Nazis’ solution for gays and lesbians remembered

If being Jewish was a capital crime in Nazi Germany, being gay was akin to a class-"A" felony.

The Nazis routinely harassed, imprisoned and executed thousands of gay men and women almost from the moment Hitler came to power in 1933.

Now, that lesser-known story from the Holocaust comes to the Bay Area with the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum's traveling exhibition "Nazi Persecution of Homosexuals 1933-1945." The exhibit will be at the San Francisco Main Library's Skylight Gallery from June 18 through Aug. 18.

Ted Phillips is deputy director of exhibitions for the Holocaust Museum and served as curator of the exhibit coming to the Bay Area.

"While [the museum's] focus is on the murder of 6 million Jews," he says, "we go to some lengths to describe Nazi persecution of other groups specifically targeted for action because they were outside of what they thought the ideal society should be."

The exhibit itself consists of 30 panels on which are displayed 250 photographs, documents, art reproductions and texts explaining the history and context of Nazi persecution of gays and lesbians.

Starting with the 1920s through the end of the war, Phillips sought to depict the destruction of Germany's gay community. To assemble the exhibit, Philips consulted with 40 institutions around the world, including Berlin's gay museum, the Schwules.

"The Weimar era was one of social experimentation," says Phillips, "a time when Berlin was rapidly moving from rural to urban. We have this incorrect notion that Weimar Germany accepted gays, but that was not true. They were tolerated in a big city like Berlin, but just because one city accepted them didn't mean the country did."

About 300,000 gays and lesbians lived in prewar Berlin, a city of 4 million. There were more than 300 bars and social clubs serving the gay community. One of Hitler's first orders was to shut down those establishments.

Gay men were hounded throughout the Nazi era. Many were castrated and many died in the camps. But, says Phillips, unlike Jews, gays were not earmarked for extermination.

"The Nazis saw [homosexuality] as a biology issue with a negative impact on population growth," he says. "There was no notion to address it as an immoral activity. The whole Nazi approach was medical pseudoscience and eugenics. They thought homosexuality was a contamination of German blood."

Moreover, according to Phillips, lesbians were treated more leniently. Not because Nazis liked lesbians, but because all women were considered second-class citizens, mere breeders for the "master race" (something lesbians could do as well).

Gay men, on the other hand, posed much more of a threat to the Nazi worldview. "The fear was that gay men would have an impact on male-dominated government institutions," notes Phillips, "that a gay man would spread and infect these groups with feminization or demasculinization."

Phillips expects Bay Area residents will be as impressed by the exhibit as have visitors in St. Louis, Los Angeles and other cities that have hosted it. "We are getting a good response," he says. "Every time I see it, I'm dumbstruck that I had the opportunity to do this for the nation's memorial to the Holocaust. I continue to be very touched."




"Nazi Persecution of Homosexuals 1933-1945" runs June 18 - Aug. 18 at the San Francisco Main Library's Skylight Gallery, 100 Larkin St. Information: (415) 557-4277.