Appendix

Timeline of Events Crucial for
Homosexual Men in Germany

1871	German Penal Code includes Paragraph 175, criminalizing sexual acts between men.
1897	Dr. Magnus Hirschfeld establishes Berlin’s Scientific-Humanitarian Committee – the first worldwide homosexual rights organization.
1898	Hirschfeld attempts to repeal Paragraph 175.
1919	First gay themed movie released in Germany – Different from the Others – pushes for the repeal of Paragraph 175. Hirschfeld establishes the Institute for Sexual Research.
1921	Adolf Hitler becomes leader of the Nazi Party.
1928	Hitler declares, “Anyone who thinks of homosexual love is our enemy.”
1930	Nazi leader Ernst Röhm becomes leader of the SA (Storm Troopers).
1931	Röhm’s homosexuality questioned in the media.
1933	January 30 Nazis gain power in Germany. Adolf Hitler sworn in as Chancellor. February 23 Gay and lesbian bars and journals are forbidden in directives on “Public Morality.” February 28 Hitler is made Führer (leader) of Germany.
	March Nazis open Dachau concentration camp near Munich. March 5 Eldorado Club in Berlin closed (large homosexual clientele). May 6 Nazis destroy Hirschfeld’s Institute for Sexual Research. May 10 Nazi hold large book burnings, including burning the thousands of books held in the Institute founded by Hirschfeld. Throughout 1933, criminal proceedings against homosexual men rise.
1934	June 30 – July 2 Night of the Long Knives – Hitler has Röhm murdered along with the other leaders of the SA. Treachery is cited as the reason, and his homosexuality is used as additional justification. Himmler made head of the SS and gains control of the SA and all concentration camps.
1935	June 28 Ministry of Justice revises Paragraph 175. Revision provides the legal basis for extending the Nazi persecution of homosexuals. Any act that could be construed as homosexual, “criminally indecent activities between men,” is punishable. Law broadened – now even an embrace between men is punishable. September 15 Nuremberg Laws – The Laws for the Protection of German Blood and German Honor – passed. Deprives German Jews of citizenship and rights. Magnus Hirschfeld dies in France.
1936	Olympics held in Berlin – some gay bars reopened and some anti-Semitic signs are removed. October 26 Himmler forms the Reich Central Office for Combating Abortion and Homosexuality. In show trials against independent youth groups and the Catholic church, the Nazis use homophobia as a tool of denunciation.
	Sachsenhausen concentration camp opens near Berlin – men arrested under the revised Paragraph 175 sent there and to similar camps being established. Himmler orders that any SS men caught in homosexual acts are to be put in concentration camps and then shot while trying to “escape.” Roma, Sinti, and Jehovah’s Witnesses are arrested and sent to concentration camps.
1937 – 1939	Peak years of homosexual persecution.
1938	April 4 Gestapo directive – men convicted of homosexuality will be incarcerated in concentration camps. November 7 Killing of Ernst vom Rath (a German diplomat in Paris and a suspected homosexual) by seventeen-year-old Jewish youth Herschel Grynszpan provides pretext for Kristallnacht.
	November 9 Kristallnacht – looting and destroying of Jewish property, beating and killing of Jews, and the arrest and internment of 20,000 Jewish men. Kristallnacht marks the beginning of the Nazi’s efforts to eliminate the Jews.
1939	September 1 Poland invaded – beginning of the Second World War. Austrian men convicted for homosexual offenses are deported to Mauthausen concentration camp. October Hitler initiates a decree empowering physicians to grant a “mercy” death to the mentally and physically challenged, or any person considered to be genetically defective.
1940	The deportation of German Jews to Poland commences. July 12 Himmler decrees that homosexuals (who have seduced more than one partner), after finishing their prison term, will be sent to concentration camps for preventive detention.
1941	November 15 Hitler orders death penalty for any SS officer engaged in homosexual behavior.
1942	The mass gassing of Jews begins in the death camps in occupied Poland – millions are murdered.
1944	Hitler occupies Germany’s former ally Hungary. The Nazis send 476,000 Hungarian Jews to Auschwitz.
1945	May End of war. Russians liberate Auschwitz, the British liberate Bergen-Belsen, and the Americans liberate Dachau. Hitler commits suicide in his Berlin bunker. October Beginning of the Nuremberg trials – Nazi persecution of homosexuals not addressed.
1950 – 1951	East Germany replaces the 1935 Nazi version of Paragraph 175 with the 1871 version. West Germany keeps the Nazi version in place.
1950s – 60s	Thousands of homosexuals are imprisoned in West Germany under the Nazi version of Paragraph 175.
1968	Paragraph 175 is liberalized in East Germany – homosexual acts between consenting adults are no longer criminalized.
1969	Paragraph 175 revised in West Germany
1973	Further revisions to Paragraph 175
1984	First commemorative plaque acknowledging homosexual prisoners installed in Mauthausen concentration camp.
1985	West German President Richard von Weizsäcker includes first public acknowledgement of homosexual persecution at the 40th anniversary of the end of the Second World War. Plaques installed at Dachau and Neuengamme concentration camps acknowledging the suffering of homosexual prisoners.
1987	Monument to the persecution of homosexuals erected in Amsterdam.
1989	Plaque installed in Berlin’s Nollendorfplatz area commemorating the persecution of gays (close to the Eldorado club – closed in 1933).
1994	Homosexual acts removed from legislation in Germany.
2001	Sydney, Australia – memorial erected to mark the persecution of homosexuals. German government formally apologizes to homosexual victims of the Nazis. Survivors have to the end of 2001 to come forward for restitution.
2008	May 27 Monument unveiled in Berlin dedicated to the homosexuals persecuted by the Nazis.
2011	August 3 Rudolf Brazda, last known gay man to have survived being sent to a concentration camp, dies.
2012	June 14 Gad Beck, last known gay Jewish survivor, dies.