workingclasshistory:

On this day, 6 May 1933, Nazis of the German Student Union raided the Institut für Sexualwissenschaft (Sexology Institute) in Berlin. Run by Magnus Hirschfeld, the institute was a pioneering organisation that supported gay and transgender rights and equality for women. Hirschfeld coined the term “transsexualism.” The institute employed at least one transgender worker and had begun offering the first modern gender affirmation surgery.
A few days after the raid, the institute’s huge library was burned in the streets while propaganda minister Joseph Goebbels delivered a speech. The Nazis then stepped up persecution of all LGBT+ people, although, in particular, gay men and trans women were targeted, with thousands sent to concentration camps. Some of them were forced to serve out their sentences by Allied authorities after “liberation.”
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