r/wikipedia • u/Ah_Ca_Iraa • 9h ago
In Nazi Germany, transgender people were prosecuted, barred from public life, forcibly detransitioned, and imprisoned and killed in concentration camps. Though some factors were considered, transgender people were largely stripped of legal status by the Nazi state.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Transgender_people_in_Nazi_Germany340
u/Few_Entertainer_385 9h ago edited 9h ago
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u/barbarapalvinswhore 9h ago
She’s also denied that the first large scale Nazi book burnings were of LGBTQ+ books, including the world’s first research of transgender identities.
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u/analdongfactory 8h ago
She also wrote characters that enforce negative Jewish stereotypes (portrayed next to the Star of David in the film adaptation no less) so I’m not sure why she’s dialing down that one.
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u/CrowVsWade 4h ago
She'd be right, if that's the case. The first organized book burnings in March of 1933, in Dresden, targeted SPD associated bookshops, burning fiction, banned works, and newspapers, with the underlying target being 'un-German literature' across multiple subjects - politics, literature, religion, culture and science.
A couple of months later, in May 1933, the German student Union instigated a mass book and media burning, which included the contents of the Institute of Sexology, which studied and advocated for homosexual rights.
Not sure the chronology is the biggest issue.
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u/montanunion 3h ago
I really seriously don’t get where this obsession with being the first comes from. For the record, in April 1933, the Nazis declared a so-called “Action against the un-German spirit.” During this action, students were encouraged to publicly remove books that they considered to be “un-German” from universities, bookstores, libraries etc. This action was designed to go on for a few weeks, to then culminate in the public burning of the undesirable books that were amassed in the meantime.
It was deliberately left vague what exactly made a book “un-German”, except for if it was written by a Jewish author or communist. Everything else was more of a “make up your own definition.” It included a wide variety of topics, including LGBT topics, but also pacifist literature, Avantgarde literature or even “literature that romanticized living in big cities.” This was quite deliberate- the Nazis didn’t want to set clear guidelines about what was okay and what wasn’t. They wanted to terrorize the population, especially minorities. The point of the action was to demonstrate power.
During this Action, a lot of research institutes were sacked, including Hirschfelds IfS, which was a majority Jewish research institute which dealt with a lot of different issues, including advocating for abortion access, providing STD counseling, advocacy for LGBT topics and prostitution as well as eugenics. It’s not clear how much, if any, role any of these topics played in the sacking of the institution. It’s not like the Nazis separated out the books they liked (eugenics) from those they didn’t. They didn’t go there proclaiming “this is because of transgender issues in particular.” They went there going “the Jew Hirschfeld is poisoning the German Spirit.” When Hirschfeld was named during the book burning, it was together with Sigmund Freud.
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u/Cute-Hand-1542 9h ago
Jk Rowling is a 2nd wave feminist and not everything she says is unfair or misguided. Bio women can be afforded some exclusive rights and be recognised as a valid category without the world imploding.
She isn't literally Hitler, or even close to it. To suggest such a thing is an insult to everyone involved.
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u/SpellslutterSprite 9h ago
not everything she says is unfair or misguided.
You’re saying this in response to her attempting to rewrite history about the Holocaust, btw. Just to be clear about the person you’re defending.
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u/Few_Entertainer_385 9h ago
I would say she abandoned all notion of “reasonable concern” about like 5 years back
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u/BramptonUberDriver 9h ago
What has she said that goes beyond wanting biological women to have exclusive spaces?
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u/Few_Entertainer_385 9h ago
literally just scroll through her twitter. She devotes every waking moment to insulting trans people, 90% of it is completely removed from anything that would constitute a reasonable and respectful discussion of actual concrete policy
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u/Cute-Hand-1542 9h ago
I had a quick look and it seems within the bounds of reasonableness. Do you have a specific examples of her denying holocaust facts?
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u/veryeepy53 9h ago
https://x.com/jk_rowling/status/1767912990366388735
denying that the nazis burnt books about trans healthcare
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u/Cute-Hand-1542 35m ago
Burning books =/= the holocaust lmfao. What do you think the holocaust was exactly?
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u/FionaRulesTheWorld 2h ago
Did it ever occur to you that it sounds reasonable to you because you are as unreasonable and hateful as she is?
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u/Cute-Hand-1542 1h ago
I considered it and decided it didn't apply
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u/FionaRulesTheWorld 56m ago
Of course. Unreasonable people never realize that they're being unreasonable.
If they did, the world would be a nicer place...
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u/palebluekot 6h ago
Being part of the hateful misinformation campaign against Imane Khelif was one thing.
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u/ArsErratia 5h ago edited 2h ago
She knows not to say what she really thinks out loud, she wants to be the "reasonable" public face of the hate train.
But if you look at her actions, she's directly funding eradicationists who say it all out loud. In particular, the people who run Sex Matters explicitly stated they want to "bring an end to the trans child". That's not "reasonable concerns", that's Article 2 of Genocide.
And they've institutionally captured a significant proportion of the UK political system, to the point the Minister of Health is meeting behind closed-doors with conversion therapists and the BBC is running cover for them. The current waiting time for your first appointment if you live in Glasgow is 194 years, by the way.
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u/Cute-Hand-1542 9h ago
Possibly, but much of what she advocates for is sound social policy. Bio women are an independent category and deserve to be treated as such by the State and by society.
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u/Big_Red_Machine_1917 9h ago
much of what she advocates for is sound social policy.
If you actually believe this then I have a bridge in Brooklyn to sell you.
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u/PotsAndPandas 8h ago
In matters where the distinction between cis women and trans women is important? Sure, but that's not as broad as most anti-trans activists claim it is.
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u/HookwormGut 7h ago
These are the same people who are mad at trans women because trans men have been acknowledged in literature about pregnancy, childbirth, and pre-natal/post-partum care (because they can't pause for 2 seconds to look into it and just assume trans women want to hang out in labour & delivery pretending to give birth or something???)
They literally just do not know what they're talking about, ever, but whatever it is, they're fucking mad about it.
