On this day, 6 May 1933, Nazis raided the Institute of Sex Research in Berlin. Run by Magnus Hirschfeld, the Institute was a pioneering organisation which supported gay and transgender rights, and equality for women. Hirschfeld coined the term “transsexualism”, the Institute employed numerous transgender workers and it had begun offering the first modern gender reassignment surgery. A few days after the raid, the Institute’s huge library was burned in the streets while Joseph Goebbels delivered a speech. The Nazis then stepped up persecution of LGBT people, mass arresting gay men and trans women in particular and sending thousands to concentration and death camps, many of whom were forced to serve out their sentences by Allied authorities after “liberation”.
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