I know that some people may be offended by the title, and to be honest, that is their loss. I am simply using the terminology used in the 1930s and 1940s.
The experiences of lesbians in Nazi Germany, or the Third Reich, were complex and multifaceted, shaped by broader Nazi ideologies and policies on sexuality, gender, and race. Below are some points to understand their situation:
Nazi Ideology on Gender and Sexuality
Heteronormativity and Reproduction: The Nazi regime emphasized traditional gender roles and heteronormativity. Women were expected to focus on motherhood and raising Aryan children, contributing to the regime’s goal of increasing the population of the “Aryan race.”
Persecution of Homosexuals: The Nazis considered homosexuality a threat to their vision of a racially pure and reproductively prolific society. Male homosexuality was specifically criminalized under Paragraph 175 of the German Criminal Code, and many gay men were persecuted, imprisoned, and sent to concentration camps.
Lesbians Under the Third Reich
Legal Status: Unlike male homosexuality, lesbianism was not explicitly criminalized. Paragraph 175 did not mention women, which meant that lesbians were not subjected to the same legal persecutions as gay men.
Social Pressure and Surveillance: Despite the absence of specific laws against lesbianism, lesbians faced social ostracism, surveillance, and discrimination. The Nazis sought to enforce traditional gender roles, and women who deviated from these norms, including those in same-sex relationships, could be subject to scrutiny and punishment.
Living Conditions: Lesbians often had to lead double lives, hiding their sexual orientation to avoid persecution. Some joined organizations like the Nazi Party’s women’s wing to mask their true identities, while others formed secret networks to support one another.
Concentration Camps: While there were no systematic round-ups of lesbians like there were for gay men, some women were arrested and sent to concentration camps for being perceived as “asocial” or “deviant,” which could include those in same-sex relationships.
Resistance and Survival: Some lesbians actively resisted Nazi policies by participating in underground movements, supporting each other, and maintaining their relationships in secret.
Individual Experiences
Individual experiences varied widely. Some women managed to live relatively undisturbed lives if they conformed outwardly to societal expectations, while others faced severe consequences. Stories of persecution, survival, and resistance among lesbians during this period contribute to a fuller understanding of the impact of Nazi policies on sexual minorities. The persecution of lesbians under the Third Reich has often been less documented and recognized compared to that of gay men. It is only in recent decades that scholars and activists have begun to uncover and acknowledge the full extent of their experiences.
Collage created after the Nazi regime began to force gay and lesbian gathering spaces to close. It was published in the magazine, Der Notschrei. Berlin, March 1933.
Beginning in 1933, the Nazi regime began to harass gay and lesbian communities and individuals by shutting down and raiding their meeting places and organizations. At first, Nazi actions were uneven. They depended on the priorities of local government and police officials. For example, in the spring of 1933, the Nazis ordered the Prussian police to close some bars. Among those closed were the Eldorado in Berlin and the Dornröschen in Cologne. Nonetheless, some established gay and lesbian bars were able to remain open in cities like Berlin and Hamburg until the mid-1930s. Underground meeting places remained open even later. These, however, came under increasing police surveillance. As part of the Nazi regime’s restrictions on the free press, the government also shuttered gay and lesbian newspapers and journals.
By eliminating gay and lesbian gathering places and presses, the regime effectively dissolved the lesbian communities that had developed during the Weimar Republic.
Henny Schermann was a German lesbian of Jewish descent who became a victim of Nazi persecution. Her life and tragic end highlight the broader context of how the Nazis targeted individuals who did not conform to their ideologies on race, sexuality, and social norms. Here are the key points about her life: She was born on February 19, 1912, in Frankfurt am Main, Germany. She was of Jewish descent and worked as a sales clerk.
Henny’s parents met in Germany soon after her father emigrated from the Russian Empire. Henny was the first of the Jewish couple’s three children. The family lived in Frankfurt am Main, an important center of commerce, banking, industry, and the arts.
1933-39: After the Nazis came to power, they began to persecute Jews, Roma (Gypsies), men accused of homosexuality, people with disabilities, and political opponents. In 1938, as one way of identifying Jews, a Nazi ordinance decreed that “Sara” was to be added to official papers as a middle name for all Jewish women. Twenty-six-year-old Henny was working as a shop assistant and was living with her family in Frankfurt.
1940-44: In early 1940, Henny was arrested in Frankfurt and sent to the Ravensbrück concentration camp for women. On the back of her prisoner photo was written: “Jenny Sara Schermann, born February 19, 1912, Frankfurt am Main. Unmarried shopgirl in Frankfurt am Main. Licentious lesbians only visited such [lesbian] bars. Avoided the name ‘Sara.’ Stateless Jew.”
Henny was among a number of Ravensbrück prisoners selected for murder. On May 30, 1942, Henny was gassed at the Bernburg T4 killing center.
Henny Schermann’s story is a poignant reminder of the multiple layers of persecution faced by those who lived at the intersection of marginalized identities during the Third Reich. Her experiences as a Jewish lesbian highlight the Nazis’ extensive system of oppression and the tragic consequences for those who defied their narrow definitions of acceptable identity and behavior.
I am passionate about my site and I know you all like reading my blogs. I have been doing this at no cost and will continue to do so. All I ask is for a voluntary donation of $2, however if you are not in a position to do so I can fully understand, maybe next time then. Thank you.
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I am always surprised why there is so little known about Danish war crimes in the context of the Holocaust. Is it that perhaps most of the Danish Jews survived? Are we, therefore, given the Danes a pass?
Something I said many times before when it comes to the Holocaust is that none of the occupied countries is without blame; even the unoccupied countries carry their share of the blame.
Carl Værnet was a Danish physician who conducted unethical medical experiments on concentration camp prisoners during World War II. Værnet’s primary focus was on developing a “cure” for homosexuality, which he believed to be a medical condition. His experiments were conducted under the auspices of the Nazi regime, which sought to eliminate behaviours they deemed deviant. Værnet was a Copenhagen doctor who, realising the opportunities offered by the homophobic policies of the Third Reich, joined the Nazi party and enlisted in the SS to pursue his research to “cure” gay men.
Værnet conducted his experiments at Buchenwald Concentration Camp. He injected synthetic hormones into the groins of prisoners in an attempt to alter their sexual orientation. These procedures were invasive and painful, and the prisoners were not willing participants.
In the Buchenwald Concentration Camp, SS doctors carried out pseudo-medical experiments on prisoners. They cooperated with the Wehrmacht, IG Farben AG and the Robert Koch Institute, among others. The SS set up a permanent experimental station in Block 46.
In the autumn and winter of 1944, the Danish doctor Dr. Carl Værnet, who worked in an SS laboratory in Prague, carried out experiments on homosexual prisoners in Buchenwald. His inhumane goal was to “cure homosexuality” in homosexual men using a hormone gland. He used around 12 prisoners for his experiments. Værnet received support from the SS camp doctors Dr. Gerhard Schiedlausky and Dr. Erwin Ding-Schuler.
