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The representatives of the various sexual minorities persecuted during National Socialism were humiliated, abused and killed, and later remained completely forgotten. 

"Now get rid of your balls, you homosexual pig" - with these words a warden at the Sachsenhausen concentration camp in August 1939 mockingly addressed Otto Giering, who had previously been forcibly castrated.

Even before he ended up in the concentration camp, the 22-year-old man was twice convicted of homosexual relations and sent to a labor camp.

The harrowing story of the tailor's apprentice from Hamburg is included in the book Medicine and Crime.

Gearing survived his stay in the camp, but his health was ruined.

He died in 1976 - a few months before his 60th birthday.

He was one of between 10,000 and 15,000 homosexual men herded into German concentration camps by the Nazis.

In Sachsenhausen alone they numbered approximately 1,000 people - more than in any other concentration camp.

Along with Jews and Roma, they are among the groups most abused by guards. 

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"After 1945, homosexual relations remained a crime under the law in both German states. In fact, the liberalization of the rules began much earlier in the GDR than in West Germany. For a long time, the rehabilitation of other groups of Nazi victims took priority over this one of homosexuals. In East Germany, for example, it was the political prisoners, and in the West - the conservative resistance and later the Jews," explains Sachsenhausen Memorial spokesman Horst Seeferens.

The roots of discrimination and persecution of homosexuals go far back in history.

Different sexual orientation was punished long before the National Socialists came to power in 1933.

Paragraph 175 of the Penal Code of 1871, when the first German Reich was founded, defined "unnatural intercourse" between men as part of the so-called "crimes against morals".

In 1935, the Nazis tightened the rules, introducing paragraph 175a, extending the law to all other "indecent acts" between men.

Lesbians also become subject to surveillance and control by the authorities.

They have been relatively spared from the point of view of criminal law.

On the territory of almost the entire Reich, intimate relations between women were not treated as an act punishable.

The only exception is Austria after its accession to Nazi Germany in 1938. However, it should be borne in mind that the fate of lesbians in concentration camps is much less studied than that of homosexual men.

Women were mostly imprisoned as "asocial", homeless, prostitutes or as attracting attention with their "immoral lifestyle".

Despite all this, the pressure to persecute homosexuals continues to grow - especially when it comes to men.

After the Nazis closed the places for socializing gays and lesbians in 1933, they also destroyed the Institute for Sexual Science in Berlin, founded in 1918 by Magnus Hirschfeld, writes DW.

In 1936, the regime even established a "Reich Central Office for Combating Homosexuality and Abortion".

During the time of National Socialism, about 100,000 investigative cases were opened for such "crimes" and about 50,000 men were convicted.

After the end of National Socialism, Paragraph 175 remained in force in both the Federal Republic and the GDR.

It was finally abolished only 4 years after the Unification - in 1994.

The Bundestag did not rehabilitate homosexuals convicted by the Nazis until 2002, when most of them were no longer alive.

Near the parliament building, in the heart of Berlin, since 2008 there is a memorial dedicated to the memory of the representatives of this community persecuted by the National Socialists.

the rights of homosexuals

victims of the holocaust