Homosexuals

The growing political influence of the LGTBQ+ movement has led to efforts to publicize the victim-status of homosexuals in National-Socialist Germany, who were said to also be targeted for systematic extermination. Following the general pattern of Holocaust hagiography, the number of homosexuals alleged to have died in National-Socialist concentration camps has been extremely exaggerated over time, with some claiming as many as 500,000 victims or even more. Today, some researchers are reluctantly acknowledging figures as low as 5,000 victims – a reduction of 99%.

In pre-war Germany, and also in post-war Germany for more than two decades, homosexuality was a crime, as it was in many other countries – such as, for example, Great Britain and the USSR. Between 50,000 and 60,000 homosexual males were sentenced by German courts between 1933 and 1944. After having served their prison term, a minority of these – some 10,000 to 15,000 – were kept in “preventive custody” in concentration camps. These were mostly repeat offenders, male prostitutes, transvestites and paedophiles. Considering the high mortalities in some of the wartime camps, homosexuals fell victim to these conditions at similar rates as other inmates, rather than to a policy specifically targeting them. (See Wickoff 2023 for details.)