Nazi Policy and Gendered Violence:

Throughout the Nazi Third Reich lesbians did actually exist. They were "perpetrators, victims, followers, and bystanders (Gisela Bock, Ordinary Women)” much like all other Germans caught up in Hitler's plans for the creation of the ultimate Master Race. While Nazi Policy set up rules in order to control everyone, those specific controls over women were the attempt to create a masculine world-view that would always maintain belief in the superiority of one master race over everyone else, and those men over every other living human in the world.

Those controls began with a slow suppression of physical limitations, then worked on mental and emotional controls until everything that makes up a human being was stripped from their lives. The pain moved from the physical realm to much more intangible realms that threatened the existence of the soul.

What this kind of policy took away from humanity is just an exaggerated version of what we see in everyday patriarchal life. There was not some great and immediate evil that didn't look like there might be some great benefits; there was just everyday life under an extreme masculine world-view that refused to acknowledge the differences between human beings; that refused to even consider the idea that everyone is human, and specifically that women are as valuable to the world as men are.

We call this patriarchal gender violence, and with Nazi policy we can see how it went beyond the physical realm to control the life and world views of women in general and the German lesbian in particular. It comes very close to total ethnocide, or loss of lesbian-oriented culture, and by extension, a loss of creativity and intellect in Germany, and a tremendous loss to the rest of the world as well.

Lesbians in the Weimar Republic 1900-1933

Gay and Lesbian Studies looks to Germany as the country where the gay community first became an organized public community. The first gay organization in Germany was the Scientific-Humanitarian Committee, opening May 15, 1897, and founded by Physician Magnus Hirschfeld, Publisher Max Spohr, Lawyer Erich Oberg, and Novelist Franz Josef von Bulow (Barry Adam, 19).

Because the German movement had so many academic and scientific ties, most women were left out of the academic arguments, but were very much a part of the public gay community. The movement spoke to both men (Adam, 19) and women. It offered them a lifeline for their emerging identities, and for isolated but aware lesbians and gay men, it influenced their thinking and helped lay the groundwork for movements that emerged after WWII (Adam, 19). Hirschfeld and the gay movement put high priority in overturning the German penal code law known as paragraph 175.

Paragraph 175 in 1872 penalized "lewd and indecent acts contrary to nature" between males, and provided for a maximum penalty of five years imprisonment. It originally only covered acts of anal intercourse, but was extended to cover "all acts similar to coitus (Dynes, 994)."

"Hirschfeld attempted to include women in the committee work (Adam, 22)," but there wasn't a lesbian movement on its own. Politically active German lesbians were usually active in two or more groups, a feminist / political group and a gay group, and maybe a social group or hobby group.

Feminist issues of the time were seeking more rights as women, but within traditional women's roles. Only a few women challenged gender roles in the early 1900's. Helene Stocker was one who "argued against the mainstream, declar(ing) that many of the attributes of femininity were the result of socialization and not women's inherent nature (Adam, 23).”

In 1904 Anna Ruling tried to get the women's movement to push for more education and professions for women. She felt that knowledge and economic freedom might help lesbians from having to rely on marriage for their support (Adam, 23).

It pushed the issues of women's feminism in directions a lot of women weren't really prepared for, and splits began to divide the movement. There were several feminists who focused their efforts on WWI and peace efforts, which may have been the straw that broke the camel's back for the German feminist movement. Things were moving too far away from traditional women's roles, and women didn't know what to do with that.

While by 1910 the women's movement purged it's organizations of radicals, it did "rally against a 1911 Reichstag committee proposal to extend Paragraph 175 to women (Adam, 28)." It is interesting to note that after the purge of radical feminists, the women's movement lost its strength, much like The National Organization of Women (in the U.S.) did in the late 1970's when it purged its organization of lesbians and other ethnic and minority groups.

"Lesbian organizations remained closely aligned with gay male forms throughout the Weimar Republic, with social clubs typically meeting in the same clubhouses and journals printed on the same presses as their male counterparts (Adam, 23-24)." It became obvious that gay organization was affecting change in the public community and in the law.

During the 1920's there were 14 bars and clubs for lesbians; a total of 60 meeting places in Berlin. Public organizations brought many women together, but the traditional views of women were still very much in force.

Groups were tolerated but not necessarily accepted. Hirschfeld and the Coalition for Reform of the Sex Crimes Code ...called for equality for women, liberalization of marriage laws, distribution of contraceptives, abortion reform, and abolition of illegitimacy."

