Who was gay in the nazi party

In Poland, no one writes about the tragic fate of homosexuals during the Nazi era. Nothing has been published about the thousands of Polish homosexuals who became death camp victims. The Napoleonic Code of served as the model for this kind of progress. Under the influence of the French Revolution, Bavaria repealed in the law that imposed penalties on homosexual unions.

The government of Hannover soon followed suit. The Berlin physician Magnus Hirschfeld zealously opposed Article Inhe founded the Scientific-Humanitarian Committee, which campaigned for the repeal of Article and for education on homosexuality. Despite many legal barriers, the Committee helped create a place where gays and lesbians could meet.

The topic of homosexuality appeared frequently in the German press, literature, and film of the day. Everyone was discussing it. New clubs, bars, and other meeting places for gays and lesbians were opening all the time.

Oppression

There were around bars of this type in Berlin alone. In the mid s, rising inflation and the economic recession strengthened Nazism. The nationalist right emphasized das Volk, the purity of race and blood, and the role and sanctity of family life. The Weimar Republic came under increasingly frequent attack for condoning too great a degree of sexual laxity.

The Jews were accused of lowering the moral standards of the Germans, and above all of directing efforts aimed at destroying the Aryan race and reducing the population. For a time, Hirschfeld and his allies sought support for their efforts from the Soviet Union, but their sympathy for that country declined when increasing numbers of Soviet homosexuals began to be committed, as a result of a decree by Stalin, to mental hospitals.

Jews always attempt to support sexual relations among siblings, between people and animals, or between men. We National Socialists will soon bring them before the law and condemn them. These deeds are nothing but vulgar, depraved crimes, and we will punish them by banishing or hanging the guilty.

Around a hundred students forced their way into the building and began demolishing the Institute. They scattered documents around, destroyed research equipment and material, and carried the books out of the library. That afternoon, other trucks arrived full of Nazi storm troopers who finished the job.

Several days later, the Nazis assembled a large crowd to watch the burning of an impressive number of books and documents, and a bust of Hirschfeld, in front of the Berlin Opera. Hirschfeld was abroad at the time he would never return to Germany and witnessed the destruction of his institute in a newsreel in a Paris cinema.

Soon afterwards, the German government stripped him of his citizenship. On May 15,he died at the age of 67 in Nice, where he worked to his last days trying to set up an institute similar to the one in Berlin. Many German gays, like Jews, nevertheless assumed that the Nazis would change their policies once they were in power.