Upon the rise of Adolf Hitler and the National Socialist German Workers Party in Germany, gay men and, to a lesser extent, lesbians were two of the numerous groups targeted by the Nazis and were ultimately among Holocaust victims. Beginning in 1933, gay organizations were banned, scholarly books about homosexuality, and sexuality in general, were burned, and homosexuals within the Nazi Party itself were murdered. Germany's vibrant gay community at the time became heavily repressed as the Gestapo

The Gay Holocaust These resources cover several aspects of the Gay Holocaust: situation at the concentration camps, relations with other persecuted groups, the resistance, theoretical works about the Holocaust itself and the persecution of homosexuals.

Interviews with such survivors revealed that for many years they never told anyone they had been in a concentration camp. The extreme devaluation was accepted as a self-evaluation. Gay interest groups arose again only in the 1950s, and the movement as a whole took until the 1970s to return to the position it had held in 1932.

Between 1933 and 1945 when the Nazis came to power in Germany an estimated 100,000 homosexual men were arrested, of whom 50,000 were sentenced under criminal law Paragraph 175. Most served prison sentences. An estimated 5,000 to 15,000 were sent to concentration camps.

The Gay Holocaust - Concentration Camps 4.3 - Testimonies about life of prisonners in a Nazi Camp When prisoners arrived at a camp, they were forced to wait for up to 12 hours before they were processed, then over the next week, thy would be forced from their blocks for roll-call.

Best Gay Holocaust Survivor Books The best books (fiction and non-fiction)telling the often unknown stories of those who were persecuted during the Holocaust not for their religion or race but for their sexuality. All Votes Add ...

Roman Blank (1920-2017) was Holocaust survivor from Central Poland who came out as a gay man in his 90’s. He was aware of being gay since childhood, but had to hide his sexual orientation. He was aware of being gay since childhood, but had to hide his sexual orientation.

Soon after taking office on January 30, 1933, Hitler banned all gay and lesbian organizations. Brownshirted storm troopers raided the institutions and gathering places of homosexuals. While this subculture had flourished in the relative freedom of the 1920s, Nazi tactics greatly weakened it and drove it underground.

Gay men were targeted for persecution because they did not contribute to the desired growth of the 'Aryan population' and were viewed as corrupting German values and culture. Between 1933 and 1945, an estimated 100,000 men were arrested for violating Nazi Germany’s law against homosexuality, and of these, approximately 50,000 were sentenced to prison.

Gay victims of Nazism were not officially recognised in the immediate aftermath of the Third Reich – Paragraph 175 remained part of the German penal code during the 1950s and 1960s. In the 1980s, these "forgotten victims" were finally discussed. In 1985, for instance, president Richard von Weizsäcker remembered homosexuals as a "victim group".