It (also) sought to overturn Paragraph 175. In 1929 in a close vote a Reichstag committee approved a penal reform bill that would...drop the infamous paragraph from German Law (Adam, 27)."

Pre-war Nazi Policy 1933-1939

When Hitler came into power in 1933, he did several things simultaneously. He split up his chosen leaders and had them head specific committees to deal with the problems he wanted to work on immediately. One of his top priorities was expansion of the Aryan race. To do that he set up a serious split between the public and private spheres. "The Fuhrer told women that emancipation of women is only an invention of the Jewish intellect (Vera Laska, 263)."

Women in the home were exalted and his public propaganda made it easy for him to slowly move women out of the workforce. It was easy because he started with Jewish women, forcing them out of professional organizations and positions, out of public life.

Some other female professionals were as antisemetic as the Nazi's, so there was very little uproar, and some actual endorsement of Hitler's actions. Those same women quickly found out that they weren't immune to policies of the new regime. Professional women were also dismissed from their positions and relegated to the home. This would be the beginning of Kinder kuche kirche (Children, kitchen, church), and a world where biology would be your destiny if you were a woman.

Paragraph 175 was extended instead of abolished, and homosexual males became enemies of the state. Nazi- appointed groups joined with regular police forces to define new policy within the Third Reich. In the Third Reich it's the Fatherland that is of utmost importance. Women don't hold any major positions and don't make major decisions here.

The Reich Committee on Homosexuality and Abortion was created. After policy was clearly defined to those who would be enforcing it, the actions began in what can be described as an ingeniously systematic operation. Raids began in 1933 and continued all through the war. February 27, 1933 was the date of the first mass arrest of 10,000 opponents of the Nazi Government.

This was followed by raids of public organizations belonging to Jews. This was just the beginning of laws that slowly limit the lives of all German Jews. In 1933 Magnus Hirschfeld's Berlin Institute for Sexology was raided by the Gestapo. Books were taken and on May 10, 1933, there was a series of book burnings. These included books by Jewish authors and any author opposed to Nazism.

Gay and lesbian newspapers and magazines were banned. There were distributors who did keep them under the counter for those who asked, so if you had some knowledge of the lesbian community you could still get to a few of the magazines still publishing.

Every effort was made to limit the economic opportunities of several groups of people at once. Disappearances of Jewish and non-Jewish politically oriented women became commonplace. All women's associations and organizations were dissolved and there were no more public meeting places for lesbians and gay men. The thriving gay and lesbian subculture was lost to the shock of many German lesbians.

Those public meeting places held a tremendous amount of importance for women. It took women a lot longer to come to terms with their identities because they had to get past the traditional views of women and the fact that according to the world, they may have failed as a human being, because they failed at being a woman. It was overwhelmingly important to know that you weren't alone in your thoughts, and that maybe you weren't such a failure either. It was quite a shock to the system to have that validation of self ended just as you were beginning to understand yourself.

Individual pick-ups of Gypsies, vagrants, the handicapped, prostitutes and lesbians were common in the larger cities of Germany. While lesbians were never seen as a threat to the Nazi regime, those who were picked up early on were caught in raids or because of their political activities. There are no estimates of how many were picked (Dynes) up, held in protective custody and released, or held then sent to prison or labor camps.

There is evidence that more lesbians were picked up because of lesbianism than is currently thought. There was great argument in the idea of extending paragraph 175 to women. There was no real "agreement among the experts (Gunter Grau, 71)" as to the seriousness of lesbianism. "A rise in tribadism (Grau, 71)" brought up the question of distinction between "tribadism caused by circumstances (Grau, 71)" and "innate tribadism (Grau, 71)."

"It has been pointed out that this vice is prevalent in big cities (Grau,73)." The question is: "is tribadism at least as harmful as pederasty? Must both be prosecuted with equal severity (Grau, 79)?" This argument raged on through most of the 1930's so it may have been dependent on each individual's idea of the seriousness of lesbianism, whether they chose to pick up women or not.

In 1942 there was official policy in "a letter from the Reich Minister of Justice dated: Berlin 18 June 1942, Subject: unnatural acts between women:

The results so far of the discussions of the official Commission on Reich Criminal Law do not envisage making unnatural acts between women punishable. The main reasons for this are as follows: Homosexual activity between women, apart from prostitutes, is not so widespread as it is among men and, given the more intense manners of social intercourse between women, it more readily escapes public notice.

The greater resulting difficulty of establishing such behavior would involve the danger of unfounded testimony and investigations. One major reason for punishing sex offenses between men-- namely, the distortion of public life by the development of personal ties of dependence--does not apply in the case of women because of their lesser position in state and public employment.

