PARAGRAPH 175 PRISONERS IN AUSCHWITZ

Drastic deterioration of the situation for homosexuals occurred when the Nazis came to power and the Third Reich was proclaimed on 30th January 1933. Shortly afterwards, the WhK was delegalized, and its chairman, Kurt Hiller was imprisoned in Oranienburg concentration camp. From April 1933, the Nazified German Student’s Union, supported by the SA militia, carried out a campaign to ‘cleanse’ libraries and academic institutions of publications the Nazis considered to be Bolshevik, Jewish and anti-national. The campaign also affected the WhK. Its Berlin headquarters in the House of Hatzfeld were devasted by a Nazi militia on 6th May 1933. The documentation and scientific collections of the Hirschfeld Institute, together with some 20,000 other books and publications plundered by Nazi militias from Berlin libraries and academic institutions, were burned in front of the State Opera, in Emperor Franz Joseph Square (now Bebelplatz) on 10th May 1933. Magnus Hirschfeld, who since 1932 had been abroad conducting a series of lectures, never returned to what was now Nazi Germany. In 1934, the Third Reich authorities stripped him of his German citizenship, and all his publications were removed from German libraries and destroyed. After the banning and destruction of the WhK, the were no institutions in Germany to defend homosexuals.

The attitude of the Nazi Party and its leaders towards homosexuality was extremely negative for three reasons: (1) personal worldview and cultural prejudices, (2) totalitarian Nazi ideology, which rejected any diversity not complying with the model of the morally and politically unified nation, and (3) the typically Nazi ideological fanaticism. For Hitler, Himmler, Rosenberg and other NSDAP leaders, homosexuality was a manifestation of degeneration. Hitler himself brutally attacked Hirschfeld in his speeches many times, accusing him of degeneration and striving to disintegrate and destroy the German nation. The Nazi ideological propaganda narrative presented homosexuals as a demoralised, egoistic and useless ‘social burden’, which placed them in the social hierarchy on a level almost as low as that of the Jews and mentally disabled people.

Nazi propaganda described homosexuality as: ‘abnormal behaviour’, ‘an anomaly’, ‘disgusting debauchery’, ‘wickedness’, ‘perversion’, ‘turpitude’, ‘hideous depravity’, ‘mental aberration’, ‘amoral insanity’, ‘a plague’, ‘mental disease’, ‘a degenerated animalistic urge’, ‘erotic degradation’, ‘sexual abnormality’ or simply ‘an abomination’. Not only in language but also in practice the Nazis took the matter beyond paragraph 175 of the German Penal Code, which defined homosexuality as merely ‘unnatural fornication’. An example of the new approach is a directive of the Kassel Criminal Police Office, 11th May 1937, which bluntly stated: ‘Homosexual men are enemies of the state [underlined by BP] and should be treated as such.’ [Op. cit. Günter Grau (Hrsg.), Homosexualität in der NS-Zeit, Dokumente einer Diskriminierung und Verfolgung, Frankfurt am Main 1993, p. 130]. However, already in August 1930, the leading Nazi newspaper, the Völkischer Beobachter, stated that homosexuality encompassed ‘all the evil impulses of the Jewish soul’ (‘alle boshaften Triebe der Judenseele’) and therefore ‘what it is should be legally defined, i.e. a vile perversion and grievous crime deserving to be punished forcefully by hanging or expulsion.’ [Hans-Georg Stümke, Rudi Finkler, Rosa Winkel, Rosa Listen…, p. 96].

Third Reich anti-homosexual propaganda shows clear analogies to its anti-Jewish propaganda. An example of this is a speech by Heinrich Himmler in which he presented the alleged danger of homosexuals forming a conspiracy based on their internal solidarity:

Nazi propaganda often used primitive cliches to arouse strong emotions. A key element in the narrative was to stress the ‘threat’ posed by Jews, communists and homosexuals, which was combined with the idea that the Jews were deliberately spreading Bolshevism and homosexuality to weaken and destroy the German nation. In this context, Magnus Hirschfeld, being at the same time a Jew, a homosexual and someone with leftwing sympathies, became a convenient target for Nazi propaganda.

An event that significantly hardened Nazi policy towards homosexuals was the so-called Night of the Long Knives (Nacht der langen Messer) on 30th June – 2nd July 1934. During this operation, at least 85 opponents of Hitler within the Nazi movement and mainly from the SA leadership, were captured and murdered. The real reason for the bloody purge, including the murder of the SA leader Ernst Röhm, was concealed by Nazi propaganda with a narrative of alleged drunkenness, embezzlement and homosexuality in the SA ranks, including Röhm’s closest circle.

