friend has been hauled in front of a court on a charge linked to paragraph 175, which forbids same-sex relations between men. The woman hurries to the courthouse and swears to the elderly judge that there must be some mistake since this man is her fiancé and they are soon to be married. The judge looks hard at the severely dressed woman and says, "Well, if that is so then this case is over. " The man and woman lose no time and leave the court as soon as possible.

The future husband has been saved. A lesbian and gay get married in the interests of both - but  especially to save him from a long prison sentence or a concentration camp.

The year is 1938.

Homosexuals under the Swastika

In mid-November 1992, the Central Office of Political Education (the English title sounds worse than it is !) of Lower Saxony organised a weekend seminar on the theme “Homosexuals and National Socialism" -- appropriately on the territory of Bergen-Belsen.

Among the 25 participants were researchers in this sphere such as Prof. Dr. Lautmann (Bremen), Dr. Burkhard Jellonek (Saarbrücken), Claudia Schoppmann and Dr. Ilse Kokula (Berlin). Also present were representatives of the memorial sites Bergen-Belsen, Buchenwald and Neuengamme, as well as Rainer Hoffschild, whose book about Homosexuals in Hannover „Olivia“ will shortly be published and Jürgen Müller from a Cologne Association researching into gay history. After the official opening by Wilfried Wiedermann for the provincial Centre, Burkhard Jellonek gave a scientific lecture which was closely related to his book Homosexuals under the Swatiska.

As a result of the absence of one speaker, the opportunity arose to hear Dr. Günter Grau with an contribution on the role of the Hitler Youth (“H.J.” in German) in the persecution of homosexuals. Quote:

A Hitler Youth (H.J.) leader who neglects to report a homosexual 'misdeed' within the H.J., is undisciplined and unfit to be a youth-leader. (Quote from a H.J. Document).

"After the so-called takeover of power in 1933, it can be shown that the Nazi leadership made great efforts and used different methods to put into practice what they understood by the "eradication of homosexuality." …For many millions of girls and boys, next to the family and school, the H.J. was the decisive socialisation centre and the guarantee of the future and the permanent maintenance of their domination. Service in the H.J. was meant to bind the growing generation to the 'models' of the Nazi system. The great majority during the 12-year Third Reich received a H.J. education. The maintenance of the 'purity' of the German youth demands the sharpest rejection of same-sex 'misdeeds'. It could destroy what education has built up ..."

"(...) It was a matter of the inability or refusal to produce children, the danger of 'corrupting' youth and a possible 'plague-like' spreading of homosexuality, the tendency to form cliques, which made every homosexual a potential opponent, and thus an enemy of the bourgeois community; and a danger to public morals."

"As you will know these are not Nazi prejudices but go further back in history, and continued after 1945." Commented Dr. Grau and continued, "Homosexual men were seen as an direct threat to population growth – and held to be partly responsible for example the reduction in the birth-rate. The necessity for a maximum exploitation of the reproductive forces of the population was propagated.  From the beginning there was a close relationship (of the H.J.)  to the Nazi Security Service."

A lively contribution to the seminar came from Jürgen Müller (Cologne). Based on minute research and oral history approaches their book brings history alive, and doesn’t fall into the trap of a “black-white” picture. There were Nazi-homosexuals (not only Röhm of the SA) and in Cologne one of them – a lawyer - ran foul of his power hungry “comrades” by defending homosexuals in court and refusing to name contacts when the Gestapo came for him. Aside from which “life” continued under terror in parks, “cottages”, and in private too, - as witnesses have related.

There was – as became clear in the seminar – a definite difference between  the position of gays and lesbians in this period, which was largely to do with § 175, which despite some proposals by Nazi lawyers was never extended to cover female homosexuals.

A time to hide …

For lesbians there began a time of hiding ... in their private lives, too…

The “invisibility”  of lesbians was made clear by the contributions of Claudia Schoppmann and Ilse Kokula. Significantly many less lesbians ended up in concentrations camps and those that did were, according to Claudia Schoppmann and Ilse Kokula - both authors of books on the topic - frequently classified as “anti-war-service”, prostitutes, or “antisocial“ offenders. Although it was the aim of the Nazis to suppress homosexuality including the closing down their meeting-places, cafés (for lesbians, too) and pubs, as well as parks and cottages - for men, a few years ago Dr. Kokula could still find women who knew of meeting places for lesbians during the war, which had not been closed down.

Dr. Kokula:.

"I suspect that a lesbian could survive, if she did not speak against the Führer or the small circle around the Führer and if you looked like the type then much in demand – the blond German woman. … Others left Berlin, alone or in pairs and moved to places where they were unknown. The homosexual organisations were forbidden after the Nazi seizure of power. Thus in 1938 it was possible for the legal expert Klare to rejoice that “with the destruction of the women’s movement, and other organisations of the homosexuals --- the possibility of them influencing political decisions disappeared."

"In 1935 the deputy national leader of the SS, the head of the Gestapo Reinhard Heydrich went so far as to demand the closure of nudist beaches. … He suspected that nude bathing by people of the same sex, was a preparation for offences against paragraph 175.  The persecution of homosexual men, which was at times intensive, also affected women who loved women. Although none of the numerous women questioned mentioned persecution on grounds of homosexuality, it is now known that lesbian women were sent to concentration camps on grounds of antisocial behaviour, criminality, interference with the war effort, or the 'corruption of youth'."

The fate of one lesbian pair …

Dr. Kokula continues:

"As the approaches of her superior became too much she rejected them ... Both she and her partner were sent before a military-court and sent to the Bützow concentration camp (in northern Germany). There they were confined with 6 other lesbians ...in a special block.  The SS guards urged the Russian and French prisoners to give the lesbians a good fucking." (Here one must be aware that in the Nazi period it was a punishable offence for a German woman to have sex with a foreigner.)

"It is one of those historical paradoxes that some lesbians have good memories of the Nazi period - the period of unemployment was over, a large number were occupied in the armaments industry or in the non-combatant part of the German of army and because of their income economically independent. The terrible conditions of the concentration camps, the medical experiments, and 'change of orientation' (an idea which is still around 50 years later - C. M-S) left their stamp on the life of 10,000 lesbians and gays. For a long time it was deliberately not mentioned, but it must never be forgotten."

Such history was until recently largely suppressed and ignored as far as the public is concerned. Is it not significant that one of the organisers of the seminar in Bergen-Belsen pointed out that the camp was “neglected” until around 1960 when there was a wave of  neo-fascist activity, and again until the mid ‘80’s when Reagan and Chancellor Kohl wanted to make a demonstrative visit there ?