Finally, women who indulge in unnatural sexual relations are not lost for ever as pro creative factors in the same way that homosexual men are, for experience shows that they later often resume normal relations (Dr. Schafer in Grau, 83-84).

The idea that lesbians "often resume normal relations (Grau, 84)" comes from a previous argument that focused on young people. Professor Mayer in debates about the extension of paragraph 175 to women argues that "we need to be clear that mutual onanism and and things reminiscent of lesbianism are simply widespread phenomena in adolescence which are certainly unwelcome, but which from the point of view of population policy it is not at all desirable to combat by means of criminal law” (Grau, 75-76).

"They cease to be impurities among young people as soon as a certain age difference is present. It is very hard to establish how prevalent such bad habits are among young people” (Grau, 76). The men mentioned above were closely involved in the heated debates about lesbianism of the time. Gunter Grau in Hidden Holocaust? lists both sides of the argument in great detail.

In 1933 there were 500,000 Jews in Germany. 150, 000 emigrated by 1938. Those that left were mostly male. No one actually believed that Nazi policy would lead to an attempted mass genocide of women and children, so they stayed behind. Sometimes those left behind suffered for it by being harassed and held hostage if the males of the family could be tracked by a paper trail (Lucy Dawidowitcz, 374).

Lesbian Jews were from the beginning of Hitler's power, subject to discrimination laws, isolation, loss of home, loss of family, ghetto life, concentration, and death camps.

On July 14, 1933 "The Law for the Prevention of Hereditarily Diseased Offspring is passed." Forced Sterilizations begin with those who are racially inferior on January 1, 1934. What criteria was used to determine racial inferiority? Did you have any of the following in your family who might be considered: mentally or physically defective, quarrelsome, alcoholic, promiscuous, or schizophrenic? Were there any prostitutes in your family? Are you any of these things? "200,000 to 350,000 persons were sterilized by 1939” (Bock, Racism and Sexism in Nazi Germany).

"In April 1934, Emma Fischer, a 29 year old unmarried and childless woman learned she was to be sterilized against her will (because previously she spent time at a psychiatric clinic and had been diagnosed as schizophrenic). She wrote a long letter of protest: "I do not understand that I should be sterilized, I have not done any moral or sexual wrong. A nervous mental disease can happen to every human being and is just like any other illness... I do not have sexual intercourse with men and I do not intend to marry” (Bock, Racism). She was sterilized anyway.

From the time of the creation of The Reich Committee on Homosexuality and Abortion, lists of information about those politicals in Weimar Republic that had been public information were augmented with lists gathered from personal reports from individuals who were given the opportunity to ruin someone if they had a personal vendetta, or thought that they might make more money by getting rid of a rival business.

Snitching on your neighbors was whole-heartedly encouraged. They also used Reports from Professional and Academic Organizations and Medical Organizations. This marks the first systematic usage of the "pink list" to track particular groups of people with the intention of harassment, forced reform, resettlement, or even death.

Through 1937 and 1938 there were mass operations against asocials (lesbians, prostitutes, political activists, thieves, and vagrants), homosexuals, and Jehovah's Witnesses.

Prison records estimate that 6 to 8 thousand women actually went through the process of being picked up, held for interrogation, then given what can only be described as a Kangaroo court trial where almost everyone was automatically seen as guilty. The only real question was: is the perpetrator reformable or not?

For the Jewish lesbian, that answer was automatically not. You were assigned a sentence in a labor factory or concentration camp early on, but by the nature of Nazi policy, if you were Jewish the ultimate answer was going to be extermination.

Jewish women could make Jewish babies who would grow up to be enemies of the state. These so-called inferior races are what Nazism wanted to delete from the world.

For the German lesbian, yes there could be reform as long as you controlled yourself and your political beliefs and did not get in the way of Nazism. In the beginning the same ideas were true for the German foreign ethnic lesbian. You might spend time in prison or concentration camp, but there did appear to be the possibility of a life after this experience for some people (Adam, 23).

By April 10, 1939 a written Report by the Gestapo lists 162,000 prisoners in protective custody. 27,396 were accused of political activities, and 112,432 persons were actually sentenced because of political activities (Holocaust Memorial Center).

The prison experience differed for women and men. The Prison records did list and try some women as lesbian, but Nazis really liked to play with people to keep them in line. They might convict you in one category and then place you in a camp under another category.