Despite Værnet’s claims to the contrary, his hormone glands have no “therapeutic” effect. However, they did harm his test subjects. At least one prisoner did not survive the Danish doctor’s human experiments.
Heinrich Himmler was very interested in Dr. Værnet’s research and supported him. The experiments were to be carried out in Prague by a front company, the “Deutsche Heilmittel” GmbH. Dr. Værnet also received Himmler’s approval for experiments on prisoners in the Buchenwald concentration camp.
“I ask that you treat Dr. Værnet with the utmost generosity. I would like a 3-4 page report every month, as I am very interested in these things. At a later date, I would also like to ask Værnet to come and see me.” This was an order from Himmler, issued on December 3, 1943, to the Reich Doctor SS, Dr. Grawitz, who was the head of the German Red Cross between 1937 and 1945.
Vaernet addressed his final report to Heinrich Himmler on 10 February 1945, describing his hormone research and alleged results without even mentioning his experiments in Buchenwald. This omission suggests that his research was probably deemed—even by him—a failure or at least not sufficiently credible to merit a mention.
When Denmark was liberated on 5 May 1945, Vaernet was arrested and detained at Alsgade Skole POW camp in Copenhagen, where he remained from June to November 1945. This camp was Denmark‘s main holding centre for war criminals and Nazi collaborators.
Dr Carl Vaernet’s barbaric medical experiments on gay concentration camp prisoners were hidden from history for over 50 years. Unlike some other Nazi doctors, he was never put on trial at Nuremberg. Instead, with British military collusion, he escaped to Argentina, where he lived openly and continued his research into methods for the eradication of homosexuality. He died on November 25, 1965, aged 72, in Buenos Aires.
I am passionate about my site and I know you all like reading my blogs. I have been doing this at no cost and will continue to do so. All I ask is for a voluntary donation of $2, however if you are not in a position to do so I can fully understand, maybe next time then. Thank you.
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I have often made the point that there is basically—no difference between the far left and the far right, If there ever was a clearer indication of that it was Pim Fortuyn, initially a Marxist and communist, who later did a complete U-turn. Although I don’t consider extreme right, he was leaning towards the far right, and we don’t know how far that would have gone because he was killed that day on May 6, 2002. His assassination did change the political landscape of the Netherlands.
Pim Fortuyn was a Dutch politician, academic, and publicist who rose to prominence in the early 2000s. He was known for his charismatic personality, provocative statements, and criticism of immigration and multiculturalism in the Netherlands. Fortuyn founded the political party Pim Fortuyn List (Lijst Pim Fortuyn, LPF) in 2002, which quickly gained popularity.
His views on immigration, Islam, and the integration of minorities into Dutch society stirred controversy and polarized opinions. Tragically, Fortuyn’s political career was cut short when he was assassinated by an animal rights activist in May 2002, just nine days before the general elections in which his party was expected to perform strongly. His death shocked the nation and sparked a national debate on issues such as tolerance, immigration, and the role of Islam in Dutch society. Fortuyn, an openly gay sociology professor and publicist, rocked the boat of Dutch politics.
Volkert van der Graaf is the individual who assassinated Dutch politician Pim Fortuyn on May 6, 2002. At the time of the assassination, van der Graaf was an environmental and animal rights activist. He opposed Fortuyn’s political views, particularly regarding immigration and multiculturalism.
After the assassination, van der Graaf was arrested and later convicted of murder. He was sentenced to 18 years in prison, the maximum penalty under Dutch law, at that time. He served his sentence and was released on parole in 2014 after serving two-thirds of his sentence, which is common in the Dutch legal system.
Van der Graaf’s actions had a significant impact on Dutch politics and society, prompting debates about extremism, political discourse, and security measures for politicians.
Van der Graaf was born in Middelburg and by the time he attended university in Wageningen, he was vegan and an idealistic supporter of animal welfare. Van der Graaf was said to be highly intelligent and a perfectionist who was emotionally uncommunicative and intolerant of those with different values from his own.
Although it was a brutal, calculated, and premeditated murder, van der Graaf was only sentenced to 18 years, of which he only served 12. He was released only a few days before the 12th anniversary of Pim Fortuyn’s assassination.
The prosecution and the defence both made appeals against this sentence. Prior to the appeal, suggestions in the media that Van der Graaf may be suffering from Asperger’s syndrome were rejected by workers at the PBC(Pieter Baan Centrum, where he had been detained during the trial), who said they had considered and then declined the possibility. The prosecution argued that the court had not taken account of the political nature of the murder, and asked again for life imprisonment. But he was released on May 2, 2014.
I am passionate about my site and I know you all like reading my blogs. I have been doing this at no cost and will continue to do so. All I ask is for a voluntary donation of $2, however if you are not in a position to do so I can fully understand, maybe next time then. Thank you.
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Paragraph 175 was a law which was introduced on May 15, 1871, in Germany, just after Otto von Bismarck unified Germany into a nation-state, forming the German Empire. Ironically the law remained in place until a few years after the other German re-unification. The law was abolished in 1994.
It made sexual relations between males a crime, and in early revisions, the provision also criminalized bestiality as well as forms of prostitution and underage sexual abuse. Overall, around 140,000 men were convicted under the law.
In 1935, the Nazis broadened the law so that the courts could pursue any “lewd act” whatsoever, even one involving no physical contact, such as masturbating next to each other. Convictions multiplied by a factor of ten to over 8,000 per year by 1937. Furthermore, the Gestapo could transport suspected offenders to concentration camps without any legal justification at all (even if they had been acquitted or already served their sentence in jail). Thus, over 10,000 homosexual men were forced into concentration camps, where they were identified by the pink triangle. The majority of them died there.
Between 1933 and 1945, by the USHMM’s count, an estimated 100,000 men were arrested for violating this law, and about half went to prison. It’s thought that somewhere between 5,000 and 15,000 men were sent to concentration camps for reasons related to sexuality, but exactly how many died in them may never be known, between the scant documentation that survived and the sense of shame that kept many survivors silent for years after their ordeal.
When reforming the law in 1935, Nazi lawyers had a chance to extend Paragraph 175 to women. However, they chose not to do so. Nazi leaders saw lesbians as women who had a responsibility to give birth to racially pure Germans called “Aryans.” The Nazis concluded that Aryan lesbians could easily be persuaded or forced to bear children. Their beliefs drew on widespread attitudes about the differences between male and female sexuality. Furthermore, women did not typically hold leadership roles in the military, economy, or national politics. Therefore, the Nazis did not view lesbians or sexual relations between women as a direct threat to the German state.
After the annexation in 1938, Paragraph 175 also came in power in Austria. One of the people subjected to the law was Josef Kohout.
In the book “The Men With the Pink Triangle The True, Life-and-Death Story of Homosexuals in the Nazi Death Camps” by Heinz Heger. The book includes the story of Josef Kohout, Following is an excerpt of his story.
VIENNA, MARCH 1939. I was twenty-two years old, a university student preparing for an academic career, a choice that met my parents’ wishes as much as my own. Being little interested in politics, I was not a member of the Nazi student association or any of the party’s other organizations.
It wasn’t as if I had anything special against the new Germany. German was and still is my mother tongue, after all. Yet my upbringing had always been more Austrian in character. I had learned a certain tolerance from my parents, and at home, we made no distinction between people for speaking a different language from ours, practising a different religion, or having a different colour of skin. We also respected other people’s opinions, no matter how strange they might seem.
I found it far too arrogant, then, when so much started to be said at university about the German master race, our nation chosen by destiny to lead and rule all of Europe. For this reason alone, I was already not particularly keen on the new Nazi masters of Austria and their ideas.
My family was well-to-do and strictly Catholic. My father was a senior civil servant, pedantic and correct in all his actions, and always a respected model for me and my three younger sisters. He would admonish us calmly and sensibly if we made too much of a row, and he always spoke of my mother as the lady of the house. He had a deep respect for her, and as far as I can recall, he never let her birthday or saint’s day pass without bringing her flowers.
My mother, who is still alive today, has always been the very embodiment of kindness and care for us children, ever ready to help when one of us was in trouble. She could certainly scold us if need be, but she was never angry with us for long, and never resentful. She was not only a mother to us but always a good friend as well, whom we could trust with all our secrets and who always had an answer even in the most desperate situation.
Ever since I was sixteen I knew that I was more attracted to my own sex than I was to girls. At first, I didn’t think this was anything special, but when my school friends began to get romantically involved with girls, while I was still stuck on another boy, I had to give some thought to what this meant.
I was always happy enough in the company of girls and enjoyed being around them. But I came to realize early on that I valued them more as fellow students, with the same problems and concerns at school, rather than lusting after them like the other boys. The fact that I was homosexual never led me to feel the slightest repulsion for women or girls—quite the opposite. It was simply that I couldn’t get involved in a love affair with them; that was foreign to my very nature, even though I tried it a few times.
For three years I managed to keep my homoerotic feelings secret even from my mother, though I found it hard not to be able to speak about this to anyone. In the end, however, I confided in her and told her everything necessary to get it off my chest—not so much to ask her advice, however, as simply to end this burden of secrecy.
“My dear child,” she replied, “it’s your life, and you must live it. No one can slip out of one skin and into another; you have to make the best of what you are. If you think you can find happiness only with another man, that doesn’t make you in any way inferior. Just be careful to avoid bad company, and guard against blackmail, as this is a possible danger. Try to find a lasting friendship, as this will protect you from many perils. I’ve suspected it for a long time, anyway. You have no need at all to despair. Follow my advice, and remember, whatever happens, you are my son and can always come to me with your problems.”
I was very much heartened by my mother’s reasonable words. Not that I really expected anything else, as she always remained her children’s best friend.
At university, I became friendly with several students with views, or, rather, feelings, similar to my own. We formed an informal group, small at first, though after the German invasion and the “Anschluss” this was soon enlarged by students from the Reich. Naturally enough, we didn’t just help one another with our work. Couples soon formed too, and at the end of 1938, I met the great love of my life.
Fred was the son of a high Nazi official from the Reich, two years older than I, and set on completing his study of medicine at the world-famous Vienna medical school. He was forceful, but at the same time sensitive, and his masculine appearance, success in sport, and great knowledge made such an impression on me that I fell for him straight away. I must have pleased him too, I suppose, with my Viennese charm and temperament. I also had an athletic figure, which he liked. We were very happy together, and made all kinds of plans for the future, believing we would nevermore be separated.
It was on a Friday, about 1 p.m., almost a year to the day since Austria had become simply the “Ostmark,” that I heard two rings at the door. Short, but somehow commanding. When I opened I was surprised to see a man with a slouch hat and leather coat. With the curt word “Gestapo,” he handed me a card with the printed summons to appear for questioning at 2 p.m. at the Gestapo headquarters in the Hotel Metropol.
My mother and I were very upset, but I could only think it had to do with something at the university, possibly a political investigation into a student who had fallen foul of the Nazi student association.
“It can’t be anything serious,” I told my mother, “otherwise the Gestapo would have taken me off right away.”
My mother was still not satisfied and showed great concern. I, too, had a nervous feeling in my stomach, but then doesn’t anyone in a time of dictatorship if they are called in by the secret police?
I happened to glance out of the window and saw the Gestapo man a few doors farther along, standing in front of a shop. It seemed he still had his eye on our door, rather than on the items on display.
Presumably, his job was to prevent any attempt by me to escape. He was undoubtedly going to follow me to the hotel. This was extremely unpleasant to contemplate, and I could already feel the threatening danger.
My mother must have felt the same, for when I said goodbye to her she embraced me very warmly and repeated: “Be careful, child, be careful!”
Neither of us thought, however, that we would not meet again for six years, myself a human wreck, she a broken woman, tormented as to the fate of her son, and having had to face the contempt of neighbours and fellow citizens ever since it was known her son was homosexual and had been sent to a concentration camp.
My father was forced to retire on a reduced pension in December 1940. He could no longer put up with the abuse he received, and in 1942 took his own life—filled with bitterness and grief for an age he could not fit into, filled with disappointment over all those friends who either couldn’t or wouldn’t help him. He wrote a farewell letter to my mother, asking her forgiveness for having to leave her alone. My mother still has the letter today, and the last lines read, “And so I can no longer tolerate the scorn of my acquaintances and colleagues, and of our neighbours. It’s just too much for me! Please forgive me again. ‘God protect our son!’
I was taken to the police prison on Rossauerlände Street, which we Viennese know as the “Liesl,” as the street used to be called the Elisabethpromenade.
My pressing request to telephone my mother to tell her where I’d been taken was met with the words: “She’ll soon know you’re not coming home again.”
I was then examined bodily, which was very distressing, as I had to undress completely so that the policeman could make sure I was not hiding any forbidden object, even having to bend over. Then I could get dressed again, though my belt and shoelaces were taken away. I was locked in a cell designed for one person, though it already had two other occupants. My fellow prisoners were criminals, one under investigation for housebreaking, the other for swindling widows on the lookout for a new husband. They immediately wanted to know what I was in for, which I refused to tell them. I simply said that I didn’t know myself. From what they told me, they were both married and between thirty and thirty-five years old.
When they found out that I was “queer,” as one of the policemen gleefully told them, they immediately made open advances to me, which I angrily rejected. First, I was in no mood for amorous adventures, and in any case, as I told them in no uncertain terms, I wasn’t the kind of person who gave himself to anyone.