From then on, homosexuality became a useful and willingly used excuse to destroy politically or even just socially inconvenient persons or groups of people in the Third Reich. This accusation was used both in personal struggles within the NSDAP and Wehrmacht, as well as to attack Roman Catholic clergy.

Almost simultaneously with the crackdown on Röhm’s opposition, that is on 3rd July 1934, the Bavarian Ministry of the Interior began preparations for a clampdown on homosexuals. It was carried out in Bavaria on the night of 20th and 21st October 1934. Some of the several hundred who were then arrested were imprisoned in Dachau concentration camp. [Albert Knoll, ‘Homosexuelle Häftlinge im KZ Dachau’, Olaf Mußmann (Hrsg.), Homosexuelle in Konzentrationslagern. Vorträge (Wissenschaftliche Tagung, 12/13 September 1997, KZ-Gedenkstätte Mittelbau-Dora Nordhausen), Berlin/Bonn, 2000, p. 61].

The first stage of the repression of homosexuals was their identification and elimination from the ranks of the NSDAP and SA immediately after the Night of the Long Knives. The task was entrusted to the Gestapo, i.e. the political police. This means that homosexuality within the Nazi movement was treated as a political crime. Within Gestapo Department II (Abteilung II), which dealt with combating political crimes, a special sub-department (Sonderdezernat II1So) was formed, commonly known as the department for investigating homosexual cases (Dezernat zur Bearbeitung von homosexuellen Fällen). On 22nd May 1935, this cell was detached from Department II and moved to the Gestapo Department II1H (Dienststelle II1H), which spied on the private lives of NSDAP members. The organiser and first head of this special department was SS-Obersturmführer Josef Albert Meisinger.

Himmler consistently linked the fight against homosexuality with the ability of the German nation to reproduce, as is evidenced by his secret order of 10th October 1936 for the creation of the Reich Central Office for Combating Homosexuality and Abortion (Reichszentrale zur Bekämpfung der Homosexualität und Abtreibung). The office was established as part of the Prussian National Criminal Office (Preußischer Landeskriminalpolizeiamt), and its first head was Meisinger. It played a major role in coordinating the repression of homosexuals. Thanks to the personal union with the aforementioned Gestapo special department, this office had at its disposal both the criminal police (Kripo) and the political police (Gestapo). Its competencies and tasks went far beyond that of the Gestapo special department in rooting out and repressing throughout Germany persons suspected of homosexuality or of carrying out abortions.

The repressive policy towards homosexuals was also expressed in the radicalisation of official legislation of the Third Reich. On 28th June 1935, paragraph 175 was expanded to include paragraphs 175a and 175b, which introduced punishments for any sexual contact between men. Paragraph 175a stipulated a penalty of 10 years of hard labour for grievous fornication (schwere Unzucht). It became the legal basis for the deportation of homosexuals to concentration camps. The new law came into force on 1st September 1939.

From then on, the number of persons convicted under paragraph 175 rose systematically. While 853 people were convicted in 1933 and 948 in 1934, the number rose to 2,106 in 1935, 5,320 in 1936, 8,271 in 1937 and 8,562 in 1938. The numbers dropped in subsequent years but were still very high: 7,614 persons convicted in 1939, 3,773 in 1940, 3,735 in 1941, 3,963 in 1942 and over 2,200 in 1943 and 1944. [Burkhard Jellonnek, Homosexuelle unter dem Hakenkreuz. Die Verfolgung von Homosexuellen im Dritten Reich, Paderborn, 1990, pp. 100-139; Hans-Georg Stümke, Rudi Finkler, Rosa Winkel…, pp. 212-217, 262-263, 505].

After the outbreak of the Second World War, the Nazi regime stepped up its fight against homosexuality in the ranks of the SS and police. On 15th November 1941, Hitler issued a decree on the Purity of the SS and Police (Erlass zur Reinhaltung von SS und Polizei). It introduced a penal provision, which in the case of SS and police functionaries replaced the penalties provided in articles 175 and 175a of the German Penal Code with the death penalty. The text of the decree reads as follows:

Translation: 

The decree for the Purity of the SS and Police was issued by Hitler at the inspiration of Himmler, who not only considered homosexuality a racially hostile ‘plague’, but he also considered the SS to be the biological and racial elite of the Germans. That is why he wanted to set higher ‘moral’ requirements for the SS than for ordinary Germans. Moreover, by being able to punish SS and Police personnel accused of homosexuality with death, Himmler had acquired a powerful tool for disciplining his forces to maintain obedience and absolute loyalty.