In the early years women were sent to one of six different prisons set up for them. Gotteszell prison in Wurtemberg was originally a vacant convent. Fifty-four women lived in two small cells. While food was barely adequate, and they had no space and privacy, this was actually the better prison experience. Its first director was schooled in the Weimar penal system and not in Nazi beliefs. There was a lot less brutality experienced here.

Stadelheim prison in Munich was more the typical prison experience for women: long detentions in solitary confinement for political prisoners, inadequate food, and the beginning signs of future Nazi brutality.

The Barnim Street Women's prison was in Berlin, Fuhlbuttel was near Hamburg, the Brauweiler Penitentiary was in Westphalia, and Hohenstein Castle was in Saxony.

Hohenstein was extremely brutal on women.26 1938 was the first year that foreigners were placed in German concentration camps, so for 5 years only Germans were subjected to the experiences of Nazism and the Nazi mindset.

By November 10, 1938 and the event known as Kristallnacht (The night of the broken glass), Hitler was set up and ready to carry out his true plans.

They were the same plans he lists in his book Mein Kampf (Hitler, 15). There was a forced emigration of 150,000 Jews, and on July 4, 1939 The Reich Citizenship Laws went into effect. People know this as the beginning of the Nuremberg Laws that sealed the fate of millions of European Jews.

In May of 1943 20,000 Jews deported from Germany and Berlin (Germany's capital), was declared free of Jews. There was not the total genocide that Hitler looked for. 1200 Jews managed to stay hidden and survived the war in Berlin itself.

At the end of the war there were 28,000 Jews left alive in all of Germany.28

In December of 1940 the National Socialist German Workers Party (The Nazis) "To guarantee the cleanliness of German blood" ordered factories to establish houses of prostitution for foreign laborers from allied countries and workers from the west. Only foreigners are permitted to be prostitutes.

By December of 1944 an estimated 30,000 people were murdered in Hartheim under the euthanasia project. Many lesbians were euthanized because so many were sorting out their identities when Hitler came to power. They were typically young rebellious women whose families no longer knew how to control them and felt they were locking them away for their safety.

Concentration Camps

The Camp system included 1800 camps run by the SS that were located in Germany and parts of Europe. The concentration camps were divided into three classes: labor, hard labor, and death camp.

They created a prison and camp hierarchy that also kept a lot of people from getting out of line. It was just one more way to control large masses of people. They did this by providing outer physical markings to categorize prisoners.

The pink triangle denoted the male homosexual. An upside down black triangle was an asocial female (the lowest in prison hierarchy), a red triangle was the political communist marking, green was for criminals, brown for gypsies, purple for Jehovah's Witnesses, and the yellow Mogen David or star stood for Jew (Adam, 57).

Green and red triangle inmates tended to get easier supervisory jobs. Brown, yellow, and pink triangles were subjected to greater violence and starvation (Adam, 57-58).

Factory Camps were a world unto themselves. In factory camps men and women were placed in the same area without fences or partitions."

There was always an established hierarchy of inmates, and survival of the experience depended on age, health and occupation. Life here could always be improved through bribery. Officially inmates received twice a day: three quarters of a liter of watery soup with dried potato flakes, two hundred grams of bread baked partly with these same potato flakes, ersatz coffee, and occasionally a dollop of jam.

Inmates got one set of clothing. When it wore out it was replaced with paper sacks. instead of shoes, the prisoners received wooden clogs. They were not given utensils, soap, or towels” (Felicja Karav, Women in Forced Labor Camps).

In all SS camps men and women were housed separately. Concentration camps for women operated from 1933-1945. Moringen was the first. It did not begin operations based on the male Dachau model camp. Other camps include: Papenburg, Sonnenburg (closed April 1934), Lichtenburg (May 1939) closed. The women who were still there were transferred to Ravensbruck).

Brandenburg (closed April 1934 because of "improper usage of protective custody"). Political prisoners were sent to Brauweiler and Moringen (Sybil Milton, 302-303).

The concentration camp experience

Many of the survivors who share their stories say that women bonded with each other to help themselves survive. Sometimes it might be two or three individuals, and sometimes larger familial groups were created.

One story talks about an entire group of inmates who when first arriving were inclined to keep sane by carrying on with what might be seen as regular household duties. They kept things very clean and organized, and that work gave them the sense of comfort that they needed to have early on in their captivity.

Later on, that same group learned an important trick: They cut bits of their remaining hair off and piled it in small areas near the entrances to their huts. It didn't take long for lice and other vermin to make a home for themselves there. The piles were out of the way of the true living space the women had created, and they served to give the women a little bit more privacy. It kept out anyone who essentially didn't really want to be in there.