They then started to insult me and “the whole brood of queers,” who ought to be exterminated. It was an unheard-of insult that the authorities should have put a subhuman such as this in the same cell as two relatively decent people. Even if they had come into conflict with the law, they were at least normal men and not moral degenerates. They were on a quite different level from homos, who should be classed as animals. They went on with such insults for quite a while, stressing all the time how they were decent men in comparison with the filthy queers. You’d have thought from their language that it was me who had propositioned them, not the other way around.
As it happened, I found out the very first night that they had sex together, not even caring whether I saw or heard. But in their view—the view of “normal” people—this was only an emergency outlet, with nothing queer about it.
As if you could divide homosexuality into normal and abnormal. I later had the misfortune to discover that it wasn’t only these two gangsters who had that opinion, but almost all “normal” men. I still wonder today how this division between normal and abnormal is made. Is there a normal hunger and an abnormal one? A normal thirst and an abnormal one? Isn’t hunger always hunger, and thirst thirst? What a hypocritical and illogical way of thinking!
Two weeks later, my trial was already up, justice showing an unusual haste in my case. Under Paragraph 175 of the German criminal code, I was condemned by an Austrian court for homosexual behaviour, and sentenced to six months penal servitude with the added provision of one fast day a month.
Proceedings against the second accused, my friend Fred, were dropped on the grounds of “mental confusion.” No exact explanation was given as to what this involved, and it was clear enough from the judge’s face that he was less than happy with this formula. Never mind, in Hitler’s Third Reich even the judges, supposedly so independent, had to adapt to Nazi reasons of state.
Some “higher power” had put in a finger and influenced the court proceedings. Presumably, Fred’s father had used his weight as a Nazi high-up and managed to get his son out of trouble.
On the day that my six months were up, and I should have been released, I was informed that the Central Security Department had demanded that I remain in custody. I was again transferred to the “Liesl,” for transit to a concentration camp.
This news was like a blow on the head, for I knew from other prisoners who had been sent back from concentration camps for the trial that we “queers,” just like the Jews, were tortured to death in the camps, and only rarely came out alive. At that time, however, I couldn’t, or wouldn’t, believe this. I thought it was an exaggeration, designed to upset me. Unfortunately, it was only too true!”
Josef Kohout was sent to the Sachsenhausen concentration camp in mid-January 1940. Four months later, he was transferred to Flossenbürg. He worked as a Kapo in forced labour in the loading commando at the train station. His position as a Kapo was unusual for a homosexual inmate. He survived, as he explained, because of his good relations with other “green” Kapos. During the death march in April 1945, Kohout succeeded in escaping near Cham.
Josef Kohout lived with his partner in Vienna until his death on March 15, 1994, three months before Paragraph 175 was abolished.
I am passionate about my site and I know you all like reading my blogs. I have been doing this at no cost and will continue to do so. All I ask is for a voluntary donation of $2, however if you are not in a position to do so I can fully understand, maybe next time then. Thank you.
To donate click on the credit/debit card icon of the card you will use. If you want to donate more then $2 just add a higher number in the box left from the PayPal link. Many thanks.
Ireland lost one of its most talented singers yesterday. Sinéad O’Connor was a great performer and artist, there were very few like her.
However, she wasn’t always known for her music, she had many controversial moments. She leapt to international fame with the release of her first record, The Lion and the Cobra in 1987, but her career catapulted in 1990 with her iconic cover of Prince’s Nothing Compares 2 U. O’Connor and Prince didn’t meet until after her version of the song was recorded and released, apparently the pair didn’t get along when they finally did. It’s not clear what kind of relationship the singers had, but O’Connor alleged that Prince once locked her in his home and suggested they have a pillow fight, only to reveal that he had a hard object in his pillowcase. O’Connor said she ran from his property and he followed her in his car.
Prince had recorded “Nothing Compares 2 U” on 15 July 1985, but Sinéad O’Connor made that song her own.
Nearly from the moment Sinéad O’Connor appeared in the mass public consciousness, she created controversy: her first release, a song called, “Heroine,” co-written with U2’s guitarist the Edge for the soundtrack to a largely forgotten 1986 film called Captive, was swiftly followed by the singer causing a controversy by expressing her support for the IRA.
In 1991, she boycotted the Grammy Awards and refused to accept her award for Best Alternative Album, explaining that she believed that the ceremony was steeped in commercialism.
Her 1992 performance on Saturday Night Live, during which she ripped up a photo of the pope, was described by the New York Daily News as a “holy terror,” and attracted harsh criticism from everyone—Madonna to Joe Pesci.
In April 1999, a month after O’Connor attempted suicide, she was ordained as the first-ever priestess in the Latin Tridentine Church, a dissident Catholic group in her native Ireland. In 2007, she announced she had become a Rastafarian and also hinted she was bisexual. She later cancelled a tour because, she said at the time, she had learned she was bipolar.
Sinead came out as a lesbian in 2000 saying most of her life she’d gone out with “blokes because I haven’t necessarily been terribly comfortable about being a lesbian.”
She told Curve Magazine that she wanted to eventually become celibate.
In 2005, she said that she considered herself to be “three-quarters heterosexual, a quarter gay” during an interview with Entertainment Weekly.
In 2018 she converted to Islam and changed her name to Shuhada Sadaqat but she kept performing as Sinead O’Connor.
Finishing up with that iconic rendition of “Nothing Compares 2 U.”
Ruth Maier is often referred to as Norway’s Anne Frank, I don’t agree with that. I think it takes away the value of the words of both women. Their circumstances and lifestyles were completely different. Even the way they were murdered was different. The only thing they had in common was that they were both Jewish.
Ruth Maier was born on 10 December 1920, in Vienna. She and her sister Judith, who was 1½ years younger, spent the first years of their childhood in Vienna-Döbling, in the attic apartment of an apartment building on Peter-Jordan
Starting in 1930, the municipality of Vienna built a large residential complex nearby – along Gersthofer Straße – in which the family moved into a spacious apartment on the 3rd floor (staircase 1, door 14; entrance Hockegasse 2). On the floor above, the father, the chairman of the Austrian postal union and secretary of the International Trade Union Federation of Postal, Telephone and Telegraph employees PTTI, Ludwig Maier, had his office.
Ruth liked to sit and read in her father’s study, with whom she had a close relationship. She was just 13 years old when her father died of bacterial dermatitis. Mother Irma and Grandmother Anna tried to give the two girls a happy childhood.
On her 18th birthday, Ruth witnessed the violent excesses of the Nazi mobs during the November 1938 pogrom in Vienna: Ruth Maier, who had previously had no connection to Judaism, began to confront her identity in her diary. Judith managed to escape to the United Kingdom, via the Kindertransport. Ruth was able to find refuge in Norway. She was too old for the Kindertransport.
On 30 January 1939, a family from Lillestrøm took Ruth Maier into their home: the telegraph operator Arne Strøm, an acquaintance of Ruth’s father, had vouched for the Norwegian authorities that the young refugee would not be a financial burden to the state. In August 1939 Ruth Maier was admitted to the Frogner School in Oslo, she became fluent in Norwegian within a year, completed her final exams, and befriended the future poet Gunvor Hofmo at a volunteer work camp in Biri. The two became a couple, finding lodging and work in various places in Norway.
