This exhibition examines the rationale, means, and impact of the Nazi regime’s efforts to rid Germany of male homosexuality. Following an overview of the emerging urban gay community in the 1910s to the early 1930s, the exhibition discusses Nazi racial and social ideals that formed the basis for the opposition to male homosexuality.

The core of the exhibition focuses on the police terror that led to the arrest of some 100,000 homosexual men, 50,000 of whom were convicted and imprisoned during the Nazi period. Also presented is the brutal and often fatal incarceration of an estimated 5,000 to 15,000 men in concentration camps. The exhibition concludes with the postwar aftermath and Germany’s memorials to the homosexual victims of Nazi persecution.

Photo: Richard Grune, German artist sent to Nazi concentration camps. Courtesy of the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum.