How many LGBTQ individuals were persecuted under Paragraph 175 during the Holocaust?

1. Arrests and convictions: How big was the legal dragnet?

Contemporary research and authoritative reference works place the number of criminal proceedings under Paragraph 175 during the Nazi era at about 100,000 arrests, with approximately 50,000 to 53,000 resulting in convictions and fixed prison sentences. These figures reflect prosecutions across civilian courts and the Nazi judicial apparatus and are cited by major Holocaust encyclopedias and historical surveys; they show a massive and sustained legal campaign targeting men accused of homosexual acts ^{[1] [4]}. The consistency across multiple sources on the order of magnitude supports the conclusion that persecutions were widespread, even while documentation gaps prevent exact tallies.

2. Who was sent to concentration camps — and how many?

Estimates for the number of men deported from prisons to concentration camps as “homosexual” offenders vary notably among reputable sources, with commonly cited ranges from 5,000–6,000 to 10,000–15,000. Institutional histories and library analyses frequently use the lower bound (around 5–6,000) while specialized Holocaust and LGBTQ studies often cite 10–15,000 camp detainees. This divergence stems from methodological differences: some counts rely strictly on camp registration tags marked with a pink triangle or Paragraph 175 notation, while others include prisoners initially convicted under Paragraph 175 who later were subsumed under broader categories such as “asocial” or “protective custody.” The variance demonstrates uncertainty about the camp population attributable specifically to Paragraph 175 ^{[1] [5] [6]}.

3. Death tolls and survival rates: the human cost remains contested

Scholars report differing mortality estimates for men imprisoned in camps for homosexual acts. Some sources note an approximate 60–65 percent death rate among those interned as “homosexual” prisoners, which would imply a high fatality count if higher camp-population estimates are used. Other works caution that such percentages derive from incomplete datasets and may be skewed by the severe vulnerability of this subgroup: targeted abuse, medical experimentation, forced labor, and denial of proper care increased mortality risk. The result is a tragic but imprecise picture: mortality was disproportionately high, yet converting that into an exact number of deaths attributable solely to Paragraph 175 persecution is not possible with current records ^{[1] [3] [6]}.

4. Records, labels, and why totals remain uncertain

A central reason for divergent figures is the archival problem: many victims were not recorded under a singular label. Some were listed explicitly under Paragraph 175, others under “asocial,” “criminal,” or “protective custody,” and camp registers often omitted sexual orientation altogether. Case files survive in fragmentary form—examples like the Dachau records show only a small number listed explicitly as Paragraph 175 cases, a clear underestimate of the true scale. Historians therefore triangulate from arrests, court convictions, camp registrations, and survivor testimony to produce ranges rather than a single number, reflecting methodological caution forced by incomplete documentation ^{[4] [7]}.

5. Women, lesbians, intersex people and broader queer experiences

While Paragraph 175 targeted male homosexual acts, the Nazi regime also persecuted lesbian women, transgender people, and intersex individuals through other legal and extralegal mechanisms. Most major studies emphasize that lesbians were less systematically prosecuted than men and often punished under ancillary charges, yet they still suffered arrests, social ostracism, and medical abuses. The historical focus on male victims under Paragraph 175 can obscure these broader experiences, and sources urge inclusion of the wider spectrum of queer persecution in any accounting of Nazi-era repression ^{[5] [3]}.

6. Reconciling numbers and the responsible takeaway

Across institutional and scholarly sources the responsibly stated conclusion is a range: ~100,000 arrests, ~50,000 convictions, and several thousand—likely between 5,000 and 15,000—imprisoned in camps, with high mortality among those interned. Differences in the lower and upper bounds reflect varying methodologies, archival survival, and the Nazis’ own practices of mislabeling victims. The historical consensus is firm on the scale and severity of persecution even if precise arithmetic remains elusive; the data compel recognizing both the systematic criminalization under Paragraph 175 and the significant human toll exacted by Nazi policy ^{[1] [2] [3]}.