Nazis' heinous crimes against thousands of queer people must never, ever be forgotten

[left-of-center2012]

Each year on 27 January, the day that the surviving prisoners in Auschwitz were freed, the world comes together to mark Holocaust Memorial Day. Each year, we remember the victims who tragically lost their lives, but we also remember the survivors whose lives were permanently scarred by the horrors they faced.

Between 1933 and 1945, an estimated 100,000 men were arrested for homosexuality in Nazi Germany. Some 50,000 were sentenced for their “crimes” and ... sent to concentration camps. Sociologist Rüdiger Lautmann has estimated that up to 60 per cent of gay men incarcerated in concentration camps died during their imprisonment.

Unfortunately, when the allies liberated the concentration camps, many of the gay people who were imprisoned were not set free. Instead they were transferred to prisons, then under the control of the Allied forces. Same-sex sexual activity between men remained illegal in East and West Germany until 1968 and 1969 respectively.

In 1972, the first autobiography of a gay concentration camp survivor was published. The Men with the Pink Triangle told the story of Josef Kohout and shone a light on the largely untold treatment of queer people in the Holocaust.

https://www.pinknews.co.uk/2022/01/27/holocaust-memorial-day-lgbt-nazi-concentration-camps/

The Men with the Pink Triangle: The True Life-and- Death Story of Homosexuals in the Nazi Death Camps
https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/391661.The_Men_with_the_Pink_Triangle

[Passenger]

1. Very good, but please *also* remember ...

1) We were illegal in all the "good guy" countries, too, with real prison sentences for it. In the USSR it meant a trip to the Gulag.

2) The Nazi era German law was from before the Nazis took over, though of course Nazi concentration camps were worse than pre-war prisons. Weimar "decadence" in Berlin was an anomaly in its own time. In most German venues the law was still enforced and people went to prison for it.