joanofrad:

rainbowsnviolets:

joanofrad:

rainbowsnviolets:

woke-ing-ya-terves:

rainbowsnviolets:

rainbowsnviolets:

illalwaysbehere:

lesbihonest-art:

I do not have enough knowledge on any of these subjects to say anything useful. I would ask Romani and Jewish lesbians for their thoughts if anything.

Yes. Lesbian women were also targeted by the Nazis and killed during the Holocaust.

Do you all really believe it was only male homosexuals who were targeted?

Your sources had no idea what the hell they were talking about, anon.

This will be long but I actually read a lot about this topic so if you are interested where this sentiment of “lesbians weren’t killed in nazi Germany” comes from and why it’s wrong here it goes. Lesbians ALWAYS get ignored when we talk about the history of the Holocaust here in Germany. Again and again their memory is denied at memorials that are held at former concentration and work camps. And yea… it’s making me incredibly angry.

The history of lesbians in the third Reich is complex. People who want to deny that this history even exists always cite one lame argument: In the law back then only sexual acts between two men were criminalized. Great. So lesbians were a-ok back then? Nazis were extremely cool with women loving each other? Case closed? NO of course not!

This argument isn’t new. Time and time again in history you will see gay men being killed or imprisoned by law but lesbian women not even being mentioned anywhere in any paper or book from that time. But this never means that lesbians were treated amazingly well. In fact, lesbians faced equally as much violence and death as gay men. But to understand why lesbians weren’t mentioned in most laws, you need to understand the misogyny back then. You see, admitting that lesbians exist would also mean to admit that women have a desire, a purpose, the ability to feel sexual desire and love without men. Admitting this is far more dangerous than keeping lesbians out of the law. We tend to forget that women were seen as sub-human. Not capable of their own agency and true drive or desires. To question this would have meant to question everything: From marriage laws (raping your wife is legal, women were basically property etc) to why women werent allowed to work certain jobs and so on. So in history, lesbians weren’t acknowledged by law because acknowledging their sexuality would have meant questioning the very foundation of the patriachal society they existed in. But they were punished nontheless. Lobotomies, “corrective” rape, forced marriages, domestic violence and so on. Most kinds of violence and murder against women weren’t documented, it wasn’t by law but it was definitely wanted and part of the system.

Under Hitlers regime women were basically birthing-machines for the third Reich. Already historically strict and conservative rules (that actually got much better during the 20s!) were even more strict and harsh for women again. They were supposed to be mothers to the perfect german boys and girls, nothing more. How would lesbians fit into this?? Of course Nazis weren’t okay with women who didn’t want to be pregnant and serve/marry a proper “german man”.

This is where a mechanism comes in that already existed before the third Reich but was even harsher back then. Women were controlled economically, socially, politically and by law. If you weren’t punished by law, you would be punished by your social circle, your family, the men near you etc. To be a lesbian meant to live in constant fear and you had to rely on your entire social circle (including neighbours, family, workplace…) to not call someone on you, to not get you labeled insane/degenerate or to tolerate you at all. Those calls would be for you being “asocial” or “degenerate” and could get you sterilized or imprisoned. On paper there wasn’t made any difference between a lesbian woman and a severly mentally ill woman or a woman who had neglected their child. All those were “incorrect” women (asocial/degenerate) that needed to be erased from the gene pool either by sterilizing them, imprisoning them, putting them into camps and/ or killing them. This makes it incerdibly difficult to actually know how many lesbians were targeted and what exactly was done to them. But they WERE targeted. We just lost them on paper on their way to their deaths and thus can’t say how many there were.

Adding another layer: Jewish lesbians were a highly targeted group. Often times they would be killed or put into concentration camps with the reasoning that they were jewish BUT the reason why they got caught, why people called the police on them, was often times because of lesbian activities. There were quite some people who wouldn’t call someone on a jewish person but would definitely target a jewish lesbian. Jewish lesbians and their unique struggles and history gets widely ignored while discussing the holocaust. While them being jewish was the main reason they were targeted, them being lesbians made them even more vulnerable and isolated.

