Solidarity, by Richard Grune, lithograph, 1947. Schwules Museum, Berlin
Between 1933 and 1945, the Nazi German regime promoted racial health policies that sought to eliminate all sources of biological corruption to its dominant “Aryan” race. Among the groups persecuted as threats to the “national health” were Germany’s homosexual men. Believing them to be carriers of a “degeneracy” that weakened society and hindered population growth, the Nazi state arrested and incarcerated in prisons and concentration camps tens of thousands of German men as a means of terrorizing them into social conformity. Nazi Persecution of Homosexuals 1933–1945 examines the Nazi regime’s attempt to eradicate homosexuality, which left thousands dead and shattered the lives of many more.
This exhibition is supported in part by the Lester Robbins and Sheila Johnson Robbins Traveling and Special Exhibitions Fund established in 1990.