11—LMBTQ.

In addition to the ’races’ declared inferior - Jews, Gypsies - National Socialism also persecuted homosexuals, especially men, on moral grounds.

Symbols worn in concentration camps.

The persecution of gays in the Third Reich

In Germany, homosexuals (mainly men) have been a persecuted group since the early Middle Ages. Although Section 175 of the 1871 prohibited sexual intercourse between men (which could lead to imprisonment), homosexuality was long accepted - at least tacitly. In addition, there were several movements to abolish the law in the 20th century, and in the 1920s and 1930s German gay bars and clubs proliferated like mushrooms.

This vibrant subculture was brought to an abrupt end by the National Socialists, who were convinced that homosexuality would lead to the disintegration of society. Gays did not fit into their notions of a racial purity, morality, the family and the importance of having children, and their ideologues argued that homosexuals were a threat to public morality, undermining pure morality, and that the 'problem' had to be uprooted. The Nazis mainly persecuted gay men, but in the later stages of the war they also deported lesbians and sent them to re-education programmes. 

On 30 of June 1934, which we now recognize as the Night of the Long Knives, Hitler ruthlessly executed the SA (the Nazi stormtroopers' unit that played a key role in the rise to power of the NSDAP), citing the need to eliminate the squad's widespreaded homosexual 'infection' (Ernst Röhm, the SA leader, was known to be gay). After this, everyone knew that new times were coming. In 1936, Himmler set up the Reich Central Office for Combating of Homosexuality and Abortion, and the German authorities began to register homosexuals. The registers were destroyed in the last year of the war, but it is estimated that they contained the details of at least 100,000 people.

The Nazis tried to re-educate people, tortured and castrated them and then put them in prisons and concentration camps - many Catholic priests were also discredited and arrested for alleged homosexual behaviour. Around 50 to 60 thousand gay men were convicted, 5 to 15 thousand of whom were sent to camps and many of whom died. In the camps, gay men were made to wear pink triangles and women who were attracted to their own sex were made to wear black triangles (as a sign of anti-sociality). Prisoners were regularly experimented on, with Josef Mengele and other 'pseudo-doctors' subjecting Jews, gypsies and gays alike to horrific torture.

After the war, Germany did not acknowledge that homosexuals were victims of Nazism: the German government did not formally apologise to them until 2002.

Prisoners in the Sachsenhausen concentration camp (December 19, 1938)

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Tolerated gays in Hungary

Until the 20th century, homosexuality was considered a crime in Hungary, and consensual sexual relations between men were made punishable in 1878. Paragraph 241 made the category of "unnatural indecency" punishable by up to one year in prison: most of the so-called Csemegi Code, which contained this, was in force until 1961. 

At the same time, a particularly vibrant homosexual subculture similar to that in Germany emerged in Budapest at the beginning of the 20th century, which was only completely ended by the German invasion in 1944.

There are no original police documents on gay-related cases, so we can only rely on indirect information. For example, in his 1933 book Catastrophes in Love Life, the sex pathologist Zoltán Nemes Nagy refers to the semi-official register of the capital's gay community, which, like in other European cities, was created for the purpose of control and surveillance and was finalised in 1908. Its existence was never openly acknowledged. Generally, someone was added to the list when they had a run-in with the police, for example if they were caught in the act. The registry kept quite detailed records of people, mainly noting down their physical features and personal history (such as whether they had a female name, moustache or beard). However, the authorities were generally lenient with gays; on the one hand, they had bigger issues to deal with than to harass them more seriously, and on the other hand, they did not want homosexuality to 'spread' by becoming more public. So, with this taboo and collective silence, gays did quite well in the capital, especially if they kept their sexual orientation hidden from the public. 

During the Horthy era, various criminal law measures were introduced to maintain public morality. Non-traditional sexuality was also more strictly regulated (for example, prostitution). Surprisingly, men who were attracted to their own sex were - for the most part - left alone; the authorities never openly targeted them, and if they did occasionally arrest someone, they often let them go.

