LGBT life in Germany began to thrive in the early 20th century. Berlin was a liberal European city with a number of Queer spaces.
By the 1920s, Paragraph 175 of the German Penal Code, which criminalized homosexual acts, was being applied less and less. Magnus Hirschfeld’s Institute for Sexual Science led the world in its scientific approach to sexual diversity and was a sort of public center for Berlin lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender life. In 1929, the process towards complete decriminalization was being discussed in the German legislature.
Nazi ideas of race and gender influenced the fascist regime’s anti-homosexuality agenda. Repression against gay men, lesbians, and trans people began within days of Hitler becoming Chancellor. In May of 1933, the Nazis looted, vandalized, and shut down The Institute for Sexual Science, burning its extensive collection in the street.
Unknown numbers of Queer Germans fled abroad, and others entered into marriages to fool the authorities. The thriving gay culture in Berlin was in ruins.
The police established lists of homosexuals. Significant numbers of gay men were arrested. 50 thousand of them were incarcerated.
In addition to the 50 thousand who were jailed, as many as 15,000 other men who were accused of homosexuality were deported to concentration camps, where most of them died from starvation or exhaustion or cruel medical experiments. Sometimes hundreds of gay men were exterminated at once.
When Donald Trump mendaciously makes discredited claims about white genocide in South Africa, the Queer God Squad wants you to remember what genocide actually looks like.
