazis didn’t pay much attention to lesbians. In a state that glorified blue-eyed, blond-haired, muscled men, women didn’t matter.
When the concentration camps were liberated at the end of World War II, Keel said, there was no liberation for homosexuals. Paragraph 175 remained in force.
No liberation for homosexuals
“At the liberation in 1945, the homosexuals remained in prison to serve out their terms,” Keel said. “They weren’t given any reparations for what they had been through.”
It wasn’t until 1995, 40 years after the war’s end, that homosexuals murdered by the Nazis were recognized.
“On the 40th anniversary, a monument was set up in Germany for homosexual victims of the Holocaust,” Keel said. “In 2002, the German parliament pardoned all homosexuals.”
With a hint of sarcasm in his voice, Keel added, “It only took 60 years.”
The exhibit in Houston is on loan from the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum in Washington, D.C. “We’ve never done an exhibit about this topic,” Keel said.
Musuem organizers are encouraging Houston gays to see the exhibit for an alarming look at the terror homosexuals in Germany experienced at the hands of right-wing fanatics.
“Homosexuals have long been targets of systematic hatred and discrimination. These images and the stories they tell document a horrible time in the history of mankind and remind us that prejudice still exists in both subtle and overt ways even today,” said Coy Tow, executive director of the Greater Houston GLBT Chamber of Commerce.
Odd... no mention of the homosexual role in bringing the Nazis to power. Guess that's un-PC.
Talk about life-threatening behavior and failure to give it up even in the face of death. Something like today's AIDS epidemic, huh?
Will they note Ernst Rohm as one of the victims?
That's a friggin' dead give-a-way!!
Just as with adultry or any deviant act, especially ones that seem to be filled with emotion or stark feelings need to be dealt with as a sickness.
It's not that the person should be hated or destroyed, but the idea.
Hitler had to eliminate the SA because he had cut a deal the the military. So during the "Night of the Long Knives", Hitler had Roehm and the other leadership of the SA liquidated. Accusations of homosexuality were part of the justification for this. I'm not sure just how homosexual the victims of this purge, or the early Nazi leadership, really were.
About 6,000 homosexuals died in the Nazi work camps during the period as contrasted with about six million Jews.
Thanks for posting the link to that article; it makes it clear that Roehm and his fellow Brownshirts were homosexual.
Yeah... the part about homosexual Nazis trading Jewish children as sex slaves, juxtaposed against the attempt to equate homosexuals and Jews, really makes my blood boil. I am so sick of homosexuals shoving their habits and their revisionism down our throats, I will no longer allow their propoganda to go unchallenged.
(No Gays = No AIDS; No Arabs = No Terror; No French = No Appeasement)
= ('No Jews = No "Jewish Problem"')
Extermination is the last resort of the evil and stupid.
Literalism is the only resort of the unimaginative.
By the way, nice resort to outright anti-semitism there. There is no "Jewish Problem" for anyone who doesn't already desire to kill off the Jews. However, AIDS is a problem regardless of whether one wishes to eliminate gays, terror is a problem regardless of whether one wishes to eliminate Arabs, and appeasement of totalitarians is a problem regardless of how one feels about the French.
The point of my tag, of course, is to challenge people to think about these generalizations and how few and far between the exceptions actually are. Let me know if you find someone with the mental capacity to have such a discussion.
One should not dismiss the fact that the Nazis murdered thousands of homosexuals, however I smell a political agenda. The left loves to jump from one topic to another -- Are you against "gay" marriage? Hitler was against gays, therefore you must be a Nazi... Suddenly, being against the attempt to "redefine" (weaken, destroy) marriage is the same thing as wanting a "Holocaust" against homosexuals. Soon the hedonists will "redefine" child abuse as a form of "love" and anyone who is horrified that anyone would molest children and who wants to protect children from such abuse will be accused of "hating" children.
Look closely, those little tics in my quote above are called 'apostrophes.' Like the ones on either side of the word apostrophe above. They indicate a semi quote and indicate that I think your statements are the EQUIVALENT of saying that they are moral equivalent to anti-semitism without adopting such a belief myself.
I am semetophilic. I simply despise individuals who advocating 'wiping out' fellow human beings as a solution to any problem. ("No x = No y problem" is pure Nazithink.)
Your last paragraph is strictly disingenuous. I don't think that is what you are saying in the least.
Well.... then it's apparent they're not talking about the NAZI's, because they were left wing SOCIALISTS. Who btw just happened to HATE the 'further left', Communists!
(The left NEVER lets little things like FACTS get in the way of a good rant).
" ... look at the terror homosexuals in Germany experienced at the hands of right-wing left wing socialist fanatics."
There that's better. The truth is what the truth is.
"tagged as homosexuals and punished because of it"
Yes, it was a way to accuse and humiliate a political adversary, because it was easy to accuse and difficult for the accused to defend himself from. (After all, you can't prove a negative . . . )
***I.E. MANY of those accused were NOT homosexual; it was a convenient way to get rid of people. And the homosexuals who were charged with it, were somehow "enemies of the state" or they would have been left alone, as were so many homosexuals in the Nazi structures of power - even AFTER the Brownshirts were purged.
Can't recall the name of the General whom Hitler hounded out with this accusation; even though he was well respected, and that treatment almost caused a revolt of the officers. The accused, though, was too humiliated to make a public issue of it. It was a Gestapo file based upon another guy with the same last name, but they intended all the while to use it against the good General, even though they knew it wasn't him . . .
Another good source detailing the homosexual sexual depravity of the Nazi leaders is a new book: Salvation is From the Jews.
The record shows that charges of homosexuality were largely a pretext for the Nazis to eliminate political opposition, and that they really didn't have much of a problem with it - on the contrary, the Nazis were infested with it, up to the highest ranks (Hitler himself is alleged to have been a homosexual prostitute in Vienna).
1% of the "homosexual" population - who were basically political prisoners - died at the hands of the Nazis, vs. 85% of Jews.
This is why these comparisons are so offensive. The homosexuals are at the forefront of the modern Nazi movement (also known as transnational socialist, or "progressive"), just as they were at the forefront of the original Nazi movement.
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