Women were very creative in ways of surviving and even meeting some few emotional needs. Every camp, even the death camps, had a clandestine life that went on for the inmates. They continued aspects of art, culture, and learning.

If they could, some even continued practicing their chosen religion. A few practiced quiet Subversion and Sex was a part of camp life, but a majority of survivors tell us that it was not common to a majority of the inmates.

It was more common to those higher up on the prison hierarchical scale because for most inmates, the highest priority in their lives was food. The food was inadequate and most were starving. Food before sex. If the most basic human needs were being met, then you might think about sex. Those higher on the scale like foreign workers, prison elite (this group included some political prisoners) guards, and Nazis were more inclined to be in that position.

Because food was such a scarce commodity inmates could and did use sex as a bargaining chip. It could be between inmates, or between an inmate and kapos, guards, or the Nazis themselves. The person who was alone in a camp could find the need to rely on this arrangement to survive. There were cases where inmates were blackmailed into this situation as well (Dynes).

A number of camps had a brothel that was filled with those listed as prostitutes and asocials (lesbians, thieves, and other criminals and vagrants). Nazi beliefs did not define lesbianism as irredeemable behavior, but for those "real" lesbians, those seducers of straight and proper German women were asocial to the productivity of the Third Reich.

They were out of control, much like prostitutes, which may be one reason why lesbians and prostitutes are very tied together within the Nazi world-view. Since they thought of them together anyway, it only seemed fitting to send lesbians (as asocials) to camp brothels to serve out their sentences.

"Else (Born in 1917) worked in Potsdam as a waitress. She was apparently detained because of her homosexuality and the sent to Ravensbruck. From there she was sent to Flossenburg. Presumedly she had been forced into prostitution at Ravensbruck and served in the Flossenburg brothel.... The Nazis were especially keen on putting lesbian women into brothels. They thought it would get them back on the right path" (Schoppmann, Position of Lesbian Women in the Nazi Period, 14).

Historian Claudia Schoppmann's argument about lesbians in brothels also includes the knowledge that the women sent to the brothels could be forced into them based on Nazi whims, or enticed into it with offers of freedom for "a period of service" The "SS estimated (that) six months" was about how long a woman could last as a 37 "camp prostitute." (Schoppmann, Days of Masquerade, 21-22).

At the end of six months time an individual disappeared much like Else. "She was probably deported to Auschwitz." Records that do exist suggest that none of the women were given their freedom. They were all killed (Schoppmann, Days, 22).

Records Research on this aspect of camp life are difficult to pin down. They are either unavailable, missing, or been destroyed. There haven't been any interviews done with a woman who might have survived this experience. Even Else's story comes from someone else-- a gay man who in Flossenburg was forced to have sex with women Schoppmann, Days, 22).

Inmate Physicians Nadja Persic from Yugoslavia and Maria Grabska from Poland should always be remembered for some very heroic deeds at Ravensbruck. They saved prisoners from death selection by providing false diagnosis of diseases, and Grabska personally tried to remove or change tattoos on Austrian women slated for death" (Milton, 316).

There is no reference that indicates that these Austrian women may have been lesbians, but it should be remembered that in Austria, paragraph 175 did actually include lesbians within the scope of that law.

Death Camps

Kulmhof also known as Chelmno in Germany was the first operative death camp. It was intended for Jews from the Lodz Ghetto, and opened for business on December 8, 1941. Belzec near Lublin opened in February of 1942, Sobibor, and Auschwitz-Birkenau.

Also include the labor camp Majdanek (set up in 1940) near Lublin as it was transformed into a death camp in 1942, and the labor camp Treblinka (set up in 1941) was turned into a death camp in 1942 (Dawidowitcz). The other two death camps were Sobibor, and Auschwitz-Birkenau.

The Death Camp Experience

The "Secretaries of Death (Lore Shelley)" were a group of prisoners in Section 2 of the Auschwitz-Birkenau camp administration. They thought of themselves as the Himmelfahrts Kommando (the on-the-way-to-heaven squad) because they felt that the secrets they knew were too important. Not one of these prisoners expected to live. But some of them survived. They even managed to smuggle out valuable information about women in camps that would have been lost to us forever.

These women and men were the record keepers who tried not to allow important information to pass them by. They saved everything they could, and recorded as much as humanly possible. They smuggled information out of camps whenever they got the chance to, and because of their work, we have records of atrocities that no one can claim never actually occurred.

