NAZI GERMANY The Other Holocaust

Deportations of all these "undesir subjects" and others occurred and they fulfiled the same unavoidableness as Jews in that they were stripped of their belongings, taken away at will by the Gestapo and ripped away from their relatives and friends. Pierre Seel was 18 when the Gestapo ordered him to appear before them. He was taken from his family, force to confess his sapphicity because his name was on a name of people who visited a homosexual pick-up spot because he had erstwhile reported his watch stolen, and scudd, "We had to sign. Kneeling on a ruler, we had to avow that all these names made up the roster of homosexuals in Mulhouse. The walls echoed with our screams. At first we managed to endure the suffering. But ultimately it became impossible. umbrageous by our resistance, the SS began pulling out the fingernails of some of the prisoners. In their fury, they stone-broke the rulers we were kneeling on and used them to rape us. Our bowels were punctured. Blood spurted everywhere. My ears tranquillize ring with our shrieks of atrocious pain" (Seel 26).

Homosexuals were despised for different reasons than were blacks. Blacks were seen as a threat to the purity of the German race. After the affiliate had occupied the Rhineland after World War I, the German authorities depicted African colonial troop members as rapists of German women, carriers of venereal and other diseases, and used other forms of racist propaganda, a good deal as they had done with the Jews. In Mein Kampf Hi

Dulffer, J. Nazi Germany: 1933-1945. New York, St. Martin's Press, 1996.

Berenbaum, M. and Peck, A. J. (eds.). The final solution and History. Bloomington, Indiana Univ. Press, 1998.

Homosexual victims of the Holocaust have long been a forgotten group of victims. in that location are many reasons for this. First, many of the alleged 1.5 to 2 million homosexuals in Germany were murdered. Second, when the time of retribution came, no recriminations came to those responsible for crimes perpetrate specifically against homosexual groups. For example, at the Nuremberg trials and trials of medical doctors accused of wring and experimentation, no charges were invoked ground on crimes committed against homosexuals.

Third, many survivors, deal Pierre Seel quoted above, were unable to come forward with their tales of brutality, torture and murder until decades after the end of the war. While homosexuals did non suffer any more or less than other groups in the concentration camps, they did endure a unique experienced based on their status as homosexuals. This unique status came in two forms. The first difference was that their experiences with other prisoners were more discriminate than those of other groups, like criminals or Jews. Social integration among prisoners was seen as crucial for survival, but homosexuals were often not privy to such integration:

Seel, P. Liberation was for Others. New York, Da Capo Press, 1997.

Whether or not the necessity of entering into a relationship with fellow prisoners as well as among themselves was perceived, it was a precarious matter. How could homosexuals arrive at the solidarity that was a prerequisite for survival? Any form of reciprocal contact would raise suspicion as to sexual intent, as illogical as this might seem in general. The homosexual in the outside world might have been able to bear derision and contempt as a set to be paid for his deviant status; in the camp, however, the diversity from moral degradation to ph
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