Homosexuals were seen as ‘ a-social ’ by the Nazis – an enemy of the master ‘Aryan’ race. Their attraction to other men meant they were not producing children for the Volksgemeinschaft .
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Led by Heinrich Himmler , the Nazis persecuted gay men in several ways.
Initially, the Nazis closed down a large majority of the homosexual bars, and shut down any homosexual publications. They arrested gay men and tortured them, forcing them to give up their address books and names of partners in an attempt to create a register of all gay men in Germany.
On the 28 June 1935, the Nazis revised Paragraph 175 , a section of the German Criminal Code which banned homosexual contact. The law was extended to the concept of ‘criminally indecent activities between men’, which meant that the authorities could then arrest any male suspected on limited or no evidence. This was a crucial turning point in the radicalisation of persecution against homosexuals.
Homosexuals were some of the first people, alongside political prisoners, to be sent to the concentration camps in 1933. In the camps, they were subject to ridicule and hard work. They were also forced to wear pink triangles to define them as homosexuals.
As with Roma, in the camps homosexuals were also the subject of brutal medical experimentations, such as castration.