Another factor is that inside the concentration camps those women were also targeted. Male or heterosexual survivors called the lesbians in those camps “monsters” and “animals” just for expressing their love towards other women, which in turn silenced lesbian survivors who felt a great sense of grief and loneliness even after the horrors of the war. They were ashamed and silenced by those they suffered along with. This isn’t meant to diminish any suffering survivors faced or to badmouth them, I just want to say this to point out why a lot of lesbian history was lost over the years after the Holocaust.

So we have a lack of documentation due to laws inside of a misogynistic society and a lack of documentation because of homophobia and shame. This isn’t unique to the Holocaust but especially grim considering how through and extensive the research and memorial for many other victims is.

Women in history are ignored and silenced. By law, by society and by politics. This leads to little documentation of womens suffering and especially lesbians suffering. I don’t know if there are any translations of their work but I read  the works by Claudia Schoppmann, Ulrike Janz and Ingeborg Boxhammer. To name a few. There are several others, but I would have to look them up. Write me a PM if you are interested in them.

It’s really important to me to get people to inform themselves about this topic but I know it’s difficult to get into, especially if your first language isn’t german. I also only started doing my research on this after reading “Aimee und Jaguar”, a book about a jewish woman (Felice Schragenheim) and a woman married to a nazi (Lilly Wust) who fell in love during that time. Spoiler: it doesn’t have a happy ending. It’s based on a true story and the author interviewed Lilly when she was still alive. The book and the interviews aren’t without their controversy and many argue, that it’s a very one-sided story. But since Felice didn’t survive the holocaust Lillys words, their surviving friends words and their letters are all we have. And it’s still a powerful and incredibly important story. From stories like these we learn about lesbian culture, lesbian history and also about lesbian struggles.

There is also a movie if you aren’t into reading the book. I highly recommend both. It won’t give you many answers to what that anon asked but it will make you want to search for answers. And it will get you much closer to a horrible but important part of our history.

Is no one else more horrified that all it took for any woman to be tortured by Nazis and effectively made criminal was for them to be considered asocial?

It IS horrifying! The history of women in nazi Germany is grim and often times gets overlooked. As I wrote in my previous wall of text, womens sexuality has always been under close observation in history and our sex has always been the basis of our oppression. But in nazi Germany this was put to the max. Women were literally nothing more than baby-factories. The nazis wanted to build the “perfect” nation with perfect kids. So if a woman wasn’t (for any reason) seen fit to birth children or didn’t WANT to birth children she was already incredibly suspicious and often times brought to a doctor (who basically just diagnosed her with being a lesbian or being crazy). This obsession with “perfect” children and the eugenics behind it is another topic in itself so I won’t get into detail here.

But women were for example awarded a “Mutterkreuz” (literally “mothers cross”) a medal for having a lot of kids and being a “good wife and mother”. On the other hand, women who weren’t seen as fit for birthing kids could be forcefully sterilized. This could include certain ethnic groups, lesbians, women with mental illnesses, gender non conforming women (which were often times ssa women) etc. There are people who argue that german women were gleefully joining into their own submission under the nazi rule. And while that is true for many, it ignores the suffering of many women who didn’t or really couldn’t submit to it. Women who did agree with nazi ideology is a complex topic in itself I will maybe make a seperate post about someday (can’t talk about nazi Germany and sociology without getting side tracked many times).

Women being marked as asocial also wasn’t as straight forward as men being deemed not fit for society often times. The oppression and suffering of women was carried by family, friends, neighbours, doctors etc. Often times the family of a woman would go with her to a doctor, get her “diagnosed” with being asocial and then the women would be forced into some kind of institution or work camp. Being a lesbian was often times written in the report cards by doctors to deem a woman asocial or insane. But there are many other reasons why a woman would be considered asocial.

There are cases of women being sexually assaulted or raped, developing anxiety and trauma symptoms and then being deemed “arbeitsscheu” which literally translates to “work shy” and is used for lazy people who refuse to work. Which in turn made them be deemed “asocial”. Women would also be marked as “schwachsinnig” which means “crazy/insane”. These women would often times be sterilized. Women who tried to defend themselves against any of these unjust practices while imprisoned were severly punished, sometimes with vomit inducing injections for example.

