Nazi Persecution of Homosexuals: Holocaust Memorial Museum exhibit comes to UNC Asheville
Alongside the 6 million Jews killed during the Holocaust were several other marginalized populations. An estimated one million gay men lived in Germany at the time of Hitler’s rise to power. Nazi policy asserted that these men carried a degeneracy that threatened the “disciplined masculinity” of Germany, and Paragraph 175 of the German Penal Code was broadened in 1935 to criminalize and prosecute gay men on a larger scale. They were seen as a threat to the stability of the nation itself; a social ill that required elimination. By 1945 there had been an estimated 100,000 arrests made on charges of homosexuality, and anywhere from 5,000 to 15,000 of those men were sent to concentration camps. The number who perished there is unknown.
Through reproductions of historic photographs and documents, the traveling exhibition Nazi Persecution of Homosexuals 1933 – 1945 explores the rationale, means, and impact of the Nazi regime’s persecution of gay men during the Holocaust. Many survivors were afraid to come forward with their stories until decades after the war had ended, as homosexuality remained criminalized until 1969 and stigmatized far later. Barely acknowledged until recent years, they have been described by some as “forgotten victims” of the Nazi regime’s many atrocities. For the first time, their voices are lifted in this exhibition.
Nazi Persecution of Homosexuals 1933 – 1945 was produced by the US Holocaust Memorial Museum and is being hosted by the UNC Asheville Center for Diversity Education. The exhibit will be displayed in UNCA Ramsey Library from February 12 until April 7, 2017. Programming will include a February 23 screening of the documentary Paragraph 175 at The Fine Arts Theatre and an Interfaith Panel on Gender in Faith Traditions on April 4. For more information, please visit DiversityEd.org/Nazi-Persecution-Homosexuals.