These men and women have many personal emotional and mental problems today. They were privy to way too much information about what was happening to all the inmates, and they were overloaded, almost daily bombarded with it all. It has taken incredible tolls on the physical, mental and emotional levels of their lives (Shelley).

German Lesbians at Home During and After the War.

Lesbians in Germany who escaped the concentration camps lived in a variety of different ways during the war. They were married, hid out, conformed to the norms and buried their true selves, practiced many different quiet subversions, and even some not so quiet in-your-face resistance.

As early as 1933 gay men and women were using the survival technique of "friendship marriages," or marriages of convenience in order to protect both parties from public harm.

There were lesbians who were German Nationals, who found their worlds narrowing on an almost daily basis. They attended Volunteer and Youth leagues. Official records attest to the fact that there were many who found themselves charged with lesbianism while in the military and volunteer organizations like the Reich Labor Service for Female Youth (Schoppmann, Position of Lesbian Women in the Nazi Period, 13).

There were German lesbians like the artist Gertrude Sandmann (1893-1981), who remained hidden throughout the war, and lived to give us her tremendous art afterward (Schoppmann, Days, 76-91).

A number of women survivors have said that by 1934 at least in the larger cities, there was a growing sense of danger that Jewish men and women easily picked up on. There were 1200 Jews in Berlin who survived the entire war.

Most of those who survived did so because of the large and small kindnesses of a great number of people whose deeds may go on unknown forever. How they survived was a totally unorganized system of underground networks provided by the few who were able and willing to help in hiding people, and in getting food.

The way most survived was through their friends, and the friends of those friends.

The big issues in life became a place to hide and enough food to eat. Germans were given ration cards that allowed individuals to have so much food per month. Further into the war, there are instances when the loss of ration cards could literally mean death to an individual, or to families.

One Jewish lesbian has been immortalized in the 1999 film "Aimee and Jaguar." This film is about the true story of Lilly Wust and Felice Schragenheim. Felice was living in Berlin under a false identity when Wust (who was married to a Nazi) fell in love with her. Wust hid her and several other Jewish women in her Berlin apartment.

In the summer of 1944 Gestapo arrested Felice after she and Lilly returned from a day out. Felice was deported to Theresienstadt Camp in Czechoslovakia. Later she was shipped to another camp and all trace of her was lost. Berlin authorities pronounced her dead in 1948. Wust tried to see Felice after her arrest but said that it is "absurd that her appearance at Theresienstadt might have signed Felice's death Warrant" (Clive Freeman, Israel to Honor 85 year old Woman Who Hid Jews…).

The articles don't disclose information about how the Gestapo might have known where Felice was, so we don't really know how true her statements are here.

German Lesbian resistance

Women are statistically over-represented in the resistance area. Experts agree that there were two types of resistance: 1) organized networks linked by a common ideology and 2) autonomous acts of non-compliance. Quiet subversion was very much a female tool for survival, but there were many who refused to be quiet about it (Laska, 231).

The typical woman was single and not in the public eye. These individuals were able to do great work because few knew of their existence. Later on in the camps, their stories were a tremendous source of hope for those still trapped in the Nazi system. These legends circulated from camp to camp and incited other camp inmates on to their own acts of rebellion.

There are plenty of atypical lesbians in the field of resistance as well. One special woman has lived to give us the record of her prison experience. Hilde Radusch (1903-1994), was a labor representative for the post office. She wrote articles for the "Frauenwacht" the newspaper of the Red Women's and Girl's Association.

As a Communist and former city councillor "she planned to go underground" when she knew the Gestapo started looking for political activists." She didn't make it though. She helped set up illegal post office operations before she was arrested on April 6, 1933. While the Gestapo was coming for her, she managed to destroy her notes about postal operations. She was arrested and taken for interrogation. She didn't say anything and was held in "protective custody."

Her first imprisonment was the police headquarters at Alexanderplatz. At Alexanderplatz there were 36 women prisoners in one room. She relates a story about two other women prisoners who were giving back rubs and were very quickly removed from the prison. There is no mention of their fate (Schoppmann, Days, 33).

She was transferred to the Barnim Street Women's Prison "Where approximately two hundred "political prisoners" were held. She and the other prisoners fought for better living conditions while in the prison. In September of 1933 she was released. She moved to a different district but was continuously observed by Gestapo. She kept a low profile, but continued small acts of rebellion whenever possible (Schoppmann, Days, 33).

In 1944 a friend warned her about her "imminent arrest" when Heinrich Himmler ordered that all representatives of the former labor and mainstream parties...be taken into "protective custody." She and her partner fled to a small village outside of Berlin and lived out the war in a "primitive wooden shed" (Schoppmann, Days, 37).