Ruth was also one of the models for the statue “Surprised”, by Gustav Vigeland. It is on permanent display in Frogner Park in Oslo. Vigeland began work on the sculpture in about 1904. The model for the face of the sculpture was Inga Syvertsen; the sculpture was completed in 1942. Ruth was surprised by another person entering the room while she was modelling for Vigeland, and she tried to cover her naked body, which shows in her posture. The statue was eventually cast in bronze in 2002.
But even during this period, Maier repeatedly found herself overcome by a sense of loneliness and of being misunderstood, feelings which became particularly strong once the German Wehrmacht occupied Norway. They eventually led to a nervous breakdown, and in early 1941, Maier had herself committed to a psychiatric ward. Gunvor Hofmo’s visits were the only ray of hope during the seven weeks she spent there. In fact, it seems that Hofmo was the only person in Norway who cared about Maier.
Below are some excerpts from Ruth Maier’s diary.
Saturday, July 20, 1940, Lillestrøm “Lillestrøm is unbearable now. You come across German soldiers at every turn. They wink at the young girls with the same self-confidence, and the girls always smile back, bewitched by the uniform sore.”
In early January 1941, Biristrand “I can’t tell you how warm I am with Gunvor. I love her deep eyes very much. I love her way of speaking about things subtly”
Ruth’s ast note to Gunvor Hofmo
“I believe that it is good that it has come to this. Why should we not suffer, when there is so much suffering? Do not worry about me. Perhaps I would not want to trade with you.”
Norwegian police officers entered the Engelheim boarding house for girls and young women in Oslo on November 26, 1942, and took Ruth Maier away. The arrest is said to have been violent. Maier was dragged into a car and forced to board the “Donau,” a prisoner transport ship, on the very same day.
Five days later, she was murdered in the Auschwitz extermination camp along with 187 Jewish women, 42 children, and 116 men from Norway who were unable to work.
Jan Erik Vold, the editor of her diaries writes about the last hours before her deportation:
“The raid in which she was arrested took place on November 26. 300 men, members of the police, Quisling’s stormtroopers and the Gestapo took part in the operation. Taxis that had been confiscated were used to transport the arrested persons. Nunna Moum lived in the Same boarding school as Ruth. She says that the arrest happened quietly. Two Norwegian police officers led the Austrian down the stairs into the street to a waiting car. She was told to sit in the back seat, where two tearful girls were already sitting. The girls in the boarding school woke each other up and watched the scene. Someone said, ‘We can watch your gold watch until you come back.’ Ruth replied, ‘I’ll never come back.’ “
Gunvor Hofmo kept Ruth’s diaries and much of her correspondence. She approached Gyldendal to get them published in 1953 but was turned down. After she died in 1995, Jan Erik Vold went through her papers and came upon Ruth Maier’s works. After editing them for ten years, they were published in 2007. Vold was highly impressed by the literary value of the diaries, comparing Ruth Maier’s literary talent to that of Hannah Arendt and Susan Sontag. The book was translated into English by Jamie Bulloch in 2009
Gunvor Hofmo never got over the loss of her girlfriend. This traumatic experience was probably one of the reasons for the crisis Hofmo went through in the 1950s, which caused her to become a long-term patient at the Gaustad mental hospital in Oslo for two decades. In the immediate postwar period, Hofmo had suffered from obsessions which became increasingly intrusive. She heard voices and was afraid of “radiation” in her head.
In a speech issued on 27 January 2012 on the occasion of International Holocaust Remembrance Day Prime Minister of Norway Jens Stoltenberg issued an official apology for the role played by Norwegians in the deportations. As reported on the official website of the Norwegian Government, Stoltenberg delivered his speech at the dock in the capital Oslo where 532 Jews boarded the cargo ship Donau on 26 November 1942, bound for Nazi camps. Stoltenberg said:
“The Holocaust came to Norway on Thursday 26 November 1942. Ruth Maier was one of the many who were arrested that day. On 26 November, just as the sky was beginning to lighten, the sound of heavy boots could be heard on the stairs of the boarding house “Englehjemmet” in Oslo. A few minutes later, the slight Jewish girl was seen by her friends being led out the door of Dalsbergstien 3. Ruth Maier was last seen being forced into a black truck by two big Norwegian policemen. Five days later the 22-year-old was dead. Murdered in the gas chamber at Auschwitz. Fortunately, it is part of being human that we learn from our mistakes. And it is never too late. More than 50 years after the war ended, the Storting decided to make a settlement, collectively and individually, for the economic liquidation of Jewish assets. By so doing the state accepted moral responsibility for the crimes committed against Norwegian Jews during the Second World War. What about the crimes against Ruth Maier and the other Jews? The murders were unquestionably carried out by the Nazis. But it was Norwegians who carried out the arrests. It was Norwegians who drove the trucks. And it happened in Norway.”
I don’t agree with the line of the speech “Fortunately, it is part of being human that we learn from our mistakes” The unfortunate truth is that we don’t, we should, but we don’t.
I have done similar posts before, but I do think it is extremely important that people understand this. The Holocaust didn’t start with the killing of Jews and other groups, it started with the actions of well-educated people. It started with something we call nowadays cancel culture.
On this day, 90 years ago. university students in 34 university towns across Germany burned over 25,000 books. The works of Jewish authors like Albert Einstein and Sigmund Freud went up in flames alongside blacklisted American authors such as Ernest Hemingway and Helen Keller, while students gave the Nazi salute.
Four days previously, on 6 May 1933, the Institute of Sexology, an academic foundation devoted to sexological research and the advocacy of homosexual rights, was broken into and occupied by Nazi-supporting youth. Several days later the entire contents of the library were removed and burned.
It is presumed that Dora Richter was killed in the attack, the first known person to undergo complete male-to-female gender reassignment surgery, although it is possible she was arrested and died in custody. It’s not known just how many people were murdered after the institute’s records fell into the hands of the Gestapo and the police.
Dr Wolfgang Herrmann had created a black list of those books that should be removed from bookstores and libraries, List 1: Fiction and List 2: Politics and Political Science. At the same time, there were indications for books whose purchase is recommended. On 1 May 1933, Herrmann forwarded the selection list to the National Socialist German student body in order to direct the plundering of the stocks of libraries, lending libraries and scientific institutions in the campaign, “Against the un-German spirit.”
Surprisingly it also included works from Waldemar Bonsels: everything except Maya the Bee, heavenly people, and journey to India. Bonsels was an outspoken anti-semite and expressed his approval of Nazi politics against Jews in 1933, calling the Jew—a deadly enemy, who was poisoning the culture in an article (NSDAP und Judentum) which was widely published.