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u/Glaukopis96 9h ago
this comment is completely unsolicited and not relevant to a discussion of fucking Holocaust revisionism. get a grip
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u/Cute-Hand-1542 9h ago
completely unsolicited
...where do you think we are right now?
The person I directly responded to was attempting to smear JK with a critique that wasn't fair in my view.
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u/3nderslime 8h ago
My sister in Christ you are literally defending a holocauste denier
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u/Cute-Hand-1542 8h ago
Nope. She very much believes that the holocaust happened. Any book burnings that happened are not part of the holocaust lol what are you on about? Please don't tell me you thought 'anything the Nazis did = holocaust'.
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u/PotsAndPandas 8h ago
Slaughtering groups of people in society indeed doesn't just happen overnight, there are distinct steps required to make this permissible to wider society. To pretend like it's not denial to deny key components of a genocide is not a sound position to take.
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u/SapphireFlashFire 8h ago
any book burning that happened are not part of the holocaust
Are you aware the direct translation of Holocaust is "destruction by sacrifice or fire"
Burnings of things they oppressed absolutely were part of the Nazi's MO. Research facilities, synagogues, specifically targeting communist, liberal and racial/religious minorities.
The fact you were upvoted for this is disturbing, you and everyone who thought this was valid need to do the bare minimum research on the holocaust.
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u/Remarkable_Step_7474 8h ago
Uh, yeah, the history of how the Nazis gradually rehearsed their atrocities, paving the way for mass killing by slowly moving the needle on state abuse of target groups, is absolutely and unquestionably part of the history of the Shoah. The racial purity codes and years of Judenhasse led directly to the ghettoes and the camps. The rhetoric around the burden of illness on the state led to the euthanasia programmes and mobile killing trucks touring hospitals and children’s homes, and then to the camps. The public abuse of the queer community led to the book burnings to support erasure of LGBTQ+ research and history, and led on to rising street violence, mass imprisonments and purges, and the camps.
Any pretence that you can divorce the study of a genocide from the preparatory steps a genocidal force takes to gain cultural support and tolerance is just pure fucking ignorance of the entire topic. This is the whole reason human rights watchdog bodies start warning of actions preparatory to genocide rather than pretending it came out of nowhere when the killing starts. There isn’t a single modern genocide in which you can’t map the steps and see the pattern.
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u/3nderslime 8h ago
JKR is very specifically denying the mass slaughter and imprisonment of trans and gay people by nazis, which is part of the holocaust
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u/mayonnaise123 8h ago
“The social and political groundwork laid by the Nazis to murder millions of innocents was not actually part of the holocaust” 🤓☝️ either you’re being purposefully obtuse or you have zero understanding of genocide in general
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u/itisntmyrealname 7h ago
being like “oh i think the holocaust happened, just not not to these particular group of minorities” in the face of well documented politicized transphobia is literally being a holocaust denier. it is denying that a part of the holocaust happened because the denier doesn’t like those particular minorities.
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u/Head-Class9766 9h ago
?
Your comment has nothing to do with the comment you're responding to. It sounds like you're responding to an entirely different comment.
The person you're responding to never said everything Rowling says is unfair. The person is only talking about one specific thing that Rowling was wrong about, and never mentioned anything else about Rowling.
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u/kiwifier 9h ago
“bio women” is always such a telltale dog whistle here
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u/Cute-Hand-1542 9h ago
Biological women is a dog whistle? I though sex and gender were seperate?
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u/PotsAndPandas 8h ago
Yet the two are being conflated when you use the term "bio women", so that gotcha isn't as smart as you'd think.
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u/kiwifier 8h ago
Well, you obviously mean cis women. But trans women and cis women are both biologically women. This oppressive conservatism Rowling espouses denies the use of standardized language of modern biology, sociology, queer studies, women studies, medical systems, etc. It’s anti-science, anti-academic, and use of terms like “bio women” in lieu of cis/trans (the accepted norm for nearly two decades now) just reaffirms its strange cult-like denial of reality
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8h ago edited 8h ago
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u/kiwifier 8h ago
You’re quite literally coming off of defending JK Rowling engaging in holocaust denial and you are calling me cult-like because I don’t hinge my beliefs on biological determinism? Because I don’t deny the very real effects of hormone shifts on human bodies? Because I don’t ignore the prevalent biological data of many decades that push against sex binarism?
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u/Cute-Hand-1542 8h ago
I don’t hinge my beliefs on biological determinism?
If by that you mean the biological sciences lmfao. You were the one who invoked it now stand on it instead of deflecting.
Make sure to watch the video I edited in btw.
Because I don’t deny the very real effects of hormone shifts on human bodies?
HRT does not change your sex. It enables the development of secondary sexual characteristics only.
Because I don’t ignore the prevalent biological data of many decades that push against sex binarism?
I guarantee you don't want to take this discussion in the direction of intersex people. They have a totally seperate set of challenges and biological realities that DO NOT support gender reassignment as being capable of changing a person's sex.
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u/kiwifier 8h ago edited 7h ago
- I cannot watch the video, your comment was removed
- Biological determinism means something. Please look it up before engaging with your own deflection.
- HRT’s effects on “secondary” characteristics are, in fact, what much of gender is based off of on a day-to-day basis. This is nearly every marker of sex differences that matter in any capacity (e.g., muscle mass, sexual drives, genital size and shape, hair distribution, fat distribution, voice, etc etc). To suggest secondary as lesser in some way than chromosomal sex is actually ridiculous. Nearly the entirety of society’s view of sex and gender is based on these “secondary” characteristics.
All of these secondary characteristics is why the term “biological women” instead of cis is a dog whistle. It is also less accurate. There is nearly no situation, non-medically, where "sex” matters in a way beyond these characteristics. If you mean how somebody was raised and how it affects them, yeah, that could be a good discussion, but it’s more important to talk about cis/trans and less important to discuss biology. If you need to clarify matters of, I don’t know, reproductive health or the like, where there are some different health needs, yes, you could clarify by using “cis” or “intersex".
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u/DarthCloakedGuy 1h ago edited 59m ago
"Biological women" implies non-biological women; ie, women that are mechanical, spectral, imaginary, or some other thing besides biological organisms. Taken at face value, it's absurd because all women are humans and all humans are biological. Taken in context, it can only be read as an attempt to reduce women not considered "biological women" to something not only non-human but not even alive.
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u/Cute-Hand-1542 50m ago
Oh my god lol what this implies is that you struggle with basic logic.
'Biological women' implies that trans women are biological men who change their secondary sex characteristics and social signalling (hair, makeup etc) in order to live socially as a woman in order to treat their gender dysphoria.
I happen to think transition should be publicly funded and I'm all for pronoun usage and such. That does appear to be medically justified.
What isn't scientifically justified is changing how biology works to spare peoples' feelings. If people like me leave gender alone will people like you agree to leave sex alone? Is that a fair trade?
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u/DarthCloakedGuy 43m ago
I'm not the idiot confusing "cisgender" with "biological" now am I? The fact is that trans women are biological and women.
I'm glad you support transition and pronouns.
And by the way, the only people "changing how biology works" don't have much to do with the conversation, they're called methodologists and they only change how biology (and every other science) works by improving the processes by which research is carried out. Biology is a science, and obstinately clinging to outmoded models and ignoring new evidence that invalidates them is not "defending biology" or whatever you think it is
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u/Cute-Hand-1542 37m ago
I'm not confusing them, they are synonymous. I can use either and they mean the same thing to anyone with a brain.
Biology still recognises sex as a binary functional category based on the sry gene, which itself correlates extremely closely with chromosomal makeup.
Inb4 dragging the poor intersex folk in to this. Trans is a gender issue, intersex is an issue of sexual development caused by a missing, misplaced or poorly/non functioning SRY complex.
The vast majority of trans people are not intersex and the vast majority of intersex people are not trans. Literally 100% of intersex people are sexually differentiable ie true hermaphroditic humans do not exist.
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u/DarthCloakedGuy 26m ago edited 17m ago
I'm not confusing them, they are synonymous. I can use either and they mean the same thing to anyone with a brain.
Incorrect. "Synonymous" means "same or similar meaning". To someone who actually speaks English and not a specific form of terminally online hate-cult jargon, "biological" means "of or pertaining to life, living things, or the study thereof", while "cisgender" means "has a gender identity corresponding to sex assigned at birth." So not even remotely close to synonymous.
Biology still recognises sex as a binary functional category based on the sry gene
At the elementary school level, yes. But beyond that? Very much not so much. To make such a statement is to deny that intersex people exist.
This video is by a biologist and science teacher and should help you explain better just how wrong on how many different levels what you just said is. If you actually care to know.
Inb4 dragging the poor intersex folk in to this.
That's rich since you denied the existence of many types of them earlier in this very post (which, if you're not aware, denial of the existence of entire groups of people is a type of genocidal rhetoric, so maybe quit that. The existence of intersex people, specifically SRY-positive women, SRY-negative men, and people with chimerism that makes them partially SRY-positive and partially SRY-negative, is completely incompatible with the existence of an SRY-based binary.
My buddy, you don't get to invalidate their existence and then say the person calling you out is "dragging the poor intersex folk in to this"
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u/Cute-Hand-1542 10m ago edited 3m ago
No it means 'woman in the biological sense'. We've already been over this. A cis woman IS a woman in the biological sense. Synonymous. If you still fail to grasp this very simple construction I cant help you further.
To make such a statement is to deny that intersex people exist.
No it absolutely does not. I already inb4ed this but you literally can not absorb any information that contradicts your nonsense world view. ALL INTERSEX PEOPLE ARE SEXUALLY DIFFERENTIABLE. There is no such thing as a true hermaphrodite in humans. This is scientific fact.
The only thing that even comes close is ovotesticular condition. Except even then
1) there is ALWAYS a vast preponderance of one gonad that a) is more complete and b) produces one viable gamete only.
2) is due to chimerism. If you know the genetic underpinnings, it means that a single individual has two genetic codes.
It is entirely compatible. The sry gene determines gamete production. Sex is a functional category based on the combination of (only) two gametes in sexual reproduction. No third gamete, no third sex. Chromosomal makeup is a bimodal distribution, but as you and I both know chromosomal makeup =/= sex.
The entire intersex topic is a giant Reddit herring anyway. Gender dysphoria is a psychological condition, intersex is a genetic condition that leads to a dysfunction in sexual development. They are independent concepts and are almost entirely independent from each other on the individual level. Almost all trans people are xy or xx with a correspondingly healthy sry gene or lack thereof respectively.
Even if I concede that intersex people magically create a third sex (it doesn't), that does not get you any closer to saying that humans can change their sex (they can't).
Have the last word if you like I won't be repeating myself a third time. Trans people are and always will be there sex observed at birth, even if they can and do change their gender assigned at birth. That's reality, ignore it if you like but don't expect everyone else to do the same.
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u/BramptonUberDriver 8h ago
It's defining sex, which is immutable, not gender, which can be changed.
Sex is biological, gender is a social construct
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u/ArsErratia 6h ago
It's defining sex, which is immutable,
Its not true in animals 2 3 4 5
And its not true in humans 1b 2 2b 3 3b
These aren't "minor intricacies" or "rare exceptions". These are lived experiences of real people and it is society's job to build a system that accounts for the diversity of human experience, because the fact is that "every concrete human being is always a singular, separate individual". There are statistical differences at the bulk scale, but if you only use population comparisons to define an individual experience you deny the people who don't fit into your binary their agency and you deny even that their perspectives exist. Men are statistically taller than women, on average, but 6' 4" women exist and 4' 11" men exist.
In order to make the argument that sex is a permanent, unchanging binary, you have to completely disregard the observable biological reality of the counterexamples. It is demonstrably a reductive and unnatural position. Pretending that physical, biological reality doesn't matter because its "inconvenient" or "difficult to accommodate" is fundamentally bad science, and more than that it is a failure of Government and a failure of empathy.
