Digital Studies of The Holocaust
This collaborative research project aims to introduce the process of data analysis to Holocaust studies to create new ways of seeing and remembering the Holocaust.
Men Persecuted for Homosexual Activity
Held at the Dachau Concentration Camp
Nils H. Roemer, Director, Ackerman Center for Holocaust Studies
Katie Fisher, Research Assistant, Belofsky Fellow
Yannis Soonjung Kwon, Undergraduate Research Apprentice
As Nazis in Germany sought to build an empire upon notions of racial purity, genetic supremacy, and a defined homeland they displaced, attacked, and eliminated groups they saw as a threat. One such group was men who were suspected of engaging in homosexual activity. In an attempt to discourage unapproved activity, Nazi officials made the law prohibiting homosexual activity stricter. Known as Paragraph 175, the law had been on the record since the German Empire in 1871 and was expanded upon and applied with utmost severity during the Nazi regime. In 1935, a new version of the statute was written to punish men with prison sentences and broaden the range of acts considered violations. Paragraph 175 was part of Section Thirteen of the criminal code which regulated “Crimes and Offenses Against Morality.” The code listed homosexual activity among offenses such as bestiality, bigamy, incest, and sexual assault. During the war, Paragraph 175 was enforced to close down gay public spaces, arrest gay men, and prohibit gay presses. As is evident from the map included in this visualization, the majority of arrests happened within the area Nazis thought of as their homelands.
Lesbian women were not directly included in the new statute because Nazis believed lesbian women could still be coerced into having Aryan children. Thus, they were not as much of a threat as gay men who could seduce heterosexual men and reduce birth rates. However, lesbian spaces and lesbian women were still harassed and suppressed. Likewise, transgender women were also persecuted for violating Paragraph 175. In 1936, Heinrich Himmler established the Reich Central Office for the Combating of Homosexuality and Abortion to track down and arrest homosexual men with the help of the Gestapo. While many of the convicted offenders were given fixed prison sentences, “repeat offenders” would be sent to concentration camps with a pink triangle indicating their offense. The effect of this crackdown destroyed the gay community throughout the Third Reich.
Numbers vary widely about how many men were arrested and held during the Third Reich for violation of Paragraph 175. Approximately 100,000 arrests occurred for Paragraph 175, and around 53,000 of these resulted in convictions with fixed prison sentences. The Dachau Captured Records acquired by the Allied forces upon liberation contain information for 166,398 individuals, 351 explicitly labeled under Paragraph 175. However, because homosexual prisoners were also labeled under “asocial” or “protective custody,” the exact number of men held at Dachau for violation of paragraph 175 remains unknown. This case study aims to document the names of men held for homosexual activity and to share fragments of information on their years at Dachau. Through the data visualization shown below this project digitally memorializes these often-overlooked victims of the Third Reich.
Dachau originally served as a prison for political opponents and criminals. Initially, men held at Dachau for homosexual activities arrived for a fixed prison sentence and then were released within two years. Throughout Dachau’s operations, another significant portion of men were transferred to Mauthausen, Buchenwald, Flossenburg, or other prison camps. Men held for Paragraph 175 violations often were not killed immediately but kept for forced labor.
Munich, the closest urban center to Dachau, had the highest concentration (69 individuals) of homosexual men who were imprisoned at Dachau. Men from Munich were arrested mostly at the beginning of the Third Reich and were either released after 1-2 years or transferred to Mauthausen or Buchenwald.
A significant shift happened in 1938 when the majority of prisoners held for homosexual activity were not released after fulfilling their sentences. Instead, they were kept for indefinite periods. Of these individuals who were not released, the longest sentence served in Dachau was 8 years by Anton Wittmann. His records indicate that he was imprisoned at Dachau in 1934, transferred around various camps, and then ultimately perished on April 15, 1942, in one of Dachau’s subcamps. This case study includes 103 individuals kept in Dachau throughout the war and eventually liberated.
After liberation, survivors of Nazi persecution of homosexual activity faced persecution and negative stigmas—even former political prisoners did not wish to be associated with them. The majority of individuals who were persecuted under Paragraph 175 refused to speak about their experiences after the war because it remained illegal—leaving a significant void in the record of testimony collected from survivors.
East Germany did not stop enforcing earlier versions of Paragraph 175 from the Weimar Republic until 1968, and West Germany did not abolish Paragraph 175 until 1969. It wasn’t until the reunification of East and West Germany in 1994 that Paragraph 175 was removed entirely from the German criminal code. Permission to set up a memorial for homosexual victims in Dachau was not granted until 1995, and the Memorial to Homosexuals Persecuted Under Nazim was only recently erected in Berlin in 2008. This case study features a table of the individuals’ names on each page to ensure that these individuals are not lost among the large number of individuals held at Dachau.
Join Dr. Nils Roemer and Belofsky fellow Katie Fisher on a walking tour of the Dachau Concentration Camp Memorial Site outside of Munich, Germany. This auditory experience captures the sound of the present-day landscape with its birdsong and tourist chatter and is layered with historical context and references provided by Dr. Nils Roemer.
[1] “Paragraph 175 and the Nazi Campaign against Homosexuality,” The United States Holocaust Memorial Museum Holocaust Encyclopedia.
[2] “Homosexual Prisoners in the Dachau Concentration Camp,” Comité International de Dachau.
[3] Episode 49, “Holocaust Memorials in Everyday Berlin Life,” The Ackerman Center Podcast.
[4] Personal file of WITTMANN, ANTON, born on 4-Jan-1894, Arolsen Archives.