Continuing Policy after the War

After the war all signs of the early gay and lesbian rights movement of Germany were totally lost. Public organization of the gay community had to begin all over again, and that has proved to be an almost herculean task. Paragraph 175 remained a part of West German law until 1969 (Roberta Bennett U.S. Holocaust Museum, 3).

In 1935 the Nazi regime extended it even further than the 1929 version. You could even be picked up for fantasies that related to gay male sex. Thinking about it made you just as guilty as actually doing it.

On May 10, 1957 that same Nazi law was upheld by the Federal Constitutional Court, on the pretext that "homosexual acts indisputably offend the moral feelings of the German people” (Dynes, 945)."

Homosexual men went from concentration camp to German prison. Asocials and prostitutes might have made their way back home before they were picked up and sent to prison to also finish out their so-called prison terms. Not only did Germany destroy their gay community, so did the rest of the world. Allied attitudes were no more accepting of Jews, gays, prostitutes, and lesbians than the Nazis were.

DP Camps or displaced persons camps were just as traumatic for inmates as the Nazi camp system was. Earl Harrison did the definitive study of DP Camps in order to let Americans know what was really happening. Inmates were still homeless, still inadequately fed, sick and getting sicker, and with limited clothing available were often forced to wear Nazi uniforms (The Harrison Report, 456-463). There were no psychological aids for the inmates, or those who first found them. The military was totally unprepared for the real situation.

In the late 1960's and early 1970's a tremendous change took place in Germany. In the former GDR (1968) and in the Federal Republic of Germany (1969) homosexuality was decriminalized (Aart Hendriks, The Third Pink Book, 57).

Attempts were made to form large organizations but they failed after a short period of time. When the Berlin Wall came down East-German gays and lesbians were playing catch-up in terms of activism. There were church organizations and homosexual clubs, but the repressive atmosphere they were under was not conducive to activism on a national level.

There were no legal supports for these groups, so they looked to their West-German counterparts to give them ideas on what to do next. There is a re-emerging gay rights movement building here, but they face many battles to earn the right to simply live their lives according to their nature.

West-German groups were a little less repressed, but these groups were also merely being tolerated, not totally accepted. There are currently 50 gay and lesbian groups and 2 national homosexual organizations in Germany: The Bundesverband Homosexualitat (BVH), and Schwulenverband in Deutcschland (SVD).

They are working on educating each other, the general population, and those in power so that they will eventually be able to have some legal power in terms of human rights issues (Hendriks, 16).

Effects of law on German Lesbians today.

German law offers a series of constitutional basic rights that parallels U.S. Rights. Individual German Basic Rights are established in Articles 1-19. These include: protection of human dignity; rights of liberty; equality before the law; freedom of: faith, conscience, creed, expression, movement, assembly, and association; marriage and family, illegitimate children; Education; Privacy of letters, posts, and telecommunications; right to choose occupation; liability to military service; Inviolability of the home; Property rights; Deprivation of citizenship (German Basic Rights Articles 1-19).

Sexuality is not mentioned in the Basic Rights. The 1992 constitution of Land Brandenburg mentions sexual orientation as one of the forbidden grounds for discrimination. Homosexuals are allowed to serve in the military, but are not considered to be suitable for senior positions in the armed forces.

German society today can be said to be moderately tolerant. "A majority of the population is in favor of gay and lesbian rights, however there is a sharp increase in physical violence in the former GDR related to growing support for neofacist and ultranational groups” (Hendriks, 283).

While basic rights involve all humanity of a particular country, human traditions, patriarchy, religious attitudes, and just plain bigotry don't allow those rights to apply to everyone equally. We see it every day in the 12 U.S. And we can see it in current actions in Germany.

A legal ruling on October 13, 1993 stated that: "Homosexual couples have no right to marry under German Law. It ruled that marriage was by definition between a man and a woman, though homosexuals were free to live together” (Karl Sruhe, Gay Couples Can’t Marry in Germany, Court Rules).

In June 1996 Germany's post-war Republic sent 160 police... some in full riot gear and with guns drawn into the ZOOM disco in Halle....The masked police officers ordered everyone to lie down on the floor and those who didn't respond were beaten with batons and bar stools. The 70 or so patrons were handcuffed and not allowed to talk or move for up to four hours. A number of guests were strip-searched and all were subjected to threatening, insulting, and violent behavior on the part of the police..... All the patrons..... were filmed by police video cameras?"

