The Holocaust was a terrifying and terrible moment in history in which 11 million people had their lives stolen from them. That’s a little more than half the entire population of Florida in 2015, according to the United States Census Bureau. 6 million of these victims were Jews and the other 5 million consisted of a cocktail of different groups the Nazis deemed “inferior”. Romani, Slavic peoples, African-German children, disabled people, Jehovah’s Witnesses, opposers to the Nazi regime, including communists, socialists, and members of the anti-Nazi Confessional Church, homosexual men, and other people the Nazis believed for various reasons didn’t have a place in their society they called “asocials” were all seen as sub-human to the Nazis and
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Nazis believed that because they were not contributing to their creation of an Aryan race that they were “socially aberrant” and were enemies of their cause (Homosexuals, Victims of the Nazi Era, 1933-1945). An entire police unit was made targeting gay men and in 1935 male homosexual behavior was legally considered “lewd and lascivious” because of Paragraph 175 of the criminal code. However, because of the Nazis’ view of women being weaker and less important than men, lesbians were not targeted as criminals and were not seen as a threat to the Nazi state and very often were able to live in relative security compared to homosexual men (United States Holocaust Memorial Museum, Lesbians and the Third Reich). They were still effected, however, because both male and female homosexual organizations and books were destroyed and, because many Nazis saw female homosexual acts as anti-Aryan, lesbians were still at risk for being labeled asocial and sent to a concentration camp (Homosexuals, Victims of the Nazi Era, 1933-1945). Homosexual men were forced to wear pink triangles in concentration camps and to this day some still use the pink triangle as a symbol of pride and the asocial black triangle is seen in a lesser known lesbian pride flag. This seems incredibly appropriative to me to use it as a source of pride and very erasing of what gay men and women went through in these horrible, terrifying times. These symbols were symbols …show more content…
In 1939 Hitler created “Operation T4” or the “euthanasia program” which was a secret plan to murder anyone who had a mental or physical disability to ensure the purity of the Nazis’ plan for human “perfection” (A Teacher’s Guide to the Holocaust). Because of forced sterilization programs in 1934, somewhere between 300,000 and 400,000 people with disabilities had already been sterilized without patient consent. Even after Hitler ended the “euthanasia program” Nazis continued the murders quietly and more secretly through poisoning or starvation. The plan to kill the disabled was based on a book by Alfred Hoche and Karl Binding who believed that disabled lives were useless and that they should just be ended to save money that Germany lost after World War 1 (Handicapped: Victims of the Nazi Era, 1933-1945). The Nazis made propaganda with this same idea and people started to genuinely believe that this was for the best of Germany and the best for these
Nazis believed that because they were not contributing to their creation of an Aryan race that they were “socially aberrant” and were enemies of their cause (Homosexuals, Victims of the Nazi Era, 1933-1945). An entire police unit was made targeting gay men and in 1935 male homosexual behavior was legally considered “lewd and lascivious” because of Paragraph 175 of the criminal code. However, because of the Nazis’ view of women being weaker and less important than men, lesbians were not targeted as criminals and were not seen as a threat to the Nazi state and very often were able to live in relative security compared to homosexual men (United States Holocaust Memorial Museum, Lesbians and the Third Reich). They were still effected, however, because both male and female homosexual organizations and books were destroyed and, because many Nazis saw female homosexual acts as anti-Aryan, lesbians were still at risk for being labeled asocial and sent to a concentration camp (Homosexuals, Victims of the Nazi Era, 1933-1945). Homosexual men were forced to wear pink triangles in concentration camps and to this day some still use the pink triangle as a symbol of pride and the asocial black triangle is seen in a lesser known lesbian pride flag. This seems incredibly appropriative to me to use it as a source of pride and very erasing of what gay men and women went through in these horrible, terrifying times. These symbols were symbols …show more content…
In 1939 Hitler created “Operation T4” or the “euthanasia program” which was a secret plan to murder anyone who had a mental or physical disability to ensure the purity of the Nazis’ plan for human “perfection” (A Teacher’s Guide to the Holocaust). Because of forced sterilization programs in 1934, somewhere between 300,000 and 400,000 people with disabilities had already been sterilized without patient consent. Even after Hitler ended the “euthanasia program” Nazis continued the murders quietly and more secretly through poisoning or starvation. The plan to kill the disabled was based on a book by Alfred Hoche and Karl Binding who believed that disabled lives were useless and that they should just be ended to save money that Germany lost after World War 1 (Handicapped: Victims of the Nazi Era, 1933-1945). The Nazis made propaganda with this same idea and people started to genuinely believe that this was for the best of Germany and the best for these