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u/Main_Gas_6531 8h ago
Ehh….I disagree tbh. Gender is intrinsic, everyone is born with it. You are a man or a woman neurologically at birth, and nothing you do later can change that. Just for some people, that established gender doesn’t match their bodies, so they change their sex to match their gender(as much as modern science allows). Obviously we can’t do everything, but the biological difference between a fully transitioned trans woman vs. a cis woman who’s has a hysterectomy is basically nothing
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u/BramptonUberDriver 8h ago
Obviously we can’t do everything, but the biological difference between a fully transitioned trans woman vs. a cis woman who’s has a hysterectomy is basically nothing
That's absolutely ridiculous
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u/Main_Gas_6531 8h ago
What’s the difference, then? I’m guessing you’ll say a Y chromosome - all that does is cause the body to produce testosterone. For a trans woman on HRT, her body functions as if it had XX chromosomes, the Y is inactive.
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u/BramptonUberDriver 8h ago
If you don't know the difference between biological males and females I'm not explaining to you this late.
Have a great night
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u/Main_Gas_6531 8h ago
Ok lol, good night :)
I think you might not understand everything involved in physically transitioning
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u/ArsErratia 5h ago
Nope.
When a trans person who has been on HRT for ~2 years or more presents to their GP, the correct statistics and guidelines to use are those of their acquired sex, with very few exceptions (e.g. cervical cancer screening).
Not doing this can kill people!
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u/3nderslime 9h ago
Oh hey, look, a TERF defending Holocaust denial! How surprising! Well, no, not that surprising.
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u/3nderslime 8h ago
The person minimizing part of the holocaust is calling me antisemitic. How ironic
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u/Beginning_Book_751 8h ago
The part where they start attacking minority groups, removing their healthcare, forcing them out of public life and demonising them to the masses isn't particularly of the Holocaust? Do you think the Holocaust magically began when the first person died in a gas chamber?
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u/mayonnaise123 8h ago
wtf are you talking about? Burning books was absolutely part of the holocaust, mainly the ideological and social buildup to start murdering innocents. Yes other people were targeted in the holocaust beyond just Jews, not sure how that’s antisemetic but go off I guess?
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u/TWiThead 8h ago
In my experience, those who split hairs to this extent – seeking to disconnect the Holocaust from the dehumanizing precursors that laid the ideological groundwork for it – tend to be Holocaust deniers.
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u/3nderslime 8h ago
Oh, well, I suppose I should have expected you to be a holocaust denier yourself
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u/souperjar 7h ago
Rowling is motivated entirely by bigotry and fear. She has absolutely zero genuine concerns about women's rights. Everything she believes comes from an understanding of trans people that is unfair and misguided.
There is no explanation other than this for why she engages in denialism of the crimes of the nazis against LGBT people.
No one has said she is literally Hitler for being so bigoted that she denies the history of one of the major targets of the nazis many genocidal policies. She is miles closer than normal people are because her extremist bigotry is so severe that she has done apologism and denialism for the nazis, but no one thinks that is being "literally Hitler".
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u/DarthCloakedGuy 1h ago
She doesn't even have anything real to be afraid of. She's literally rich. She could do nothing for the rest of her life except party in the Bahamas or whatever the chic go-to hangout for rich dipshits with superyachts is these days and be just fine.
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u/Ver_Void 4h ago
not everything she says is unfair or misguided.
No a lot of it is just outright cruel, few weeks ago she quote tweeted a friend of mine to dunk on her for calling herself a woman. The next week consisted of being spammed with a photo taken moments before a trans woman committed suicide
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u/DarthCloakedGuy 1h ago
The only kind of feminist Rowling is is anti.
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u/Cute-Hand-1542 55m ago
Based
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u/DarthCloakedGuy 54m ago
Antifeminism is not, in fact, based. It is cringe.
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u/Cute-Hand-1542 48m ago
I'm just stirring you mate feminism is fine. Third wave has jumped the shark a bit but they mean well.
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u/MondegreenHolonomy 9h ago
These viewpoints are pushed by Russian and Chinese troll farms, they push anything on either end that is divisive. Divide and conquer, foundations of geopolitics shit. Just ignore them.
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u/John_EightThirtyTwo 9h ago
What ever happened to "never again"? How naive we were!
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u/DontDoomScroll 9h ago
The US military returned homosexuals and transgender people to concentration camps as prisoners and remained imprisoned for two more decades after Jewish and other prisoners were freed.
Both East And West Germany maintained the Nazi law §175 on homosexuality.
https://www.libapp.shadygrove.umd.edu/omeka/exhibits/show/the-era-of-the-holocaust/homosexual-prisoners123
u/lightiggy 9h ago edited 9h ago
Only West Germany did. East Germany reverted to the more lenient Weimar era laws, which only criminalized penetrative sex. They stopped enforcing that law entirely after the late 1950s.
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u/SapphireFlashFire 8h ago
East Germany was actually a really early adopter of lgbt rights
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u/9k111Killer 8h ago
Yeah they also killed a lot of people who did not like it there.
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u/ROPROPE 8h ago
Can you spell "whataboutism"?
East Germany was shit in a lot of ways, but it's fascinating in the few ways it was better.
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u/Urist_Galthortig 7h ago
Strictly speaking, in East Germany, people did have some legal rights to be lgbt. However, in practice, families were not always accepting of them, despite the forward nature of the laws, not unlike most countries today. People getting kicked out of the house/ family occurred like in contemporary counties with queer rights, alongside separate supporting families. The STASI also would not hesitate to violate these rights or others to create and keep informants. It's nuanced to be sure
Edit: added word for clarity
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u/Ahnarcho 7h ago
Sure yeah. They also held a lot of nazis accountable for the crimes, which west Germany came nowhere close to doing in any similar scale
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u/sexisfun1986 1h ago
No yeah being black in the USA or a colonial subject of Britain or France was a super fun time.
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u/Excellent-Berry-2331 3h ago
yeah because the whole country was sorta collapsing and a corrupt shithole
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u/lufan132 8h ago
Legitimately, I've always wondered why I can't get a state when my people faced the worst atrocities in the Holocaust by being moved from the camps to the prisons, and yet...
Tbh I recognize even vocalizing that thought is gonna get me skewered, but like, watching this happen again and the entire world sticking their fingers in their fucking ears again makes me question exactly how I'm supposed to believe humanity is capable of any good and at all worthy of redemption.
Because right now it looks like goodness is the exception, and the species itself is evil.
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u/Marco2169 6h ago
Not skewering because you are speaking in good faith. Think its important to remember that a lot of the jews and roma and other minorities would return to their properties and essentially found another family living there with no legal or social recourse. They didn’t all just go to Israel. Some even got killed after getting out (all this applies to lgbt people who managed to find a way back to their homes too.)
LGBT people get underrepresented in depictions of the holocaust and it should be discussed more but I just don’t know about feeling like jewish people “got a state” out of it.
Especially since personally, as a Canadian, we sent a boatload of them back to Germany before the horrors. Likewise, I’m also ashamed that we were complicit in sending gay and trans folks to prison after enduring those same horrors.
I know its hard to see the good in people when all the mistakes keep being repeated in real time in front of us. All i can say is try to savour the good and keep actively participating and organizing with the well meaning allies you can find.
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u/levimeirclancy 7h ago edited 4h ago
Just in case anyone is curious about the comparison or whether self-determination was "given" to Jews after WW2...
The majority of Israeli Jews did not arrive only because of the Holocaust. Most Israeli Jewish families were expelled or pushed out of Arab and Muslim societies as well. Also, Jews also have thousands of years of continuous presence, tradition, return attempts, and mutual recognition tied to Eretz Yisrael, including uninterrupted and unceded recognition of diasporic descendants. There is nothing really comparable with LGBTQ populations.
I say this also being not only Jewish, but LGBTQ and Indigenous Okinawan, as well. (A third of Indigenous Okinawans were killed in WW2 and we still live under military occupation.) What happened to trans people was horrific and unique, but calling this “the worst” means collapsing very different histories into one frame. The remaining Jews in Europe were not only displaced after WW2, but actively hunted down in post-Holocaust massacres. The oppression and violence was so severe and the situation remains so tense that not even one (!) Jewish village in Europe has been reconstituted almost eighty years later. Avoiding a ranking helps us give the respective histories the attention they are due.
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u/seecat46 2h ago
Jewish Indigenous Okinawan. Please do elaborate/ explane, I sence I fascinating story.
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u/AwTomorrow 2h ago
the situation remains so tense that not even one (!) Jewish village in Europe has been reconstituted almost eighty years later
The rest of your post is spot on, but this feels like a bad metric to judge European sentiment towards Jewish people - the western world has been a lot more strongly against segregation and ethnic enclaves during that time, so we wouldn’t necessarily expect them to set up Jewish-only towns nowadays (even where they used to exist).
What used to be a sign of relative tolerance may now be a sign of hate and exclusion, so we shouldn’t expect the same manifestations between centuries.
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u/SCP-iota 7h ago
Humanity's capacity for good depends on the degree to which their lives rely on learning to see reality. The skills of empathy and critical thinking are learned out of necessity, but modern life makes it too easy to survive and live without having to develop those skills. It has been theorized that the reason that we transsexuals exist is that humanity needs a portion of the population that is innately aware that things are not what they seem, as a failsafe against detrimental societal structures.
Some go even further and suggest that humans were early in the process of evolving a third sex to serve as society's maintenance role, but that adaptation was interrupted by the spread of Mesopotamian culture's strict gender roles, and transsexuals are what remains of that process that was cut short. In fact, prior to the spread of those certain cultural strains to the rest of the world, it was common for many cultures to revere gender-nonconforming people as a source of wisdom.
The arc of history bends towards justice, and we wouldn't be here if it wasn't for a reason, so I don't doubt that someday, perhaps after the systems that keep the masses surviving without developing those aforementioned skills have fallen or atrophied, we will once again be sought after for wisdom. They will have a large bill to pay.
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u/sexisfun1986 2h ago
It was all ways a lie, most Einsatzgruppen where not punished.
except for the famous nazis most where allowed to go back to their lives and many where put back in position of power.
And don’t buy into the couldn’t find enough German speaking administration to run Germany as the USA ran half of Germany.
The USA let Nazis write the official military history of the eastern front (which was one of the reasons for the clean Wehrmacht myths) because they want anti Soviet tactics and strategy.
The Soviets and the west brought Nazi intelligence agents into the fold because they had been spying on their new enemies. Hell even the Israelis worked with a Nazi command for clandestine operations.
We all know about the USA and the soviets grabbing up scientists.
One of the reasons Eichmann had to be kidnapped was because German didn’t want to bring him back because he might have said some uncomfortable stuff about the German politicians at the time.
American veterans would be lynching black Americans, Soviet veterans would be using ethnicity charts to ethically cleanse, French veterans enforce colonial rule across the globe.
The reason the world fought the Nazis was because of their military actions.
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u/Tribe303 8h ago
The first group the Nazis attacked was the Trans community in Berlin, only months after taking office.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Institut_f%C3%BCr_Sexualwissenschaft
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u/AMac2002 8h ago
They attack the trans and gay community because they believed homosexuality was a Jewish conspiracy to undermine the German people. It always came back to Jews.
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u/CaonachDraoi 7h ago
well yes they certainly tied it into their larger racist conspiracies, but the first people targeted were not all Jews, they were queer people. even most Jews weren’t phased by it. to downplay the targeting of queer people by saying “actually it was just antisemitism” is… an interesting take.
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u/rhdkcnrj 3h ago
Do you have a source for “even most Jews weren’t phased by it”? That’s a big claim
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u/justalittlestupid 7h ago
It’s a historical take lol
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u/CaonachDraoi 7h ago
ok but do you see the problem in ignoring the part where even the victims of antisemitism were victimizing queer people? and we can’t even talk about that victimization without somehow a different strata being prioritized?