The lists were published in several newspapers and magazines at the beginning of May 1933. They contained summaries of four anthologies and 130 authors. Some exceptions were noted if only certain works of a writer were affected. The list was submitted to the Ministry of Propaganda but was never officially approved.
students burned upwards of 25,000 volumes of “un-German” books in the square at the State Opera, Berlin, thereby presaging an era of uncompromising state censorship. In many other university towns, nationalist students marched in torch-lit parades against the “un-German” spirit. The scripted rituals of this night called for high Nazi officials, professors, rectors, and student leaders to address the participants and spectators. At the meeting places, students threw the pillaged, banned books into the bonfires with a great joyous ceremony that included live music, singing, “fire oaths,” and incantations. In Berlin, some 40,000 people heard Joseph Goebbels deliver an address: “No to decadence and moral corruption!” Goebbels enjoined the crowd.
“Yes to decency and morality in family and state! I consign to the flames the writings of Heinrich Mann, Ernst Glaeser, and Erich Kästner. The era of extreme Jewish intellectualism is now at an end. The breakthrough of the German revolution has again cleared the way on the German path…The future German man will not just be a man of books, but a man of character. It is to this end that we want to educate you. As a young person, to already have the courage to face the pitiless glare, to overcome the fear of death, and to regain respect for death – this is the task of this young generation. And thus you do well in this midnight hour to commit to the flames of the evil spirit of the past. This is a strong, great and symbolic deed – a deed which should document the following for the world to know – Here the intellectual foundation of the November Republic is sinking to the ground, but from this wreckage, the phoenix of a new spirit will triumphantly rise.”
On April 8, 1933, the Main Office for Press and Propaganda of the German Student Union (DSt) . had already announced a nationwide “Action against the Un-German Spirit”, which was to climax in a literary purge or “cleansing” (“Säuberung”) by fire. On the same day, the student union published ‘The Twelve Thesis’
Against the un-German spirit!
Language and literature have their roots in the Folk. It is the German Folk’s responsibility to assure that its language and literature are the pure and unadulterated expression of its Folk traditions.
At present there is a chasm between literature and German tradition. This situation is a disgrace.
The purity of language and literature is your responsibility! Your Folk has entrusted you with the duty of faithfully preserving your language.
Our most dangerous enemy is the Jew and those who are his slaves.
A Jew can only think Jewish. If he writes in German, he is lying. The German who writes in German, but thinks un-German, is a traitor! The student who speaks and writes un-German is, in addition, thoughtless and has abandoned his duties.
We want to eradicate lies, we want to denounce treason, and we want institutions of discipline and political education for us the students, not mindlessness.
We want to regard the Jew as alien and we want to respect the traditions of the Folk.
Therefore, we demand the censor: Jewish writings are to be published in Hebrew. If they appear in German, they must be identified as translations. Strongest actions against the abuse of the German script. German script is only available to Germans. The un-German spirit is to be eradicated from public libraries.
We demand the German students the desire and capability for independent knowledge and decisions.
We demand German students have the desire and capability to maintain the purity of the German language.
We demand German students have the desire and capability to overcome Jewish intellectualism and the resulting liberal decay in the German spirit.
We demand the selection of students and professors in accordance with their reliability and commitment to the German spirit.
We demand that German universities be a stronghold of the German Folk tradition and a battleground reflecting the power of the German mind.
The German Student Association.
These are just some names of authors whose books were burned that day 90 years ago.
Vicki Baum, Walter Benjamin, Ernst Bloch, Franz Boas, Albert Einstein, Friedrich Engels, Etta Federn, Lion Feuchtwanger, Marieluise Fleißer, Leonhard Frank, Sigmund Freud, Iwan Goll, Jaroslav Hašek, Werner Hegemann, Hermann Hesse, Ödön von Horvath, Heinrich Eduard Jacob, Franz Kafka, Georg Kaiser, Alfred Kerr, Egon Kisch, Siegfried Kracauer, Theodor Lessing, Alexander Lernet-Holenia, Karl Liebknecht, Georg Lukács, Rosa Luxemburg, Klaus Mann, Ludwig Marcuse, Karl Marx, Robert Musil, Carl von Ossietzky, Erwin Piscator, Alfred Polgar, Gertrud von Puttkamer, Erich Maria Remarque,Ludwig Renn, Joachim Ringelnatz, Joseph Roth, Nelly Sachs, Felix Salten,[16] Anna Seghers, Abraham Nahum Stencl, Carl Sternheim, Bertha von Suttner, Ernst Toller, Frank Wedekind, Franz Werfel, Grete Weiskopf, and Arnold Zweig.
Not only were German-speaking authors’ books burnt, but also French authors such as Henri Barbusse, André Gide, Victor Hugo and Romain Rolland; American writers such as John Dos Passos, Theodore Dreiser, F. Scott Fitzgerald, Ernest Hemingway, Helen Keller, Jack London, Upton Sinclair, and Margaret Sanger; as well as British authors Joseph Conrad, Radclyffe Hall, Aldous Huxley, D. H. Lawrence, Henry de Vere Stacpoole, H.G. Wells, Irish authors James Joyce and Oscar Wilde; and Russian authors including Isaac Babel, Fyodor Dostoyevsky, Ilya Ehrenburg, Maxim Gorki, Vladimir Lenin, Vladimir Mayakovsky, Vladimir Nabokov, Leo Tolstoy, and Leon Trotsky.
What really concerns me is that 90 years on and people are talking about banning books again, and also cancelling other cultural media. Free speech is important, if you don’t like what you read or hear, you don’t cancel it, you fight your corner with persuasion.
If you limit education, you will breed ignorance and indifference, throw in hate, and you have three main pillars to create a genocide.
Die Geheime Staats Polizei, better known as the Gestapo, was set up on the 26th of April 1933, ninety years ago today. The Gestapo was an essential element in the Nazi terror system.
The Gestapo ruthlessly eliminated opposition to the Nazis within Germany and its occupied territories and, in partnership with the Sicherheitsdienst (Security Service), was responsible for the roundup of Jews throughout Europe for deportation to extermination camps.
The force was created by Hermann Göring in 1933 by combining the various political police agencies of Prussia into one organisation. On 20 April 1934, oversight of the Gestapo passed to the head of the SS, Heinrich Himmler.
The Gestapo’s mission was to investigate and combat all attempts to threaten the state. In the Nazi view, threats to the state encompassed a wide variety of behaviours. These behaviours included everything from organised political opposition to individual critical remarks about the Nazis. The government even defined belonging to certain categories or groups of people as threatening. To combat the wide array of potential threats, the Nazi dictatorship gave the Gestapo enormous power.
As a result of its 1936 merger with the Kripo (National Criminal Police) to form sub-units of the Sicherheitspolizei (Security Police), the Gestapo was officially classified as a government agency. Himmler’s deputy Reinhard Heydrich led the Security Police. Heydrich also led the SS Intelligence Service (Sicherheitsdienst or Security Service). This office was referred to by its German abbreviation “SD.”
