Learning from the past ~ lessons for today - Holocaust Education ...

Nazi Persecution of Homosexuals
Male homosexuality was illegal, under a definition which had
already been considerably expanded before the war. Heinrich
Himmler and the Reich Ministry of Justice announced the
death penalty for some homosexuals, and in July 1943, Ernst
Kaltenbrunner of the SS succeeded in having an edict passed
for the forced castration of homosexuals.
The Nazis arrested thousands of gay men, who were sent to
prison or concentration camps. They were forced to wear pink
triangles on their camp uniforms, and lesbians were forced to
wear black triangles. In the concentration camps, homosexuals
were subjected to harder work, less food, and stricter
supervision than other inmates. Thousands were put to death.
Discrimination against homosexuals continued after the war,
and gay concentration camp survivors were not acknowledged
as victims of Nazi persecution. Some even had to serve out the
terms of their original prison sentences, as the laws against
homosexuals remained on the West German statute books
until 1969.
Solidarity by Richard Grune, lithograph 1947, Schwules Museum, Berlin.
The criminalisation and social stigmatisation of homosexuals
in Europe and the United States in the years after the war
made most homosexual survivors of the Holocaust afraid to
tell their stories.
Nazi Persecution of Black and Ethnic Minorities
Fifty years before the Holocaust, Germans were carrying out
medical experiments on black people. Between 1894 and
1904 German settlers in the colony of German South Africa
(part of present-day Namibia) systematically lynched members
of the Herero tribe, raped their women and stole their cattle.
When the Herero rebelled they were killed or incarcerated in
concentration camps. Their numbers were reduced from
80,000 to 15,000. In the early years of the 20th century, the
German geneticist Eugen Fischer published his scientific race
theories in a book called The Principles of Human Heredity
and Race Hygiene, which impressed and influenced Hitler
and, ultimately, Josef Mengele.
Image of mixed-race girl used in lectures on
Race and Health in Dresden
USHMM
After the First World War, France occupied the German
Rhineland and deployed black African colonial soldiers as the
occupying force. The result was hundreds of mixed-race children
born to German women, who became targets of Hitler.
In order to preserve the “purity of the Aryan population”, the
Nazis established Commission Number 3, which secretly
organised the forced sterisilation of hundreds of children of
African ancestry. By the outbreak of the Second World War,
thousands had fled and those who remained were annihilated.
Nazi Persecution of Christians
and of Jehovah’s Witnesses
Thousands of Jehovah’s Witnesses were murdered by the
Nazis for their refusal to salute Hitler as ‘Saviour’ or to serve
in the German armed forces. Thousands of Catholics,
Protestants, and others of Christian affiliation were
persecuted and murdered. There were also hundreds of
Christians, Quakers and others who actively opposed the
Nazi regime, many of whom risked their lives to save Jews.
SS guards used badge markings on concentration camp
uniforms to identify a prisoner’s category.
USHMM
12