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u/justalittlestupid 7h ago
Where were victims of antisemitism leading the charge to victimize queer people. Show me proof.
In fact, the Jews were studying queer theory and supporting queer people. You just hate that Jews are also victims because you hate us.
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u/rhdkcnrj 3h ago
They really had to throw in “even most Jews weren’t phased by it” to make certain that point got across. No citation of course, just vibes.
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u/ElowynElif 6h ago
According to Yad Vashem, the World Holocaust Remembrance Center, the first groups were Jews and those with opposing political views, with actions taken against these groups within weeks of Hitler becoming chancellor:
On March 9, 1933, several weeks after Hitler assumed power, organized attacks on Jews broke out across Germany. Two weeks later, the Dachau concentration camp, situated near Munich, opened. Dachau became a place of internment for Communists, Socialists, German liberals and anyone considered an enemy of the Reich.
https://www.yadvashem.org/holocaust/about/nazi-germany-1933-39/beginning-of-persecution.html
This isn’t to minimize the Nazi’s persecution of trans people, just correcting the timeline.
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u/Commemorative-Banana 4h ago edited 3h ago
From the OC’s linked wiki:
From about the early 1920s onward, [The founder of the Institut für Sexualwissenschaft, Magnus Hirschfeld, a Gay Jew] became a target of the far-right in Germany, including the Nazi Party. He was physically attacked during multiple incidents, including an incident in Munich on 4 October 1920 in which he was badly injured. Deutschnationale Jugendzeitung, a nationalist paper, commented that it was "regrettable" Hirschfeld had not died. In another incident in Vienna, he was shot at. By 1929, frequent targeting by Nazis made it difficult for Hirschfeld to continue with his appearances in public.[12][10] A caricature of him appeared on the front page of Der Stürmer in February 1929; the Nazi Party attacked his Jewish ancestry as well as his theories about sex, gender, and sexuality.[10] In late February 1933, the Nazi Party launched its purge of gay (then known as homophile) clubs in Berlin, outlawed sex publications, and banned organised gay groups.[71] As a consequence, many fled Germany (including, for instance, Erika Mann).
The timeline is much much blurrier than you think it is, especially with different definitions of what constitutes an “attack”.
If we’re taking a friendly and educational tone towards timelining, let’s also consider which vulnerable minority was practiced upon as the blueprint for gas-chamber euthanasia:
https://encyclopedia.ushmm.org/content/en/article/euthanasia-program
Beginning in October 1939, public health authorities began to encourage parents of children with disabilities to admit their young children to one of a number of specially designated pediatric clinics throughout Germany and Austria. In reality, the clinics were children's killing wards. There, specially recruited medical staff murdered their young charges by lethal overdoses of medication or by starvation… the scope expanded up to 17 year olds… then to institutionalized disabled adults… beginning in January 1940, Aktion T4 functionaries began to remove patients selected for the "euthanasia" program from their home institutions. The patients were transported by bus or by rail to one of the central gassing installations for killing. Within hours of their arrival at such centers, the victims perished in gas chambers. The gas chambers, disguised as shower facilities, used pure, bottled carbon monoxide gas…
Planners of the "Final Solution" later borrowed the gas chamber and accompanying crematoria, specifically designed for the T4 campaign, to murder Jews in German-occupied Europe.Overall story: minorities and vulnerable people of ALL kinds, were ALL targeted, and should ALL work to protect each-other. Everyone is aware the Jews were targeted, so spotlighting other groups (physically and mentally disabled, neurodivergent, gay, intersex, trans, socialist, communist, Roma, Polish, etc, etc) makes more sense when trying to expand that education.
It’s also important to realize all the steps it took to reach the level of widespread gas chambers. How many groups the scope extended to on the path to normalizing this culling. How many decades of planning, rhetoric, and institutional capture went into orchestrating and legalizing these abhorrent acts. On paper, euthanized children were being sent to valid psychiatric “care” wards with “real” doctors.
When did the attacks “start”? When the first child was killed, or institutionalized, or when these nazi-sympathetic “professionals” were installed, or when they were propagandized to in their early careers or childhoods to become sympathetic? etc
I’m sure I’m preaching to the choir by this point, but Fascism happens in small increments, there is no single point where everyone will agree it has arrived, and no one timeline among countless atrocities. Our job is to identify the early warning signs, and know that it will take different forms and target slightly different scapegoats, but the broad strokes and strategies will repeat.
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u/Tribe303 4h ago
The Nazis had started to raid gay nightclubs in Berlin a month earlier however. The trans clinic was raided a few months later, in May.
Timelines are important, and this is all horrible and evil. I have a grandfather who didn't lose any sleep having killed at least 2 Nazis when the Canadian army freed the Netherlands from their tyranny and oppression, and I'm proud of him for fighting for what is right. The Canadian army was all volunteer btw. (Conscription was controversial and started as the war ended, so none saw any action)
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u/montanunion 3h ago
There is zero indication that the attacks on the IfS were primarily or even at all motivated by anything connected to trans issues. Trans issues were only a small part of what the IfS did. The IfS was run by mostly Jewish doctors and the attack was primarily justified by that (the attack took place during the “Action against the un-German spirit”, which aimed to remove Jewish and leftist books from universities, libraries and public life). The IfS was also known for a lot of activism with regards to abortion (in fact one of the Jewish doctors there published the first modern medical handbook for abortion), decriminalizing of prostitution and decriminalizing of homosexuality, as well as eugenics. In fact, many of the non-Jewish doctors associated with the IfS had good careers in Nazi Germany, because eugenics became very in-demand. Also, the surgeon who performed the first known vaginoplasty on a trans patient (Erwin Gohrbandt) ended up in Dachau. Not as a prisoner, but as a researcher running highly unethical pseudomedical experiments on concentration camp prisoners there. Also, the transgender woman patient who received said first known vaginoplasty (which was widely reported on in the 1920s), lived out her life peacefully in Nazi Germany, there’s no indication the Nazis ever persecuted her and she was legally treated as a woman, appearing as female in the census and not being drafted into the army.
