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Behind the Aegis

(53,833 posts)
Mon Jun 10, 2019, 03:30 PM Jun 2019

Gay Auschwitz prisoner survived the Nazis but didn't escape persecution

The haunting story of a gay man who survived Auschwitz but continued to face persecution after the Nazi regime lays bare the heartbreaking reality of homophobic prejudice.

The Holocaust Memorial Museum has shared Karl Gorath’s troubling story to shine a light on LGBT history during Pride month.

Karl, from Bad Zwishenahn in northern Germany, was just 26 when he was sent to a concentration camp after his jealous lover denounced him as a homosexual.

He was detained under Paragraph 175, a law criminalising homosexuality in Nazi Germany.

Nazis treated homosexuality as a ‘sickness’ that had to be ‘cured’, and kept gay men in sub-camps away from other prisoners, to prevent the so-called ‘disease’ spreading. According to Nazi documents, approximately 100,000 men were arrested for homosexuality between 1933 and 1945.


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Gay Auschwitz prisoner survived the Nazis but didn't escape persecution (Original Post) Behind the Aegis Jun 2019 OP
🕯️ irisblue Jun 2019 #1
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