Queer Persecution

Queer people have always existed. Prejudice has as well. The laws to persecute homosexuals existed in Europe long before the Nazis came to power. There was Paragraph 175 in the German penal code that prohibited sex between two men. The Austrian Penal Code, had Paragrah 129, which punished homosexuality as such, regardless of sex. After the Anschluss, it was also applied in the Protectorate of Bohemia and Moravia. Based on this precedent in the law, queer people in Germany and Nazi-occupied countries were persecuted, deported, and liquidated in concentration and extermination camps.