Before 1933, homosexual acts were illegal in Germany but the law was not consistently enforced and there was a thriving gay life in German cities. After the Nazi takeover in 1933, the first homosexual movement was shut down, publications were burned, and clubs frequented by homosexuals were shut down. Persecution accelerated after the Röhm purge as combatting homosexuality became a priority of the Nazi police state. Persecution peaked in the years prior to World War II and was extended to areas annexed by Nazi Germany, including Austria, the Czech lands, the Netherlands, and Alsace–Lorraine.
Dortmund is the third-largest city in North Rhine-Westphalia after Cologne and Düsseldorf, and the eighth-largest city of Germany, with a population of 588,250 inhabitants as of 2021. It is the largest city of the Ruhr, Germany's largest urban area with some 5.1 million inhabitants, as well as the largest city of Westphalia. On the Emscher and Ruhr rivers, it lies in the Rhine-Ruhr Metropolitan Region and is considered the administrative, commercial, and cultural center of the eastern Ruhr. Dortmund is the second-largest city in the Low German dialect area after Hamburg.
Bautzen is a hill-top town in eastern Saxony, Germany, and administrative centre of the eponymous district. It is located on the Spree. In 2018 its population was 39,087.
Dachau was a Nazi concentration camp opened on 22 March 1933, which was initially intended to hold political prisoners. It is located on the grounds of an abandoned munitions factory northeast of the medieval town of Dachau, about 16 km (10 mi) northwest of Munich in the state of Bavaria, in southern Germany. After its opening by Heinrich Himmler, its purpose was enlarged to include forced labor, and, eventually, the imprisonment of Jews, Romani, German and Austrian criminals, and, finally, foreign nationals from countries that Germany occupied or invaded. The Dachau camp system grew to include nearly 100 sub-camps, which were mostly work camps or Arbeitskommandos, and were located throughout southern Germany and Austria. The main camp was liberated by U.S. forces on 29 April 1945.
Gęsiówka is the colloquial Polish name for a prison that once existed on Gęsia ("Goose") Street in Warsaw, Poland, and which, under German occupation during World War II, became a Nazi concentration camp.
Holocaust victims were people targeted by the government of Nazi Germany based on their ethnicity, religion, political beliefs, or sexual orientation. The institutionalized practice by the Nazis of singling out and persecuting people resulted in the Holocaust, which began with legalized social discrimination against specific groups, involuntary hospitalization, euthanasia, and forced sterilization of persons considered physically or mentally unfit for society. The vast majority of the Nazi regime's victims were Jews, Sinti-Roma peoples, and Slavs but victims also encompassed people identified as social outsiders in the Nazi worldview, such as homosexuals, and political enemies. Nazi persecution escalated during World War II and included: non-judicial incarceration, confiscation of property, forced labor, sexual slavery, death through overwork, human experimentation, undernourishment, and execution through a variety of methods. For specified groups like the Jews, genocide was the Nazis' primary goal.
Jehovah's Witnesses suffered religious persecution in Nazi Germany between 1933 and 1945 after refusing to perform military service, join Nazi organizations, or give allegiance to the Hitler regime. An estimated 10,000 Witnesses—half of the number of members in Germany during that period—were imprisoned, including 2000 who were sent to Nazi concentration camps. An estimated 1200 died in custody, including 250 who were executed. They were the first Christian denomination banned by the Nazi government and the most extensively and intensively persecuted.
Josef Kohout was an Austrian Nazi concentration camp survivor, imprisoned for his homosexuality. He is best known for the 1972 book Die Männer mit dem rosa Winkel, which was written by his acquaintance Hans Neumann using the pen name Heinz Heger, which is often falsely attributed to Kohout. The book is one of very few first-hand accounts of the treatment of homosexuals in Nazi imprisonment. It has been translated into several languages, and a second edition published in 1994. It was the first testimony from a homosexual survivor of the concentration camps to be translated into English, and is regarded as the best known. Its publication helped to illuminate not just the suffering gay prisoners of the Nazi regime experienced, but the lack of recognition and compensation they received after the war's end.
Brandenburg-Görden Prison is located on Anton-Saefkow-Allee in the Görden quarter of Brandenburg an der Havel. Erected between 1927 and 1935, it was built to be the most secure and modern prison in Europe. Both criminal and political prisoners were sent there, as well as people imprisoned for preventive detention or for interrogation and prisoners of war. Built with a capacity of 1,800, it sometimes held over 4,000 during the Nazi era.
Harry Naujoks was a German anti-fascist and communist and survivor of Sachsenhausen concentration camp.
Sonnenburg concentration camp was opened on 3 April 1933 in Sonnenburg near Küstrin in a former Neumark prison, on the initiative of the Free State of Prussia Ministry of the Interior and Justice.
The Priest Barracks of Dachau Concentration incarcerated clergy who had opposed the Nazi regime of Adolf Hitler. From December 1940, Berlin ordered the transfer of clerical prisoners held at other camps, and Dachau became the centre for imprisonment of clergymen. Of a total of 2,720 clerics recorded as imprisoned at Dachau some 2,579 were Roman Catholics. Among the other denominations, there were 109 Protestants, 22 Orthodox, 8 Old Catholics and Mariavites and 2 Muslims. Members of the Catholic Society of Jesus (Jesuits) were the largest group among the incarcerated clergy at Dachau.
The Roman Catholic Church suffered persecution in Nazi Germany. The Nazis claimed jurisdiction over all collective and social activity and the party leadership hoped to de-Christianize Germany in the long term. Clergy were watched closely, and frequently denounced, arrested and sent to Nazi concentration camps. Welfare institutions were interfered with or transferred to state control. Catholic schools, press, trade unions, political parties and youth leagues were eradicated. Anti-Catholic propaganda and "morality" trials were staged. Monasteries and convents were targeted for expropriation. Prominent Catholic lay leaders were murdered, and thousands of Catholic activists were arrested.
The Old Synagogue was the largest synagogue and cultural center of the Jewish community in Dortmund, Germany.
The Holocaust in Italy was the persecution, deportation, and murder of Jews between 1943 and 1945 in the Italian Social Republic, the part of the Kingdom of Italy occupied by Nazi Germany after the Italian surrender on September 8, 1943, during World War II.
Johanna Melzer was a German political activist (KPD) who participated in resistance to the Hitler regime. She spent eleven of the twelve Nazi years in prison, earning the soubriquet "Iron Johanna" because she stayed silent under torture. She survived and became, for a time, a regional politician in West Germany.
Julius Adler was a German politician and member of the Communist Party of Germany. A member of the Reichstag from 1928 to 1933, he was later detained by the Gestapo and died in the Bergen-Belsen concentration camp.
Käthe Schaub was a German politician (SPD). Between 1947 and 1962 she was a member of the regional parliament ("Landtag") of North Rhine-Westphalia.
The Holocaust in Germany was the systematic persecution, deportation, imprisonment, and murder of Jews in Germany as part of the Europe-wide Holocaust perpetrated by Nazi Germany. The term typically refers only to the areas that were part of Germany prior to the Nazi regime coming to power and excludes some or all of the territories annexed by Nazi Germany, such as Austria or the Protectorate of Bohemia and Moravia.
Roter Ochse is a prison in Halle (Saale). The name can be traced to the end of the nineteenth century, but its origin is unclear. It is said to be related to the colour of the masonry.
