Pre-Holocaust Conditions

 “For Himmler and other Nazi ideologues, homosexuals—like Jews—were the incarnation of
degeneracy. They saw Jews and homosexuals as outsiders and inferior human beings who
threatened the purity of der Volk. As George Z. Mosse observes in his book Nationalism and
Sexuality, the nationalist and Nazi typology presented Jews and homosexuals in a highly similar
way, treating them as selfish, useless, and sexually aggressive and insatiable to the degree
that they could not control their urges. They accused Jews and homosexuals of using the fact
that they were different as a weapon against society. Jews allegedly “went mad” over Christian
women, and homosexuals over young Aryan men. The Nazis believed in an international Jewish
conspiracy and leveled similar accusations against homosexuals.”
 “Like other nationalists of the day, Himmler had an obsession about der Volk. In a speech to SS
lieutenants in 1937, he warned that the spread of homosexuality endangered the reproduction
of the nation. He went on to state that there were two million registered members of
homosexual clubs; ‘experts’ on homosexuality estimated that there were two to four million
homosexuals in Germany. ‘This epidemic is destroying our Volk,’ said Himmler. ’A nation of
numerous children is qualified to be a global power and master of the world. A racially pure Volk
with few children is on the sure road to destruction.’ He went on: ‘We must be sure as to
whether we want to go on carrying this burden [homosexuality – ed.] in Germany without
being able to combat it. This could risk the end of Germany, the end of the Teutonic world.
Unfortunately, things are not so easy as they were for our forefathers. For them, such an
individual was simply something immoral. Homosexuals, known as Urnings, were drowned in
the swamps. The respected professors who discover these corpses in the peat bogs are surely
unaware that, in ninety cases out of a hundred, they are looking at homosexuals who were
drowned there in their clothing and all the rest. This was not a punishment—it was simply
getting rid of something immoral.’”
 At a meeting of municipal administration officials in Hamburg on November 13, 1933, for
instance, the chief of police was ordered to pay particular attention to “transvestites, and to
send them to concentration camps.” In 1934, the Gestapo sent a letter ordering every police
station in the country to draw up a list of “everyone who is homosexually active in any way.” In
response, the Berlin police managed to draw up a list of approximately 30,000 homosexuals. In
May 1935, the SS magazine Das Schwarze Korps demanded the death sentence for gays.

In the Concentration Camps

 As opposed to the Jews and the Roma, the Nazis intended not to exterminate homosexuals, but
to “reeducate” them. The death rate among homosexuals was high, especially when
compared to other groups imprisoned for purposes of reeducation. Fifty-five percent of
homosexual prisoners died in the camps, as opposed to 40% of political prisoners and 34.7% of
the Jehovah’s Witnesses. Between 5,000 and 15,000 gays died in the camps, although this figure
might have been much higher since homosexuals, as opposed to Jews and Roma, could easily
conceal their otherness. Homosexuals were treated as the lowest of the groups within the
prisoner population. As a rule, they obtained the worst labor assignments, and were often
rejected by their fellow prisoners and treated as deviants. The camp capos who oversaw the
labor details also refused to help them. They had limited contact with the outside world; it
rarely happened that families maintained contact with prisoners wearing the pink triangle,
 and their friends outside had no desire to maintain contact with those who were in the camps.
Impulses of solidarity occurred sporadically among the homosexuals themselves. As Raimund
Schnabel writes in his study of Dachau, “Those whose behavior could be called perverted were
seldom found among the homosexuals; nevertheless, there were some sycophants and
fraudsters. The prisoners wearing the pink triangle never lived long. The SS murdered them
quickly and systematically.”
 Homosexual prisoners were forced to sleep in nightshirts and to hold their hands outside the
covers. This was supposed to prevent masturbation. One prisoner recalled that ‘anyone caught
without underwear or with their hands under the covers—and there were several checks each
night—was taken outside, had several buckets of water dumped on them, and was made to
stand that way for a good hour. Only a few survived, especially when there was a centimeter
of ice on the windowpanes. Bronchitis was prevalent as a result, and it was rare for a
homosexual to come back alive from the hospital.’”
 Rudolf Hoess, who held the post of commandant of the Sachsenhausen camp before being
transferred to Auschwitz, was convinced that sexual orientation could be changed through hard
labor. The results of this reeducation were lamentable: the majority of the prisoners under his
control died. The Sachsenhausen camp, regarded until 1942 as “the Auschwitz for
homosexuals,” held large numbers of homosexuals. They labored mostly at quarrying clay and
making bricks in the camp. Regardless of the weather, they had to push carts full of clay
towards the machines that produced the bricks. This work was particularly difficult because the
pits were almost empty; most of the clay had already been dug out of them. The half-dead
prisoners pushed their carts uphill, urged on all the time by the SS men and the capos guarding
them. The carts ran on tracks, but they frequently derailed and tumbled back downhill,
crushing defenseless prisoners who did not even attempt to get out of the way. The sounds of
breaking bones and the lashings of the blows directed at the prisoners who remained alive
could be heard.
 “‘Two-thirds of my fellow prisoners died within two months. To kill someone attempting to
escape paid off for the soldiers. For each prisoner he killed, a soldier received five marks and
three days’ leave. They used the bullwhips most often in the morning, when they were forcing
us down into the pits. ‘Only 50 are left alive,’ the man beside me whispered several days later. A
certain sergeant told me one morning, ‘that’s enough. Do you want to cross over to the other
side? It won’t hurt. I’m an excellent shot.’”
 “Over time, the ‘Nazis perfected the technique of using other methods than exhaustive labor to
exterminate homosexuals. In the Flossenbürg camp, for instance, they opened a house of
prostitution and forced homosexuals to visit it as a form of treatment. The prostitutes were
Jewish and Roma women from the nearby women’s camp. The Nazis cut holes in the walls
through which they could observe the ‘behavior’ of their homosexual prisoners.”
 Homosexuals were subjected to medical experiments. A Danish endocrinologist, Carl Vaernet,
castrated 18 homosexuals in the Buchenwald camp and then injected them with high doses of
male hormones. The goal of the experiment was to discover whether they would be interested
in the opposite sex following such procedures.
Effects of the holocaust on homosexuals

