Gays In Nazi Germany

Upon the rise of Adolf Hitler and the Nazi Party in Germany, gay men and, to a lesser extent, lesbians, were two of the numerous groups targeted by the Nazis, and ultimately became some of the millions victimized by the Holocaust. Since the development of the Gestapo in 1933, gay organizations were banned, any books about homosexuality (or sexuality in general) were burned, and homosexuals within the Nazi Party itself were murdered. In late February 1933, the Nazi Party launched its purge through bans of homosexual clubs in Berlin, sex publications, and organized gay groups. Consequentially, many fled from Germany.
Later that same year, after the March camp sentence of Kurt Hiller, the main organizer of Magnus Hirschfeld's Institute of Sex
Gay men who would not change or feign a change in their sexual orientation would be sent to concentration camps under the “Extermination Through Work” campaign.
More than one million gay Germans were targeted, of whom at least 100,000 were arrested and 50,000 were serving prison terms as “convicted homosexuals”. Hundreds of European gay men living under Nazi occupation were castrated under court order. Some persecuted under these laws would not have identified themselves as gay. Such "anti-homosexual" laws were widespread throughout the western world until the 1960s and 1970s, so many gay men did not feel safe to come forward with their stories until the 1970s when many so-called “sodomy laws” were repealed.
Between 1933 and 1945, an estimated 100,000 men were arrested for homosexuality, with 50,000 of them officially sentenced. Most of these men served time in regular prisons, with an estimated 5,000 to 15,000 of them doing so in Nazi concentration camps. It is unclear how many of those in the camps eventually ceased to live, but it is estimated to have been as high as 60%. Not unlike most victims of the camps, homosexuals were treated in an unusually cruel manner by their
Paragraph 175 was not repealed until 1994, although both East and West Germany liberalized their criminal laws against adult homosexuality in the late 1960s.
The Nazis' anti-gay policies and their destruction of the early gay rights movement were generally not considered suitable subject matter for Holocaust historians and educators. It was not until the 1970s and 1980s that there was some mainstream exploration of the theme, with Holocaust survivors writing memoirs, plays, and more historical research and documentaries being published about the Nazis' homophobia and their destruction of the German gay-rights movement.
Since the 1980s, some European and international cities have erected memorials to remember the thousands of homosexuals who were murdered and persecuted during the Holocaust, which can be found all over the world. In 2002, the German government issued an official apology to the gay