Remembering The Pink Triangle
Learning from Nazi and post-Nazi persecution of gays and other minorities
The Holocaust is rightly remembered as a great atrocity against the Jews. Too often, however, it is forgotten that other minorities were also persecuted. Other ethnic groups, including Slavic groups, Roma, and Black people, as well as political opponents are occasionally mentioned as being additional victims of the Holocaust. I think disabled people are sometimes acknowledged to have been victims of the Holocaust. It is rare, however, to hear anyone acknowledge that queer people—and gay/bisexual men and transgender individuals in particular—were also victims of the Holocaust.
The criminalization of homosexuality was not uncommon across the world or in Europe during the time of the German Empire (2nd Reich). The German Empire had its own laws against homosexuality in the form of Paragraph 175. Paragraph 175 theoretically covered both homosexuality and bestiality. However, through the 1920s (Weimar Republic), it began to apply less to bestiality and more to homosexuality. Once the Nazis were in power, persecution of homosexuality increased in earnest, with a tenfold increase in yearly convictions between 1933 and 1938 (p. 232). This was largely due to the Nazi revision to Paragraph 175 which greatly widened the scope of what could be considered an “indecent” act between men. Approximately 100,000 individuals were imprisoned and over 50,000 convicted during the Nazi regime for homosexual acts. About 5,000 to 15,000 of these individuals were sent to concentration camps. These individuals were forced to wear pink triangles to signify their status and were abused not only by the guards, but also by fellow prisoners.
It is not surprising that the Nazis, with their worship of nature and their obsession with purity, so strongly persecuted homosexual acts. What may be more surprising is that the successors of the Nazis—the West and East German governments and the Allies—condoned and continued this persecution. This was particularly the case in West Germany, which was governed by the Christian Democratic Party and where the Allies left decisions regarding Paragraph 175 to the West Germans. Queer people who survived the concentration camps could count on little relief from the Allies, who forced many of them to serve out prison sentences regardless of their time spent in the concentration camps. Between 1945 and 1969, another 100,000 individuals were arrested and 50,000 convicted under Paragraph 175, with a climax in the Frankfurt Homosexual Trials of 1950–1951.
Progress in this department was made only slowly. While Paragraph 175 was largely defanged between the 1960s and 1982, it remained in place and resisted attempts at removal. Indeed, Paragraph 175 was never struck down in West Germany. It was only through reunification with East Germany—which had abolished Paragraph 175 decades before—that it was finally ended for good. The German government issued an official statement of regret in 2000, and it was only in 2017 that the German government officially began to annul convictions under Paragraph 175 and to offer compensation for those who had been imprisoned due to the law. This repentance came too late for many, including Rudolf Brazda, the last known Holocaust survivor who was imprisoned for being gay. Nevertheless, any expression of repentance and accountability from a government, no matter how belated, is already exceptional. Many nations (such as Turkey) either downplay their role in crimes against humanity or deny that any such crime took place.
What do we take away from this? One thought it sparks is that discrimination is, ironically, not very discriminatory. Even the epitome of an effort to focus discrimination against one particular group ended up spilling into a multitude of other groups. It is a case study which validates following Rawls’ Veil of Ignorance. Liberation can only be liberation if it is liberation for all, because a risk to one’s liberties implies risk to all others’; to put it shortly, injustice is blind. Poetically, the greatly strengthened laws against immorality and homosexuality became an important instrument in the liquidation of the Catholic Clergy in Nazi Germany. Another lesson is that there exists no sharp dichotomy between “then” and “now”, nor between “them” and “us”. The liberation of the concentration camps in 1945 was an important moment, but it was not the total triumph it is often portrayed to be. We think of ourselves and those we identify with as the final and perfect in morality and justice, whether we like to admit it or not, and this pervades its way into our thinking about events such as the Allied liberation. In real life, there is no such thing as a perfect denouement where all loose ends are tied up and everyone rides into the sunset. There is only the next step to be taken, the next chapter to be written. And we must take this step and write this chapter together if we want it to be any good.