New documents reveal extent of Nazi persecution of gays

Thousands of marchers will be holding a gay rally outside a landmark department store in downtown Hamburg this summer, celebrating the fact that in Germany the mayors of the two largest cities, Berlin and Hamburg, are gay and that same-sex couples can form legally recognized unions. But few of these marchers will be aware of newly released documents revealing that the Gestapo staged a lightning raid on this very department store 70 years ago this summer, hauling off about 40 store employees on suspicion of being homosexually oriented. Many of those detainees ended up in concentration camps.

So gay pride in a number of cities in Germany means a mixture of jubilant parades and solemn walking tours for a new post-liberation generation of gay men and lesbians who are discovering a hitherto unpublicized dark chapter of Nazi persecution.

After German unification, hundreds of thousands of case histories were released and historians have been sifting through them. Their findings are just now being published. And the findings have shocked even many historians who knew that atrocities had occurred, but were surprised by the extent of them.