Hitler’s decree for maintaining the purity of the SS and Police came into force on 7th March 1942 on Himmler’s order. Every SS functionary was obliged to confirm in writing that he had received the text of the decree.

Paragraph 175 concerned German Reich citizens of German nationality. Nevertheless, this law was also sometimes applied to Jews living in prewar Germany, especially if their homosexual relationships were with Germans. From 13th March 1938, Austrians were also subject to this law as citizens of the Third Reich. On the other hand, paragraph 175 did not applied to Germans living in territories occupied by the Third Reich. According to Himmler, homosexuality destroyed the morale of a nation and thus also led to its biological degradation. This was probably why paragraph 175 was not extended to territories occupied by the Third Reich. It was especially the case for territories which according to the General Plan Ost were to be completely or partially depopulated and subsequently populated by Germans. However, there were exceptions to this rule. One of those exceptions was the occupied Netherlands, whose law was unified with that of the Third Reich and included the penalisation of homosexuality. This nevertheless did not result in wider repressions against local homosexuals, mainly due to the obstruction of some of the Dutch police. [Pieter Koenders, ‘Die Bekämpfung der Homosexualität in den besetzten Niederlanden‘, in Burkhard Jellonnek, Rüdiger Lautmann (Hrsg.), Nationalsozialistischer Terror gegen Homosexuelle, Verdrängt und ungesühnt, Paderborn, 2002, pp. 263-272].

Paragraph 175 also came into force in the Czech lands, not only in the territories incorporated into the Reich in 1938 but also in the territories occupied by Germany on 15th March 1939 (i.e. the Protectorate of Bohemia and Moravia, Protektorat Böhmen und Mähren). This probably resulted from the fact that both the Protectorate and the Sudetenland were part of the so-called Greater Germanic Reich (Großdeutsches Reich). Moreover, in accordance with the General Plan Ost, 50% of the Czechs and Moravians were to be Germanised.

Similarly, on 4th December 1941, a new penal code was introduced to Polish territories that had been incorporated into the German Reich, and therefore Poles and Jews were sporadically prosecuted under paragraph 175. The decree bringing the new law into effect read as follows:

Persons of other nationalities – within the prewar territories of the German Riech as well as territories that had subsequently been occupied or annexed – were liable to be punished for engaging in homosexual relationships with Germans. Both parties in such cases would then be punished (with at least imprisonment in a concentration camp) for violating paragraph 175 and the crime of race defilement (Rassenschande). All sexual relationships between Germans and Jews were banned according to the law for the protection of German blood and honour (Gesetz zum Schutze des deutschen Blutes und der deutschen Ehre), dated 15th September 1935. Later this law was extended to include persons of other nationalities considered by the Nazis to be ‘racially inferior’ (e.g. the Poles). The Nazi regime also considered penalising lesbianism. This idea, however, was never implemented beyond annexed Austria, where paragraph 129Ib (penalising female homosexuality) of the Austrian penal code remained in force.

The Third Reich authorities did not concern themselves with the existence of homosexuality in satellite states. Nevertheless, the case of France was specific. Homosexuality was not punishable in German-occupied France, though paragraph 175 did affect French citizens in Alsace Lorraine after German annexation. In the French State (L’État français), in turn, homosexuality was, on the one hand, tolerated with regard to the Minister of Education, the writer Abel Bonnard (1883-1968), and on the other hand, it was criminalized in the case of persons under the age of 21 according to a law dated 6th August 1942 (which remained in force until 4th August 1982). This was a consequence of the Vichy regime ideology and policy of ‘national revolution’ expressed in the slogan ‘work, family and fatherland’. In this spirit, the Vichy regime also limited the rights of women. [Mario Kramp, ‘Homosexuelle im besetzten Frankreich 1940-1944/45’, in Burkhard Jellonnek, Rüdiger Lautmann (Hrsg.), Nationalsozialistischer Terror gegen Homosexuelle…, pp. 273-298; George L. Mosse, ‘Die Politik gegen Lesben und Schwule im Kontext nationalsozialistischer Machtausübung’, Der homosexuellen NS-Opfer gedenken, Berlin, 1999, p. 26].