Police claim they were looking for drugs. They found only one ecstacy tablet in the intire search. It just so happens that the raid took place the day before the first Christopher Street Day (Lesbian/Gay Pride) Demonstration was going to be held (IGLHRC, Gay and Lesbian Bar Raided in Halle).

"Recently in Bavaria, a notoriously conservative area of Germany, the police have been stamping passports of gay men with "Homo-strich" and "Homo-szene." These terms indicate involvement in the gay scene or gay prostitution. The gay community in Germany feels this is reminiscent of when Jews' passports, during the Nazi regime were stamped with a "J." A German police spokesperson apologized but offered no explanations (Adam Starchild, History Repeats?)."

One other great concern is the continued usage of "pink lists," or police files of known gays and lesbians. They were perfected by Nazi policy and used extensively during WWII. The unified German Republic is still using it today to control the lives of out gays and lesbians. The U.S. has used versions of this during McCarthyism, The Civil Rights Movement, the Cold War, and the Gay and Lesbian Rights Movement.

The Effects of Nazi Policies in Holocaust History

There was a neutral gendering of the holocaust experience that focused Jews, who were the largest group involved. The experts on Holocaust History were those men who wrote of their own experience or who tried to understand and write about the entire experience of all holocaust victims.

Unfortunately very few of the works spoke to the experiences of any woman who suffered at the hands of Nazis. Even now the holocaust literature available on women is still being gathered. "Apart from memoirs, partisan literature, television productions, and token references, women have been largely invisible in the current historiography on the subject (Milton, Women and Holocaust, 297)."

If women are only beginning to be seen as human beings in their own right, where does this put the lesbian in terms of holocaust history, especially if in terms of our hierarchical mindset lesbians are in order behind gay men?

Holocaust professionals continually argue that homosexuality was and still is illegal in some countries and some states in the U.S. and that these people should be in prison. After all, they broke the laws of the time, and continue to do so without any sense of great remorse.

What they might not tell you is that the homosexuals and prostitutes released at the end of the war left the camps only to be taken straight to prison in some cases, or sent home first then sent to prison after they made their way home. These men and women are not talked about in holocaust literature. Sex still seems to be a taboo even though it was forced on these two groups continually throughout Nazi rule (Grau, 71).

Homosexual experiences are being chronicled, but are still male only. Homosexual men, those known as "pink triangles" spent a life in prison at the bottom of the prison scale. They got the worst jobs, paid with their lives in the most amount of pain and degradation possible, and were the subjects of terrible experimentation. This was indeed a persecuted group of individuals. But they are not alone.

We have gypsies, the handicapped, lesbians, and prostitutes who barely rate a paragraph in books chronicling holocaust experiences. There are lesbian oriented women's materials making their way into archives, but work needs to be done to put them together and translate them so they can be added to Holocaust history.

In holocaust history lesbians are invisible to the average person because they are still invisible to the professionals in the field. "Even with the newly established Holocaust Memorial Museum...one is unable to find any accurate information on lesbians. The Encyclopedia of the Holocaust is accessible via the museum's computer center. Search commands involving the word "lesbian" execute the release of information that focuses exclusively on male homosexuals (Amy R. Elman, Triangles and Tribulations, 2)."

Nazism simply took the patriarchy that most American women know today and multiplied it to its most extreme degree: the true secondary placing of women with in the world. To make it happen, great physical force had to be used. The Nazis knew that wasn't enough. They used mental and emotional force to not only control women's bodies but to control their minds and ultimately their souls as well.

The closet we talk and joke about today was a literal reality for the German Lesbian. These women spent, days, months, even years of their lives locked up in closets or prisons of one kind or another. To move from prisons, to work camps or to hide in a tiny room for years was a life draining, mind numbing experience. Their physical worlds really did become very narrow life-space.

To be unlucky enough to get put into a concentration or death camp was an ultimate degradation of that human female self. Some women--particularly lesbians and prostitutes ended up in the many camp and factory brothels that were created. They spent the last few months of their lives forced to continually have sex with men. Then when they could no longer go on, they were sent to their deaths.

German lesbians briefly found themselves, were forced to hide that self, then continually had that identity denied to them. They lie hidden behind other categories that seem to be considered more important within a patriarchal hierarchy of categories. Even today, German lesbians are women, or gay before they are lesbians. That absolute denial of personhood has the power to destroy one's life long before a physical death does.

To have your life experience denied at every possible level: the physical the mental and the emotional is ethnocide; the loss of a culture of women who have to fight daily to find themselves and their identities in a world that doesn't want them to exist in the first place.

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