In 1933, the Gestapo had 1,000 employees and at its peak in 1944, its active officers within Germany numbered 16,000, policing a population of 66 million. The Gestapo was underfunded, under-resourced and overstretched.
Yet, this did not mean the Gestapo was a weak or inefficient instrument of Nazi terror. To make up for a lack of staff, the Gestapo decided the vast majority of the population was loyal to the regime. It ruthlessly targeted its resources against groups within German society defined as political opponents, most notably, communists and socialists, religious dissidents, Jews, and a much broader group of racial enemies, including long-term criminals, prostitutes, homosexuals, Gypsies, juvenile gangs and the long-term unemployed. If you did not belong to any of these groups then you had no reason to fear a knock on the door late at night by a Gestapo officer.
Thousands of leftists, intellectuals, Jews, trade unionists, political clergy, and homosexuals simply disappeared into concentration camps after being arrested by the Gestapo. The political section could order prisoners to be tortured, released or murdered. Together, the SS and the Gestapo managed the treatment of inferior races. During World War II, the Gestapo suppressed partisan activities in the occupied territories and carried out reprisals against civilians. Gestapo members with the Einsatzgruppen were mobile death squads that followed the German regular army into Poland and Russia to kill Jews and other undesirables. Under Adolf Eichmann, Bureau IV B4 of the Gestapo organised the deportation of millions of Jews from the occupied countries to the extermination camps in Poland.
Marianne Elise K, a technical draughtswoman in a Berlin armaments factory, whispered to her colleague, “Hitler says he wants to do something to put a smile on Berliners’ faces.”
Goering replied, “Why don’t you jump?” Whether her colleague laughed is lost to history; what she certainly did do was reported Marianne to the authorities. On 26 June 1943, she stood trembling before the People’s Court, as its Nazi president read the sentence, “Her honour has been permanently destroyed, and therefore she will be punished by death.” A few days later, Marianne was beheaded by the guillotine.
A young Catholic priest, Josef Müller, made a joke and was executed for it.
Müller was arrested after repeating a satirical joke about a dying German Wehrmacht soldier on his deathbed, who asked a nurse to lay a portrait of Hitler on one side, and a portrait of Göring on the other. Then, he gasped, “Now I can die like Jesus Christ, between two thieves.” Müller was interrogated and temporarily taken into custody on 6 September 1943 under the charges of comparing Hitler and Göring with the two criminals crucified alongside Jesus Christ.
The indictment against Müller called this joke one of the most vile and most dangerous attacks directed on our confidence in our Führer.… It is a betrayal of the people, the Führer, and the Reich. Although interrogated and tortured several times, he would not divulge where the joke came from. He was executed by guillotine on 11 September 1944.
It’s been estimated that only 15 per cent of Gestapo cases started because of surveillance operations. A far greater number began from following a tip from a member of the public. Every allegation—no matter how trivial—was investigated with meticulous and time-consuming thoroughness. It’s been estimated that about 40 per cent of these denunciations were personally motivated. A Berlin stoker reported a prostitute who gave him a venereal disease. She was placed in a concentration camp. Gestapo officers were extremely wary of husbands and wives who informed on each other. A housewife in Mannheim told the Gestapo her husband was making derogatory comments about Hitler’s regime. After a lengthy investigation, it emerged that the wife wanted her husband out of the way to continue a love affair with an off-duty soldier. In another case, two married doctors were involved. The wife accused the husband of carrying out illegal abortions. This led to his arrest and imprisonment. The husband claimed his wife had a vengeful motive. The husband had passed on a sexually transmitted disease to his wife while carrying on a love affair. Her motive was revenge, but he served eight months in prison before this was finally established.
One example of the cruelty of the Gestapo in the occupied territories is the story of Isak Saleschutz. He was one of seven children born to devout Hasidic Jewish parents living in Dubas. By 1900, all of his siblings had immigrated to America; Isak remained in Poland due to his strong religious convictions.
In 1942 the Gestapo commandant was offended by the beards of religious Jews and demanded that they be cut off. In all his life Isak had never cut his beard–it was a violation of Jewish law. When the barber arrived, he sat somberly as his beard was cut, thinking that now he had felt death. One afternoon the Gestapo came for him. When they pounded at the door, Isak ran to the backyard to hide but was seized, forced into a shed, and shot twice. Wounded, Isak yelled, “Pigs, executioners! Revenge! Take revenge!”
Isak was shot five more times and died. He was among 22 Jewish men executed on 28 April 1942. Isak was buried in Kolbuszowa by two of his sons in a grave, next to his father.
To the Gestapo, it didn’t matter how popular you were. Baron Gottfried von Cramm was the first German to reach the final at Wimbledon. However, he did not win the title on the sacred turf. The liberal tennis baron rejected National Socialism and was arrested on 5 March 1938, by the Gestapo.
He was arrested and tried on the charge of a homosexual relationship with Manasse Herbst, a young Galician Jewish actor/singer who had appeared in the 1926 silent film Der Sohn des Hannibal.[15] After being hospitalized, for a nervous collapse after his arrest on 14 March, von Cramm was sentenced to one-year imprisonment. Cramm admitted the relationship existed and lasted from 1931 until 1934. It began before he was married. The accusation was that he violated paragraph 175. [Paragraph 175 made sexual relations between males a crime. It was still law until 10 March 1994.] Additionally, he was charged with sending money to Herbst, who had moved to Israel in 1936.
After the war, very few of the important Gestapo members were caught and brought to trial.
When you look at the picture, you would assume it is the mugshot of a hardened criminal. But you couldn’t be further from the truth. The picture is of Hans Scholl. He was arrested and later murdered for exposing the criminals that arrested him.
There wasn’t an awful lot of resistance in Germany against the Nazi regime, but there were some groups who actively defied the Nazis. One of those groups was the ‘White Rose’, Hans and his sister Sophie were the founders of that group.
Born on September 22 1918, Hans Scholl was the typical Aryan ideal. In 1933, he joined the Hitler Youth and quickly became a squad leader. However he soon grew disillusioned with the Nazi party. In 1937 a former member of his group, Ernest Reden, confessed to a homosexual relationship with him. Hans was arrested and kept in solitary confinement before admitting the allegations were true. Hans made a positive impact on the judge, who dismissed the choice to join the youth groups as the “youthful exuberance” and “obstinate personality” of a “headstrong young man.” The judge then dismissed the homosexual allegations as a “youthful failing.” Although he was charged under “Paragraph 175”, the paragraph in Nazi law that criminalized homosexual behavior,Hans was allowed to leave the trial with a clean slate. Ernest Reden, on the other hand, was sentenced to three months prison and three months in a concentration camp for the relationship.
Paragraph 175 was only abolished in 1994.
In the summer of 1940 Scholl was sent as a member of the medical corps that went with the German Army invading France. Although he observed little of the actual fighting as he was working at a field hospital where four hundred soldiers were being treated. As a medic he assisted during leg amputations and other operations. He was based in the town of Saint-Quentin and felt guilty about living in requisitioned houses. He told his parents in a letter: “I liked it better when we slept on straw. What am I – a decent person or a robber?”