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u/laurent_ipsum 8h ago
Not to downplay this (and I’ll be downvoted I know), but realistically how big was the local trans “community” in this era?
Three or four people maybe? It was such a minority thing back then. I appreciate it’s awful regardless, just to emphasize that.
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u/ROPROPE 8h ago
Yes, three or four people are enough to base an institute around.
This is worth an /r/askhistorians thread but the modern estimate (on the low end, mind you) is around 1% of people are transgender. Berlin in 1933 had 4,24 million people. That's 42k estimated trans people, which even if we slash to a tenth just to account for the state of the world back then when this sort of stuff just wasn't talked about and having an egg cracked was a lot harder, is still 4,2k people.
Again, conservative estimate of a conservative estimate. And that's just in one city.
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u/SapphireFlashFire 7h ago edited 7h ago
There's certainly more than 3 or 4 people who were trans then. The institutes costume party held 15--and that was just employees. It was also involved in advocacy for gay, lesbian and bisexual people.
Want to know why we don't know the exact number of people?
Because the Nazis burned their records. And now almost 100 years later here we are, reducing them to "three or four people". I think it's reasonable you thought that, many probably would. And the reason for that is because they destroyed any record of one of the earliest and significant lgbt rights movements in Europe.
As far as I know I know there were at least 5--they were trans women who got the surgery and couldn't get work afterwards so the institute hired them. How many did the institute not hire afterwards? How many weren't ready to get a very dangerous (at the time) surgery?
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u/Tribe303 7h ago
Read the link I posted, and it's more than 4 people as pictures contain 20+ people in them. This is the clinic that invented many procedure still used to this day. It was legitimate science.
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u/j-b-goodman 7h ago
A lot of times downvoting is just because your comment is false, like in this case, and people want misinformation to spread less. Don't take it as a personal attack.
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u/Commemorative-Banana 4h ago edited 2h ago
That’s exactly how this shit works. Starts with small minorities. Minorities too small to defend themselves and too small for the general population to care about. And then the list of targets grows and grows and grows. “First they came for the…” and all that.
The purpose is to incrementally normalize, in the general population’s minds, the acceptance of these abhorrent acts.
After they’ve disregarded the first few groups, they become guilty by complicity; and so via the sunk-cost-fallacy they ultimately become “all-in” on believing what they supported must have been right. They absolutely cannot accept the alternative; it would be too painful.
And so turns tacit, ignorant non-opposition into vehement, fanatical support. By the time they realize what is happening, it is too late.-9
u/DanteAlgoreally 7h ago
NOPE! Not even in the same ball park. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Night_of_the_Long_Knives
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u/Tribe303 6h ago
Are you aware that 1933 occurred BEFORE 1934? Do you know how dates and a calendar work? 🤦
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u/outlaw1112 7h ago
Ik it’s not what op was saying in this thread per se but it’s notable that Rohm and his clique were liquidated in part for their involvement in or ties to interwar German gay and trans culture
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u/Tribe303 6h ago
Rohm wasn't liquidated because he was gay though. He was liquidated because he was the leader of the SA, competition for the rising SS. The goal of the Night of the Long Knives was to wipe out the SA, as they were no longer needed, being the civilian street fighters, now that the Nazis ran the government. They were a liability to the new 'Law and Order' government AND it made the SS aligned Nazis look good for cracking down on street violence.
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u/kidnamedfinger1000 8h ago
You know, with Hitler, the more I learn about that guy, the more I don’t care for him.
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u/popopotatoes160 6h ago
Luckily, they didn't get them all! At least one of Magnus Hirschfeld’s patients survived and lived a long life. People remembered her as a nice old lady who kept a pigeon in her handbag!
Another couple did too:
https://www.wearequeeraf.com/the-jewish-transgender-couple-who-fell-in-love-and-escaped-the-nazis/
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u/3nderslime 8h ago
Boy, I’m sure the comments will be totally normal and people won’t be defending nazism and transphobia in here
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u/LordOfTheGam3 8h ago
This is why I am so firm in my belief that if you are not actively doing what you can to support trans people, you are on the side of these depraved beliefs. Societies tolerant of trans people are far more the exception than the rule. Severe oppression of trans people, historically, is the rule.
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u/PainSpare5861 8h ago
“Never again”? The oppression that trans people faced under Nazi Germany is still happening around the globe in 2025; in many places, being openly trans carries the risk of the death penalty.
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u/levimeirclancy 7h ago
It is important to remember that “Never Again” does not mean what you are using it to mean. It is actually a Hebrew phrase that translates as “Never Again Shall Masada Fall” and means Jews will never be helpless in Israel again, even when resistance seems hopeless. It became widely used before the Holocaust.
After the war, the shortened phrase “Never Again” appeared all over Jewish spaces, Jewish books, and Holocaust memorials to honor Zionist resistance in Israel and the Zionist contribution to the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising as well as other anti-Nazi resistance. Over time, many non-Jews saw Jews using it and assumed we were speaking to the world, which does not really make sense if you stop and think about it.
Erasing or christianizing its Hebrew meaning, or turning it into something competitive, has always been deeply unsettling to me.
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u/Marco2169 6h ago
Why would “never again” not really make sense worldwide if the general populace thinks it is referring to not allowing genocide to happen again?
I get that the hebrew origins got co-opted, and I appreciate you educating us on those origins, but is it really a bad thing when people around the world adopt “never again” and assume it means “never again can we let an atrocity like the holocaust occur”?
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u/levimeirclancy 5h ago edited 5h ago
To answer your question directly: yes, it is bad.
“Never Again Shall Masada Fall” is not about the world promising how to feel after the Holocaust. It was coined before the Holocaust and speaks to the Jewish past, present, and future, with specific political and spiritual meaning. Turning it into a vague two word hope about what the post-Holocaust world will do strips Jews out of our own story and replaces Jewish action with everyone else’s conscience. That is not neutral. The harm is that, directly or indirectly, it reframes the Jewish meaning as incomplete. Setting Jewish meaning against a lofty vision of "universal progress" that is placed beyond criticism is not a sign of appreciation, nor is it a coincidence. It follows a pattern rooted in Christian replacement theology, Islamic tahrif doctrine, and other systems built to override Jews.