Document

ANITA KURIMAY

Gay Budapest, Park Publishing House, 2023.,212-224

K.'s story: the fate of a gay man in Hungary between the two world wars

In Zoltán Nemes Nagy's book Catastrophes in Love Life, there is a story of an anonymous man, a case study. K. was one of Nemes Nagy's patients. Born in the countryside, he came to the capital as a teenager and fought as a soldier in the First World War. According to Nemes Nagy, the army gave him ample opportunity to indulge his sexual desires. 

Returning to Budapest, K. was soon able to continue his chosen path in a vibrant homosexual environment. Although there were few official gay nightclubs, there were many popular meeting places, such as the Városliget, Népliget, Erzsébet Square, the Duna-Korzó, Berlin Square (now Nyugati Square), or the baths. By his own admission, K. had established thousands of contacts - which he kept secret in his civilian life - but until 1933 he had no dealings with the police. He was registered when he once dressed as a woman and his German clients caused a public scandal because of it. Although K. was prosecuted, he was eventually released and resumed with his lifestyle - albeit much more cautiously. Eventually, he ran into financial difficulties and wanted to move out of the capital, even considering marriage. No further details are known. 

K.'s story illustrates how the Hungarian police cared little for gay people, and when he was finally arrested and registered, he was not even charged. In the Horthy era, homosexuality was therefore subject to stricter controls, but if the relationship was consensual and did not disturb public order, it was not much bothered about.

June 24, 1989 Christopher Street Day in Freiburg, rally in front of the former Gestapo headquarters at Goethestrasse 33

A list from 1942

After the relative calm of the 1930s, from 1941 onwards, intolerance towards gays increased as homosexuality became incompatible with ideology. Although no specific law was passed against them, the authorities took increasingly harsh action against them.  Criminal prosecutions increased and, following the example of Nazi Germany, the authorities considered sending homosexuals to forced labour. 

There is a surviving list from 1942 with the details of 993 gay men. It included their names, place and date of birth, religion, occupation, marital status, names of father and mother, and last known address. Very few of the occupations listed are of intellectual or high status (most were traders, shop assistants, day labourers, with only few actors, musicians, clerks), so it is likely that it was mostly gays of low social status who were listed.   

The list was prompted by an exchange of letters between the State Security Centre and the Ministry of Defence on whether or not these people should be obliged to do "defence" labour service. The correspondence ends with a negative reply from the Ministry - probably because, on the one hand, they did not want people to be taken into the army, which is regarded as a paragon of honour, on a punitive basis. On the other hand, the presence of gays was tacitly acknowledged, as there could be high-ranking gay officers among the soldiers, and the authorities did not want this to be known to the wider public or for gayness to 'spread' in the army.

What happened to the people on the list was never revealed, except for one person. The exception is a journalist who became a police 'undercover' under the name Urbán in the late 1950s under the communist regime (presumably to blackmail him by his sexual orientation), and his file reveals that he was called up for labour service during the World War, from which he escaped. In the 1960s, he reported mainly on his journalistic colleagues in Vienna and eventually defected to Australia. 

As far as we know, this list is the only document linking gays in Hungary to the Holocaust.

Gays under Arrow Cross rule

Szálasi took power on 15th of October 1944, and with his takeover the Nazi policy became an example for the Hungarian leadership to follow. The Arrow Cross wanted to create a completely new Hungarist society, which would also seriously interfere in people's private lives; they imposed marriage between (non-Jewish) men and women, made child-bearing compulsory and education along certain principles. Single people, childless people and, above all, sexual deviants were to be severely punished, and forced sterilisation and castration were planned for persons with venereal disease, Jews, Roma and homosexuals, along the lines of the German model. Their Family Law Bill made it clear that homosexuality was incurable and therefore a punishable offence, i.e. castration of "those with an abnormal sexual impulse" must be castrated (without distinction of sex). They broke the silence surrounding homosexuality, and although their plans were thwarted by the Soviet occupation, after the World War - perhaps not unrelated to the preceding events - the persecution of gays in Hungary became more widespread than ever. 

Memory

Unfortunately, we have no data on the number of Hungarian gay victims of the Holocaust. 

In 2005, the European Union agreed to include the LGBTQ community among the victims of Nazi atrocities. The International Holocaust Remembrance Day, 27 January, is also their day, as the Tel Aviv memorial inaugurated in 2014 also pays tribute to their memory.