Scholl returned to his studies in Munich. He attended classes at the university, listened to lectures at various clinics around the city, and attended the wounded soldiers who had returned from fighting on the front-line. He told his sister Inge Scholl: “Going from bed to bed to hold out one’s hand to people in pain is deeply satisfying. It’s the only time I’m really happy. But it’s madness just the same… If it weren’t for this senseless war there would be no wounded to be cared for in the first place.”
Hans was again enrolled in the military service in the spring of 1941 as a medic in the Wehrmacht. After his experiences at the Eastern Front, having learned about mass murder in Poland and the Soviet Union, Scholl and one of his friends, Alexander Schmorell, felt compelled to take action.
In 1942, Hans ,Sophie and others founded the non-violent underground protest movement called The White Rose. From the end of June until mid-July 1942, they wrote the first four leaflets. Quoting extensively from the Bible, Aristotle and Novalis, as well as Goethe and Schiller, the German poets, they appealed to what they considered the German intelligentsia, believing that these people would be easily convinced by the same arguments that also motivated the authors themselves. These leaflets were left in telephone books in public phone booths, mailed to professors and students, and taken by courier to other universities for distribution.
Hans also was responsible for graffiti on public buildings which read ‘Down With Hitler’ and ‘Hitler the Mass Murderer.’ The siblings continued to distribute the leaflets until they were apprehended in 1943 after throwing dozens of fliers from a university window.
“Since the conquest of Poland, 300,000 Jews have been murdered in this country in the most bestial way … The German people slumber on in dull, stupid sleep and encourage the fascist criminals. Each wants to be exonerated of guilt, each one continues on his way with the most placid, calm conscience. But he cannot be exonerated; he is guilty, guilty, guilty!”
— 2nd leaflet of the White Rose.
The Scholls and another member of White Rose, Christoph Probst, were scheduled to stand trial before the Volksgerichtshof—the Nazi “People’s Court” notorious for its unfair political trials, which more often than not ended with a death sentence—on 22 February 1943. They were found guilty of treason. Roland Freisler, head judge of the court, sentenced them to death. The three were executed the same day by guillotine at Stadelheim Prison. Sophie went under the guillotine first, followed by Hans and then Christoph. While Sophie and Christoph were silent as they died, Hans yelled “es lebe die Freiheit!” (long live freedom) as the blade fell.
IN THE NAME OF THE GERMAN PEOPLE in the action against
Hans Fritz Scholl, Munich, born at Ingersheim, 22 September 1918,
Sophia Magdalena Scholl, Munich, born at Forchtenberg, 9 May 1921,
Christoph Hermann Probst, of Aldrans bei Innsbruck, born at Murnau, 6 November 1919, now in investigative custody regarding treasonous assistance to the enemy, preparing to commit high treason, and weakening of the nation’s armed security, the People’s Court first Senate, pursuant to the trial held on 22 February 1943, in which the officers were: President of the People’s Court Dr. Freisler, Presiding,Director of the Regional Judiciary Stier, SS Group Leader Breithaupt, SA Group Leader Bunge, State Secretary and SA Group Leader Koglmaier, and representing the Attorney General to the Supreme Court of the Reich, Reich Attorney Weyersberg, [We]find: That the accused have in time of war by means of leaflets called for the sabotage of the war effort and armaments and for the overthrow of the National Socialist way of life of our people, have propagated defeatist ideas, and have most vulgarly defamed the Führer, thereby giving aid to the enemy of the Reich and weakening the armed security of the nation. On this account they are to be punished by death. Their honor and rights as citizens are forfeited for all time.
— Translation made by Berlin Documents Center HQ US Army Berlin Command of 1943 Decree against the “White Rose” group.
Something that is often overlooked is the fact that Hans had 4 more siblings aside from Sophie.
Inge Aicher-Scholl (1917–1998) she wrote a book about the White Rose after the war.
Elisabeth Scholl Hartnagel (1920–2020), married Sophie’s long-term boyfriend, Fritz Hartnagel
Werner Scholl (1922–1944) missing in action and presumed dead in June 1944. In 1942, Werner was sent out to the Russian front, where, by chance, he was stationed near Hans. The two were able to see each other fairly often.
Werner and Sophie Scholl
Thilde Scholl (1925–1926)
Robert Scholl was a politician and the father of Hans and Sophie Scholl. He was a critic of the Nazi Party before, during and after the Nazi regime, and was twice sent to prison for his criticism of Nazism. He was mayor of Ingersheim 1917–1920, mayor of Forchtenberg 1920–1930 and lord mayor of Ulm 1945–1948, and co-founded the All-German People’s Party in 1952.
On 27 February 1943, five days after the execution of his children Hans and Sophie as members of the White Rose, Scholl was sentenced to 18 months in prison for listening to enemy radio broadcasts.
Although this post is titled ‘Hans Scholl’ we should not forget the sacrifices made by the other family members.
Hans Scholl would have been 104 today. In wikipedia he is called an activist, but he was much more then that.
Let me start by saying I couldn’t care less if Putin is straight, gay, bisexual or otherwise. My philosophy is live and let live.
But looking at some of the anti LGBT rhetoric that comes out of Putin’s mouth ,one has to wonder why is he so afraid?
Is he afraid he might become gay himself?
Especially in the 21st century there have been a great number of political and religious leaders who passed, or try to pass, anti LGBT laws. A great number of them turned out to be gay or bi-sexual themselves.
Even in the 1920s and 1930s one of Hitler’s henchmen and enforcers of Nazi laws, Ernst Röhm, was gay.
It is often the case that people who are vehemently anti something, many times are that what they are so against.
Now I have no evidence that Putin is gay. He was married for 30 years but does that mean he is not gay? Of course not, I have several friends who got married and only later came out as being gay.
The fact that Putin is so aggressive towards anything LGBT makes me wonder is this because he has something to hide himself, has he put himself in a corner where he can’t come out.
This meme of Putin and Trump on a horse was meant as a joke, but isn’t there an element of truth in every joke?
The fact that Putin has used so many photo opportunities to show himself shirtless I find fascinating. Is it because he wants to attract women? I doubt there are women who find him attractive especially not without a shirt.
So why then? Does he want to attract men perhaps?
During the Sochi Winter Olympics in 2014 hundreds of visitors complaint that they checked into expensive hotel rooms only to find them decorated with seminude portraits of Russian President Vladimir Putin.
The portraits, showing Mr. Putin shirtless and riding a variety of mammals, adorn the walls of virtually every hotel room constructed especially for the Olympics and were created at a cost of over two million dollars, Olympic officials said.
Maybe this whole invasion of the Ukraine is perhaps to prove his masculinity to the world . A way to show he is a real Men’s man.
History of Sorts 
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