![]() They obtained the worst labor assignments, were punished, tortured and often rejected by their fellow prisoners. These prisoners were identified in concentration camps with a pink triangle and were treated, together with Jewish prisoners, as the lowest of the groups. The total number of people classified and imprisoned as “homosexuals” during the Nazi period is estimated between 5,000 and 15,000. The first group of men convicted as “homosexuals” had been sent as early as 1933 to Fuhlsbuttel concentration camp for a “re-educational process”. A central Reich Agency to Fight Homosexuality and Abortion was opened at Gestapo headquarters in Berlin in 1936. Numerous films with this view of homosexuality were produced for propaganda purposes. In the 1930s and 1940s the government presented homosexuality as legally, socially and morally deviant. Ideologically, the Nazis believed that homosexuality was a contagious disease and that homosexual persons were a threat not only on the ideal of Aryan race, but on the social policy which needed them as reproductive elements and serve in the armed forces. During the Nazi period, this law remained in effect and the persecution of this group increased. From 1871, male homosexuality was illegal in Germany according to article 175 of Penal Code. We can identify discrimination of this population at three different levels: institutional, social and personal.Ī) Institutional. Homosexual women were not usually legally prosecuted, even though in some cases they could be imprisoned as “anti-social individuals”. This is particularly true for homosexual men who were strongly repressed. National Socialism in Germany was a period during which people were persecuted if they did not conform to social norms. This is collected, in LGTB people, in the Meyer minority stress model, including experiences of prejudice, expectations of rejection, hiding, concealing, internalized homophobia and ameliorative coping processes. Recent studies show that individual, social and institutional discrimination against LGTB people may increase risk of mental diseases, substance abuse and suicide. Lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender populations (LGTB) have been identified as being at high-risk for suicide for over last decades. We conclude that committing suicides in Sachsenhausen was a common practice, although accurate data may be impossible to obtain. However, our study has several limitations: not all suicides are registered some murders were covered-up as suicides most documents were lost during the war or destroyed by the Nazis when leaving the camps and not much data is available from other camps to compare. Based on a population of 1,200 prisoners classified as homosexuals, this allows us to calculate a suicide rate of 1,167/100,000 (over the period of eight years) for this population, a rate 10 times higher than for global inmates (111/100,000). Until the end of World War II, there are 14 death certificates which state “suicide” as cause of death of prisoners classified as homosexuals, all of them men aged between 23 and 59 years and of various religions and social strata. Original death certificates and autopsy reports were reviewed. Data was collected from the archives of Sachsenhausen Memorial and the International Tracing Service in Bad Arolsen. This collective was especially repressed by the Nazi authorities. This study analyzes deaths classified as suicides by inmates in this camp, classified as homosexuals, both according to the surviving Nazi files. More than 200,000 people were detained there under Nazi rule. Sachsenhausen (Oranienburg, Germany) was a concentration camp that operated from 1936 to 1945. Living conditions in Nazi concentration camps were harsh and inhumane, leading many prisoners to commit suicide.
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