Sexual minorities were oppressed, imprisoned and murdered under Hitler’s rule. Paragraph 175 of the German Criminal Code criminalized homosexual men during the Nazi era – but the Nazis also discriminated against lesbians and trans people. They were to be excluded from the “national community”. More than 50,000 queer people were demonstrably persecuted.
Opression during the Nazi era
Quelle: ZDF/Gwen Böttger
The documentary sheds light on three poignant fates in the context of Nazi terror: Elli Smula was persecuted as a lesbian woman, Liddy Bacroff was harassed by the authorities as a “transvestite” and Rudolf Brazda was imprisoned in Buchenwald concentration camp because of his homosexuality.
To tell their stories, actor Jannik Schümann and activists Julia Monro and Kerstin Thost go in search of traces in archives and talk to historians. They learn how some people managed to live out their identity and assert themselves as queer people during the Nazi era despite the most adverse circumstances.
Homosexuals - the new enemies of the state
Quelle: ZDF/Gwen Böttger
When the National Socialists seized power, the liberal era of the 1920s came to an abrupt end. According to Nazi ideology, the “epidemic of homosexual love” was to be eradicated.
SS chief Heinrich Himmler founded the “Reich Central Office for the Combating of Homosexuality and Abortion” and declared homosexuals to be enemies of the state.
As early as 1934, almost all meeting places for queer people were destroyed by the Nazis. Raids and interrogations, as well as torture were part of the persecutors' repertoire. In addition to the police and Gestapo, lawyers and doctors also took part in the persecution of sexual minorities. The files show: Around 50,000 homosexual men were convicted of violating Paragraph 175 between 1933 and 1945. Their path led not only to the penitentiaries, but often to concentration camps.
Current Failures
Quelle: ZDF/Gwen Böttger
The persecution of lesbians and trans people is more difficult to trace, as the Nazi justice system did not have a separate category for them. However, the regime also found its own methods of persecution for them.
With the end of the Third Reich, the injustice done to homosexual and trans people remained unpunished for a long time. Queer people remained socially undesirable even after 1945. They were only officially commemorated in the German Parliament on January 27, 2023. Most of them never received compensation, or even an apology, for the injustice they suffered.
