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These Gypsy children were
sent to Auschwitz
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In addition to Jews and
the mentally and physically handicapped, the Nazis targeted several other
groups for elimination. These included the Roma and the Sinti (Gypsies);
homosexual men; and, to a lesser extent, Jehovah's Witnesses. The reason for
their persecution was that, in one way or another, all of these groups threatened
the purity of the German master race.
The
Nazis' treatment of the Roma and Sinti in many ways mirrored their treatment of
the Jews: Gypsies were considered racially inferior and targeted for genocide. A
special camp was set up for them within Birkenau, where families were permitted
to stay together until they were exterminated together. In the meantime, Dr.
Josef Mengele performed brutal pseudoscientific experiments on many of the inmates.
The Roma word for the Holocaust is Porajmos, meaning "the
devouring."
With
regard to gays, the Nazis were able to take advantage of the same sort of long-standing
hatred and prejudice that many Germans felt toward Jews. In 1871, the year of
Germany's unification, Paragraph 175 was added to the Criminal Code, stating,
"Unnatural fornication, whether between persons of the male sex or of humans
with beasts, is to be punished by imprisonment." During the sexually
liberated Weimar period, an active campaign was undertaken to remove Paragraph
175 from the Criminal Code, but the effort failed. Thus, when the Nazis came to
power in 1933, they didn't have to enact new laws to imprison homosexual men; they
merely had to enforce the law already on the books.
Nazis
prosecuted homosexual activity because they thought it weakened Germany,
contributing to the country's moral decay, declining birthrate, and overall
insecurity. During the twelve years of Nazi rule, as many as fifty thousand men
were prosecuted under Paragraph 175. Some were jailed briefly, and others
forced to join the military. The worst offenders, numbering about fifteen
thousand, were placed in "protective custody" and sent to
concentration camps, where they were forced to wear pink triangles on their
prison uniforms. Lesbian activity, on the other hand, existed in an official
limbo, neither condoned nor criminalized. As historian Claudia Schoppmann has
noted, because not many women moved in Nazi circles of power, "it was
considered superfluous to criminalize lesbians."
Because
Jehovah's Witnesses weren't considered racially inferior, they weren't targeted
for destruction. Yet, because their faith prohibited them from swearing oaths to
Germany, they were persecuted; imprisoned; tortured; and, at times, executed. (‘The
Bedside Baccalaureate’, edited by David Rubel)
