The Persecution of Gay Men and Lesbians under the Third Reich

This lecture provides an overview of the experiences of gay men and lesbians under National Socialism, especially the ways in which the Nazi regime targeted homosexual men, and the varying degrees of tolerance and actual persecution directed by the regime toward lesbians.

At the same time, however, the historical record alone is not sufficient; feminist scholarship has already indicated that Holocaust research in general has not paid sufficient attention to the unique experiences of women under Nazism. Asking new questions about sexuality, for example, helps contest the prevailing notion that lesbians were not as systematically persecuted as gay men because lesbian sex was not specifically criminalised in the Reich Penal Code. This denies the historical fact of lesbian existence under National Socialism and lesbians’ lived experiences of displacement, forced migration, separation from lovers, and actual persecution and deportation.

Given that Nazi homophobia must not be reduced to a momentary aberration in history, the lecture will conclude by addressing the ways in which homophobia continued to find expression in the post-war criminalisation of homosexuality in both the former West and East Germany, as well as the failure to recognise more broadly across Europe the crimes perpetrated against gay and lesbian victims of Nazi atrocities.