 “There were some American and British lawyers who demanded that homosexuals convicted
under Article 175 serve out their full sentences. For instance, if someone had been sentenced to
eight years and served five years of the sentence in prison followed by three years in a
concentration camp, the lawyers demanded that the person return to prison to serve out three
 years. The number of people forced to “complete” their sentences in this way is not known. To
this day, no financial compensation has been paid to the victims of Nazi homosexual policies,
despite the fact that the German government offered compensation to victims of Jewish
ethnicity, political prisoners, and other groups that survived the concentration camps. Only
the homosexuals were passed over. Many people deny that the homosexuals have a right to
any such compensation, stating that victims with an alternative sexual orientation were justly
imprisoned, and ‘had no one but themselves to blame.’”
 Significant numbers of the homosexuals who survived the war found themselves unable to
return to their families or hometowns following their camp experiences. There were many
reasons for this. Above all, however, shame and the fear of being stigmatized motivated
homosexuals to change not only their addresses but everything else that could have been
associated with their earlier lives.

Anti-Semitic Quotes from Modern Politicians & Celebrities:

 In referring to billionaire George Soros, House Representative Louie Gohmert said, “George
Soros is supposed to be Jewish, but you wouldn’t know it from the damage he’s inflicted on
Israel. And the face that he turned on fellow Jews and helped take the property that they
owned. It’s the same kind of thing.”
 Alex Jones, host of Infowars: “It’s not that Jews are bad, it’s just they are the head of the Jewish
mafia in the United States. They run Uber, they run the health care, they’re going to scam you,
they’re going to hurt you.”