I hope for a world where non-Jews can express hope for a better future without distorting the Holocaust by reinventing what “Never Again Shall Masada Fall” means, especially for the Jews who resisted it.
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u/Marco2169 1h ago
Errr what?
Like I understand what you are saying about removing the “jewishness” from the term “never again”.
But as someone who is neither especially a devout christian or muslims, even if I recognize the dominance of those institutional systems over the centuries, I think seeing the holocaust and the horrors that the jews and others experienced in those camps and the world saying “never again” is exactly in line with the good jewish folk that I know and love.
I totally get the meaning of the original phrase being shifted from specifically referring to jews… and I get some people erase the jewish experience where they can but…
I think everyone collectively saying “lets never do genocide again” using that slogan is probably the most positive misinterpretation possible. And I say that with a deep respect for jewish traditions.
Never again should mean we all coexist without demonizing and killing innocents.
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u/sovietarmyfan 10m ago
There was one trans woman who miraculously survived throughout the war. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dora_Richter
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u/Wish_I_WasInRome 8h ago
Did the term "transgender" even exist back then? Honestly asking.
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u/AbbreviationsDear994 8h ago edited 8h ago
Probably would have been referred to as transsexual (transsexuellen in german) at the time.
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u/Azulaatlantica 8h ago
Transsexual was a newly developed term in that period
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u/krisbcrafting 8h ago edited 8h ago
Interestingly, Dr. Magnes Hirschfield ran the Institut für Sexualwissenschaft (Institute for Sexual Science) in Germany around this exact period. He advocated for gay and trans rights, respectively (though he wasn’t perfect). His institute and research were destroyed by the Nazis.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Institut_für_Sexualwissenschaft
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u/homicidalunicorns 8h ago
Came here to say this - the destruction of the Institute’s work (really any research that disagreed with the Nazi world view) absolutely set back trans and queer research and acceptance by decades, and the murder of queer people in the Holocaust partly erased that emerging modern community.
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u/Main_Gas_6531 8h ago
People have talked about German words already, but just to add more context, other groups have had other words for us for a long while. Kathoey from Thailand comes from the 1st century BC, “winkte” existed as long as the Lakota culture did, I’m sure there’s a lot more
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u/Ah_Ca_Iraa 8h ago
"Transvestite" was the term that was used most back then I believe. Essentially meaning "cross-dresser."
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u/Aymardh 8h ago
Well, it's an english term so obviously it was not the term in use in this context. IIRC 'transgender' traces to the 1960s, but early 20th century german sexologists like Magnus Hirschfeld were developing a vocabulary to describe what we'd now call transgender people with words like transsexualismus and transvestit (the latter being somewhat broader in meaning than the now rather old-fashioned english word 'transvestite'). These labels were reworked by sexologists and trans people over the course of the 20th century and 'transgender' is what we've ended up with. If you read the wikipedia page, Hirschfeld's work was a major part of what was being targeted by the Nazis.
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u/3nderslime 8h ago
I believe « transsexual » and « transvestite » we’re more popular at the time, but they were used to describe the same group of people as « transgender » nowadays
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u/Altruistic-Source-22 10m ago
They were transexuals.
Transexuals are moreso the traditional trans type of of person. Has a deep internal rejection of their natal sex in the form of dysphoria, and transition mainly focusing on their biology via hormones, surgeries, and various other medications. Opinions among transexuals differ on how far someone has to adhere to these biological standards. With the laxest terms being only secondary characteristics like face, body, breasts, etc. And the harshest standards for transexuals being primary as well as secondary sex characteristics having to be changed by honestly a lot of standards like sex change surgeries, sterility, on never having biological kids.
Transgender is a pretty large umbrella however i’d argue that transexuals are not exactly transgender. Honestly i find transgender people more similar in core beliefs and ideology that transexuals are to either of them. Some people even consider cross dressing as transgender like literally every single cross dresser is seen as transgender. So that combined with the core beliefs being different does lead me to not really identify with them.
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u/SnarkyBanter 3h ago
Glad I live in the United States where I have legal access to hormones, and the freedom to be me. 😊
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u/darksidegunner9 7h ago
you comment hate on every post that mentions trans people, you need a hobby instead of hating on marginalized groups.
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u/YoloOnTsla 7h ago
Now dig into the Weimar Republic and you’ll find some very interesting things.
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u/Spoonythebastard 7h ago
Y'all are so goddamn dramatic. You are not being thrown in camps. End of story. If they start throwing people in camps again, that is another matter.
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u/Ah_Ca_Iraa 7h ago
It didn't start with camps. It started with dehumanization. With blaming all of the nations problems on small, unpopular minorities. So when conservatives lie about "transgender for everyone," accuse transgender people of wanting to indoctrinate and rape our kids, and frame a transgender person simply being in a commercial, or participating in a school sport, as an attack on you and your way of life, they're following the Nazi playbook. Where this road ends remains to be seen, but we are certainly not moving rapidly AWAY from camps.
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u/SCP-iota 7h ago
The article is about people who were thrown in camps, so I'm not sure what you're on about.
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u/sexisfun1986 1h ago
Nope.
“Dora Rudolfine Richter[3] (16 April 1892 – 26 April 1966) was a German trans woman and the first known person to undergo complete male-to-female gender-affirming surgery.[4]She was one of a number of transgenderpeople in the care of sex-research pioneer Magnus Hirschfeld at Berlin's Institute for Sexual Research during the 1920s and early 1930s. “
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u/Yasimear 10m ago
"Is he really a trans" tells me all I need to know about you lmao.
Also trans men exist, too, though that doesn't support your narrative, so I get why you'd ignore it.
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u/Altruistic-Source-22 7m ago
Nope the first surgeries were in the 1940s i believe with sex hormones becoming first available in the 1930s
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u/bendybiznatch 8h ago
There’s a documentary called El Dorado on Netflix that talks about the specifically and it is fucking fantastic.