On May 8 1945 the Second World War ended officially in Europe. To mark this 70-year anniversary, Pink Apple remembers the persecution of gays and lesbians during the Nazi era. Not long after they had seized power in January 1933, the National Socialists destroyed the gay and lesbian movement in Germany. On May 6 students and SA men raided Magnus Hirschfeld’s Institute for the Science of Sexuality in Berlin. Over 100’000 men were registered by the police, and approximately 50’000 men were convicted according to the new paragraph 175. Many of these convicted men were sent directly to a concentration camp after serving their prison time, either by justice officials or after being taken into custody by the Gestapo. There they had to wear a pink triangle, which stigmatized them as among the lowest in rank in the camp hierarchy.

According to conservative estimates between 5000 and 15’000 homosexual men were held prisoner in Nazi concentration camps. Most of them did not survive the Nazi terror.