I will bet that none of the readers of my blog know that gay men were beheaded during the Holocaust. I didn’t know it either — until I read it in a news article here.
The following quote is from the website, cited above:
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People were killed in gas chambers, they were beheaded just because of their religion, because they were a gypsy, a political dissident or they were gay,” said WVU Hillel Director Richard Guttman. “They were just killed. Half of the people killed were Jews, but the other half were regular people, so we try to remember by reading names.”
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Did you get that? Half of the people who were killed in the Holocaust were “regular people.” Some of the victims of the Holocaust were “regular people” — as opposed to what? Exceptional people? This article seems to be saying that half of the people killed in the Holocaust were goyim, who were not even human.
Were gay people deliberately killed in the Holocaust? Not that I know of.
The German law, which made homosexuality a crime, had been on the books since 1871 when the German states were united into a country by the King of Prussia, following the victory over France in the Franco-Prussian war.
After the Nazis came to power, a new law was made, which said that men who had been arrested twice, for any crime, would be sent to a concentration camp, after they had completed their second prison sentence. They would be held, in a concentration camp, for at least six months in order to be rehabilitated.
This was the law under which homosexuals and Gypsies would up at Dachau, and later, at other camps.
The law that was broken by the Gypsies was the new law which said that every man in Germany should have a permanent residence and a visible means of support. The Gypsies traveled around in wagons; they did not have permanent homes.
The German law, known as Paragraph 175, made it a crime to PUBLICLY engage in homosexual acts. It was also a crime for male prostitutes to solicit men for sex. Some of the men, who were sent to a concentration camp for soliciting men for sex, were later released after it was determined that they were not homosexual themselves.
The following quote is also from the news article:
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What makes the Holocaust unique, though, is the fact the Nazi Party kept diligent notes on everyone they killed, and while morbid, it inadvertently made it possible for the victims to be honored in a way other genocide victims can’t.
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It is my understanding that the “Nazi Party” did not keep diligent notes on anyone that they killed. I don’t think that the “Nazi Party” admitted to killing anyone in the camps. People died in the camps, but the deaths were due to disease, particularly typhus.
As the closest concentration camp to Berlin, Sachsenhausen had more homosexual prisoners than any of the other camps. A total of approximately 10,000 homosexuals were sent to all the Nazi concentration camps combined during the 12 years of the Third Reich.
In an era when homosexuals were still in the closet in all the countries of the world, Berlin was a mecca for gays. The movie Cabaret depicts the gay scene in Berlin before the Nazis came to power. It was based on a book entitled “Goodbye to Berlin” by Christopher Isherwood, who lived an openly gay lifestyle in the capital city. Only male homosexuals who broke the German law by flaunting their lifestyle in public were arrested. After their second arrest and prison term, they were sent to the concentration camps; no lesbians were ever sent to the camps, solely for being lesbians.
Some of the young men, who were sent to Sachsenhausen after they had been imprisoned for public homosexual activity, were actually Strichjunge, or male prostitutes, from Berlin.
According to the memoirs of Rudolf Höss, the Commandant of Auschwitz:
The strict camp life and the hard work quickly reeducated this type [homosexual men]. Most of them worked very hard and took great care not to get into trouble so that they could be released as soon as possible. They also avoided associating with those afflicted with this depravity and wanted to make it known that they had nothing to do with homosexuals. In this way countless rehabilitated young men could be released without having a relapse.