And yes, there were women deemed “asocial” or “crazy” that were put into concentration camps. And many of them died there. Those who survived often times suffered for up to over 20 years in horrible conditions, being tortured and in the constant fear of death.

Another not-so-fun-fact. There is a law that’s supposed to support and compensate survivors or families of people who were killed in concentration camps in Austria. This law includes people who were killed or suffered because of political reasons (political opponents of Hitlers party), because of their heritage, religion or nationality (which covers roma for example and of course jewish people). This doesn’t include women who were deemed “asocial” or “crazy” so many survivors or families of victims didn’t even dare to ask for support or compensation. They were ashamed of being deemed “asocial” even after being freed because if you live this long in a society that tells you again and again that you are disgusting and unworthy of life, you start believing it and internalize it. This intersects with lesbian victims and especially jewish lesbian victims. Many of them or their families were silenced by shame, even long after the war.

Unfortunately I once again don’t know any english publications regarding this topic but for anyone speaking german I recommend “»Arbeitsscheu und moralisch verkommen«: Verfolgung von Frauen als »Asoziale« im Nationalsozialismus”  by Helga Amesberger. It includes data and facts regarding women being deemed “asocial” in Austria but it gives you a good first picture of the situation. As with the lesbian topic, there is much work to be done and much research to be made.

A colleague of mine, a Jewish lesbian who also studies History, got into a pretty heated argument with a professor a few years back, beause this man basically full-on denied that lesbians were targeted during the Holocaust, because they were lesbians. It was ridiculous and shamefully and some of his arguments didn’t even make sense. I can - for example - remember that he argued that lesbians weren’t targeted for being lesbians, but a moment later stated that many lesbians chose to hide their sexual orientation, which immediately negated what he said at first.

Fact is that women (including lesbians) have never been treated kindly by history. Either our stories don’t get told or get distorted and I think that this won’t change soon, because historians interest in Women’s History is still almost non-existent (men are so much more interesting after all, I mean they started all the wars and got shiny swords!!! ~.~).

Some reading recommendations for people who are interested in how female people (including lesbians) were treated during the Third Reich (all in English):

Unacknowledged Victims: Love between Women in the Narrative of the Holocaust. An Analysis of Memoirs, Novels, Film and Public Memorials (full text online)

Warm  Brothers  in  the Boomtowns  of   Hell: The  Persecution  of Homosexuals in Nazi Germany (full text online)

Ravensbrück: Life and Death in Hitler’s Concentration Camp for Women (incredibly well researched book by Sarah Helm)

I don’t agree with everything that is said in these publications, but the research was done properly and the bibliographies at the end are helpful for further studying.

Thank you so so much for the important addition and the links! The history of women and especially lesbians always boils down to “we suffered greatly but since our suffering was so normalized, nobody wrote it down”. Lesbians not being aknowledged by law like gay men because women weren’t seen as autonomous isn’t a privilege, it’s an expression of misogyny and lesbophobia.
But in most cases there IS something documented or written down, it’s just more difficult to find.

Lesbians not being aknowledged by law like gay men because women weren’t seen as autonomous isn’t a privilege, it’s an expression of misogyny and lesbophobia.

Yes, I absolutely agree. There is a part in “Warm Brothers In The Boomtowns Of Hell” which really hits home for me: “The male dominated Germany society viewed lesbianism as a casual outgrowth of female bonding that manifested   itself during adolescence and usually subsided as women joined or were forced into patriarchal households.” So basically: “Lesbians aren’t real. It’s just silly girls who have a little crush on other silly girls, but as soon as they find the right dick, they’ll forget all about it.” It really makes me sick, because I know that even nowadays many people think like that!

Thank you, by the way, for recommending “Arbeitsscheu und moralisch verkommen”. I haven’t heard about this book until you mentioned it, but it went straight to my tbr list! <3