Protective Custody

As the police raids on homosexuals began and became widespread, more and more gays were identified and charged. A man suspected of violating § 175 would be questioned and often softened up with force. 

Under extreme pressure and violent interrogation those arrested would be forced to give the names and addresses of other homosexuals known to them. Often the Gestapo would have raided the house of a homosexual on arrest and found an address book that would have lead them to other violators of § 175.

Statements and confessions were signed under intense, often physical pressure and once a signature was obtained the arrestee would be charged. As most ‘confessed’ to their crime, few were given a fair hearing or the chance to fight their case in a court of law. 

At the point of arrest suspects were given no chance to return home or the opportunity to communicate with their family about their whereabouts. Many did not see their families again until after their liberation from concentration camps or after completion of prison terms.

Homosexuals charged under § 175 were held in so called schutzhaft, or ‘protective custody’, at a variety of prisons and detention centres including Waldheim prison and Fuhlsbutter prison.

The first special center to house criminals and homosexuals was erected in 1933 at Dachau, southern Germany, and was largely seen as the prototype for further camps. The Sachsenhausen camp opened in 1936 to eventually house more than 200,000 prisoners, including many homosexuals.

Once the huge network of concentration camps were in place throughout Germany and occupied Europe, many arrested homosexuals found themselves deported straight from the police custody without any chance of trial. Violators of §175 were then held mainly at Auschwitz- Birchenau, Treblinka, Flossenburg, Neuengamme and Schirmeck, although the Dachau and Sachsenhausen camps still continued to take homosexuals.

Quotes:
‘It had a different value then – a night of love’
Gay survivor Gad Beck, speaking about his arrest (taken from the documentary ‘Paragraph 175’)

‘Off I went to Dachau without a trial – directly to Dachau’
Gay survivor Heinz F. speaking about his arrest (taken from the documentary ‘Paragraph 175’)

While gay men made up the majority of homosexual victims, lesbians were by no means saved from persecution. Although § 175 made no reference to lesbianism, the Third Reich had no place for women who could not reproduce and further the Aryan race. Homosexual men were regarded as largely degenerate and dangerous impurities to the Reich, whereas all women were regarded as ‘passive’ and in need of men. Generally lesbianism was regarded as a non-permanent state resulting from confused friendships rather than a systematic threat.  

The Nazis outlawed and closed all lesbian bars, groups and publications. Police were encouraged to raid known lesbian meeting places creating a climate of fear. This forced many women to break off friendships and to meet in secret. Some escaped possible persecution by entering into marriages with homosexual friends as a form of cover, others moved to different towns where they could pass unrecognised.  Survivor Annette Eick, b 1909, escaped to the UK on a false papers that she had secured from a woman she had met at a lesbian bar. As a Jewish lesbian, she would have almost certainly been persecuted had she stayed in Berlin.

In some cases police arrested and charged lesbians as ‘prostitutes’ or ‘asocials’, which would certainly have lead to prosecution and possible deportation, but there is no evidence to show that women were ever made to wear the pink triangle. 

There are documented cases of lesbians being held at the German camp Ravesnbruck. 
One woman, Henny Schermann, b 1912, was arrested in 1940 in Frankfurt and was labelled ‘licentious Lesbian’ on her police mug shot. Also identified as a ‘stateless Jew’, she was deported to Ravensbruck concentration camp, where two years later she was selected for extermination and gassed at the Bernburg psychiatric hospital.