When the Nazi concentration camps were liberated by the Allies, it was a time of great jubilation for the tens of thousands of people incarcerated in them. But an often forgotten fact of this time is that prisoners who happened to be wearing the pink triangle (the Nazis’ way of marking and identifying homosexuals) were forced to serve out the rest of their sentence. This was due to a part of German law simply known as “Paragraph 175” which criminalized homosexuality. The law wasn’t repealed until 1969.
This should be required learning, internationally.
You need to know this. You need to remember this. This is not something to swept under the carpet nor be forgotten.
Never. Too many have died for the way they have loved. That needs stop now.
Make it stop?
I did a report on this in my World History class my sophomore year of high school. It was incredibly unsettling.
My teacher shown the class this. Mostly everyone in the class felt uncomfortable.
I have reblogged this in the past, but it is so ironic that it comes across my dash right now. I a currently working as a docent at my city’s Holocaust Education Center (( I say currently because I’ve also done research and translation for them )) and out current exhibit is one on loan from the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum ((USHMM)). This is a little known historical fact that Paragraph 175 was not repealed after the war and those convicted under Nazi laws as a danger to society because they were gay were not released because they had be convicted in a court of law. There was no liberation or justice for them as they weren’t considered criminals, or even victims for that matter. They were criminals who remained persecuted and ostracized and kept on the fringes of society for decades after the war had been won. Paragraph175 wasn’t actually repealed until 1994. And it was only in May 2002, that the German parliament completed legislation to pardon all homosexuals convicted under Paragraph175 during the Nazi era. History has forgotten about these men and women — please educate yourselves so this does not happen again. Remember this history. Remember them.
@mindlesshumor ok how the fuck did I miss this when I’ve studied The Holocaust like nobody’s business??? wtf
Because the history we have left regarding it is literally the contents of this first hand account.
It is a thin little book.
When I first opened it, I wondered why it was so thin.
Why there wasn’t other books like it.
Other first hand accounts.
By the time I finished it, I didn’t wonder anymore.
Further reading:
I, Pierre Seel, Deported Homosexual: A Memoir of Nazi Terror by Pierre Seel
An Underground Life: Memoirs of a Gay Jew in Nazi Berlin by Gad Beck
The Pink Triangle: The Nazi War Against Homosexuals by Richard Plant
Branded By The Pink Triangle by Ken Setterington
Bent by Martin Sherman (fiction; however, it’s often credited with bringing attention to gay Holocaust victims for the first time since the war ended)
This is one of the memorial sculptures in Dachau. It was erected in the early 60s and is missing the pink triangles. Because in the early 60s, homosexuality was still a crime in most of the world. Our tour guide explained why the pink triangles have not been added later - if they were, then folks would assume that they had always been there. This way people ask “why aren’t there pink triangles?” and somebody can explain why - because in some ways, the rest of the world was as bass-ackwards as Nazi Germany.
