Embedded Files
On September 1, 1935, the tightened version of Paragraph 175 came into force.
On September 15, 1935, the "Reich Citizenship Law" and the "Law for the Protection of German Blood and German Honor" were passed. Both "Nuremberg Laws" stamped the Jewish citizens as people of inferior rights.
On June 9, 1936, Carl Bruns was sentenced for the first time "for continued unnatural fornication in two cases to 4 months and 2 weeks in prison".
Heinz Roth had already been sentenced to eight months in prison in April 1936 because of his relationship with Carl Bruns.
Carl and Heinz had the same lawyers: Karstens & Wehner, Hermannstr.31.
According to a surviving judicial file (Hamburg State Archive 213-11 Public Prosecutor Regional Court - Criminal Matters, 5209/42), Paul Abele (1907-?) named Carl Bruns as a homosexual contact during an interrogation on March 27, 1942.
On April 3, 1942 Carl was interrogated and arrested the same day by the responsible Kriminalkommissariat 24 (BK1).
Carl denies all accusations, only admits sexual contact with a stranger in the summer of 1941.
On July 6, 1942, Carl Bruns was sentenced to one year in prison by the Hamburg District Court, Section 131, for fornication between men according to Section 175 (he was deemed to have a criminal record).
He served the sentence in the Hamburg-Stadt, -Fuhlsbüttel and -Altona detention centers.
Obviously, Carl was able to keep his partner Otto Schildt out of the investigation.
Carl Bruns is in police custody until April 13, 1942 (i.e. in the Gestapo prison in Fuhlsbüttel), then according to an arrest warrant he is said to stay in custody for further investigation.
While Paul Abele revokes his statement on April 30th, on April 29th a letter arrives at the public prosecutor's office in which the lawyers Karstens & Wehner declare that Carl Bruns withdraws his testimony and wants to admit everything. Tragically he does this on May, 8th: Carl admits having had sexual contact with Paul Abele three times, namely in 1933 and 1934 and then again at the end of 1940.
But his ordeal does not end there:
On March 9, 1943, he was not released, but immediately returned to the police, who arranged for his renewed, so-called preventive detention. That meant concentration camp.
Carl Bruns was sent to the Sachsenhausen concentration camp and, according to a fellow inmate, died on the death march at the end of April 1945. His partner - Otto Schildt - had died in July 1943, perhaps during the bombing of Hamburg.
The Sachsenhausen concentration camp was an "ideal model camp" and the "concentration camp of the capital of the Reich".
More information
on the Sachsenhausen Memorial and Museum website
Heinz Roth perished on May 3, 1945 after many years in various camps, most recently in Neuengamme concentration camp, when the “Cap Arcona” was bombed in the Baltic Sea by the Royal Air Force.
The evacuation of Sachsenhausen concentration camp began in the early hours of 21 April 1945. More than 30,000 of the 38.000 remaining internees were marched off in groups of 500 people towards the north-west.
In the cold and damp weather, many prisoners died of exhaustion or were shot by the SS.
On different routes the convoys reached the Wittstock area. In the nearby "Below Forest" more than 16,000 prisoners were rounded up in a large camp from 23 April 1945 onwards (> Museum of the Death March).
The links to the annual figures refer to the "Living Virtual Museum Online (LeMO)", a joint project of the German Historical Museum (DHM), the House of the History of the Federal Republic of Germany (HdG) and the Fraunhofer Institute for Software and Systems Technology (ISST).
More about the persecution of homosexuals on the website Persecution of Homosexuals of the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum and on the ‚Rosa Winkel ('Pink Triangle') website.
A film about homosexual concentration camp victims by Rob Epstein and Jeffrey Friedman, USA 1999
„Totgeschlagen, totgeschwiegen?“ (Killed, hushed up?) – Article by Klaus Müller in: Nationalsozialistischer Terror gegen Homosexuelle. Verdrängt und ungesühnt Published by Rüdiger Lautmann and Burkhard Jellonek. Paderborn 2002.
Newspaper articles:
Tragedy of the prison ships sunk by the RAF – 75 years on, The National, May 2nd, 2020
7,000 Holocaust survivors were inadvertently killed by the UK a day before Germany surrendered. Jerusalem Post, April 18, 2007
Commemoration of death marches 75 years ago: Shot dead on the Death March (in German)
Shortly before the end of the war, the SS drove prisoners from concentration camps through Brandenburg. These death marches have left their mark.
Taz, April 18, 2020
Canceled: Memorial service on 19 April 2020
A "state danger like communism"
Homosexuals as political prisoners in Sachsenhausen
Interview with Klaus Müller: PRIDE MONTH 2021: DEFYING NAZI PERSECUTION (FRIEDA BELINFANTE, WILLEM ARONDEUS). USHMM
Page updated
Google Sites
Report abuse