Homophobic and Transphobic Quotes from Modern Politicians & Celebrities

 “I think that kind of disregard for the God-endowed natural rights of human beings is the
archetype of all crimes against humanity. And I think we have an entire elite faction that is now
committed to committing such a crime against the American people.” – American political
activist and presidential candidate Alan Keyes
 “A man such as myself can walk into the bathroom at LA Fitness while women are taking
showers, changing, and simply walk in there. If I feel like a woman that day, I can be allowed to
be in that locker room.” – Republican House Rep Frank Artiles
 “We need to have profound compassion for people who are dealing with the very real issue of
sexual dysfunction in their life and sexual identity disorders.” – House Rep for the Tea Party
Caucus Michele Bachmann
 “Such people are the curse of society and social garbage. They don’t deserve to be Muslim or
Pakistani, and the support and protection announced by the US administration for them is the
worst social and cultural terrorism against Pakistan.” – Islamist party member Jamaat-e-Islami
 “Congress should oppose any effort to recognize homosexuals as a ‘discrete and insular
minority’ entitled to the protection of anti-discrimination laws similar to those extended to
woman and ethnic minorities.” – Former Vice President Mike Pence
 “Whether or not you feel compelled to follow a particular lifestyle or not, you have the ability to
decide not to do that. I may have the genetic coding that I’m inclined to be an alcoholic, but I
have the desire not to do that, and I look at the homosexual issue the same way.” – Republican
Rick Perry
  “We look at the jihad that is being waged right now, in Indiana, and in Arkansas, going after
people of faith who respect the biblical teaching that marriage is the union of one man and one
woman.” – Republican Ted Cruz
 “But what I can say is that the state is not doing a service to the child and to society by not
putting that child in a home where there is mother and a father. This is common sense. This is
nature. And what we’re trying to do is defy nature because a certain group of people want to be
affirmed by society. And I just don’t think that’s to the benefit of society or to the child.” –
Republican Rick Santorum
 “I’m for traditional marriage. I think marriage is between a man and a woman. Ultimately, we
could have fixed this a long time ago if we just allowed contracts between adults. We didn’t
have to call it marriage, which offends myself and a lot of people.” – Republican Rand Paul
 “If you start overturning things like [gay marriage bans], I gotta tell you, there will be every Tom,
Dick, and Harry in there with some crazy marital scheme demanding the same rights and the
same privileges.” – Republican Orrin Hatch
 “Gay guys are the horniest people in the world… they’re disgusting. Dude, most of them
probably have AIDS.” – Paris Hilton
 “I’ve seen the evil homosexuality come out of you people… AIDS is the result of your sins. Now
don’t get me wrong; God loves you. But not the way you are now.” – Donna Summer
 “I’m gonna keep talking shit to these white faggots until they unlike my page. Fucking weirdo
stalkers!” – Soulja Boy
 Bestiality and infidelity begin with homosexual behavior.” – Phil Roberston

Sources:

Www.auschwitz.org. (n.d.). Robert Biedroń, Nazism's Pink Hell. Robert Biedroń, Nazism's Pink
Hell / Homosexuals. A Separate Category of Prisoners / Categories of prisoners / History /
Auschwitz-Birkenau. Retrieved November 17, 2022, from
https://www.auschwitz.org/en/history/categories-of-prisoners/homosexuals-a-separate-
category-of-prisoners/robert-biedron-nazisms-pink-hell/

Hasan, M. (2019, February 15). Six GOP House members who need to resign for anti-semitism
before Ilhan Omar. The Intercept. Retrieved November 17, 2022, from
https://theintercept.com/2019/02/15/ilhan-omar-aipac-republicans-anti-semitism/

Staff, R. W. W. (2013, April 2). Keyes: Marriage equality is the 'archetype of all crimes against
humanity'. Right Wing Watch. Retrieved November 17, 2022, from
https://www.rightwingwatch.org/post/keyes-marriage-equality-is-the-archetype-of-all-
crimes-against-humanity/

Lurie, J., & Brodey, S. (2015, March 9). Get ready for the conservative assault on where
transgender Americans pee. Mother Jones. Retrieved November 17, 2022, from
https://www.motherjones.com/politics/2015/03/transgender-bathroom-discrimination-bills/
Badash, D. (2011, June 2). Michele Bachmann's top ten anti-gay quotes. The New Civil Rights
Movement. Retrieved November 17, 2022, from
https://www.thenewcivilrightsmovement.com/2014/04/michele_bachmann_s_top_ten_anti
_gay_quotes/

BBC. (2011, July 4). Pakistan: Religious groups condemn US embassy gay event. BBC News.
Retrieved November 17, 2022, from https://www.bbc.com/news/world-south-asia-
14010106

Lewis, T. (2022, October 31). The most anti-gay US politicians. Ranker. Retrieved November
17, 2022, from https://www.ranker.com/list/the-most-anti-gay-us-politicians/ballerina-
tatyana

says:, K., & Says:, I. H. (2016, August 27). 10 homophobic quotes from Hollywood celebrities.
Dear Straight People. Retrieved November 17, 2022, from
https://dearstraightpeople.com/2015/08/18/10-homophobic-quotes-from-hollywood-
celebrities/