Trans History Week and Germany 1933

The Hirschfeld Institute had clients who in 1933 feared that the changing political climate might affect their acceptability within the Nazi party - even though the Nazis never abolished the German 'transvestite pass', cross-dressers suspected of being homosexual could be in trouble. The burning of all the patient records was very convenient for them.

Erwin Gohrbandt, the doctor who carried out the pioneering 'sex-change' (as it was called) surgery on Dora Richter was a war criminal who carried out experiments on prisoners in Dachau.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Erwin_Gohrbandt

The Nazis persecuted and murdered Jews, Gays, Gypsies, Trades Unionists, Communists, Poles - 'transgender people' weren't on the list.

I don't really consider an article in favour of sterilising non-conforming children to be a credible source.

From your article:

Today, right-wing attacks against trans people in the United States are intensifying.
**
Though the American Academy of Pediatrics and every major medical association approve of gender-affirming health care for trans kids, Republican politicians have banned it in 22 states, with even more moving to prohibit it.

The Nazis at the time were in the habit of smashing up psychoanalysts' libraries, Lou Salome being a good example. The usual justification for this was that psychoanalysis was a 'Jewish science', and Salome having been friends with Freud wouldn't have helped her case.

In the case of Hirschfeld's institute, the very extensive fetishism and pornography collections would probably have attracted accusations of outraging public decency.

The followers of Wilhelm Reich also got it in the neck, although Reich himself escaped into exile. Reich isn't quite as fashionable as he used to be though, while Hirschfeld has been rescued from obscurity to become the 'trans doctor', and we gloss over the elements of his work that were just as cranky as Reich's stuff.

I’m afraid we’re arguing against a tide of individuals who seem to think that recognising atrocities against a marginalised group 90 years ago somehow infringes on their rights today. Let’s save our breath and support trans people in material ways in our communities and show these bitter people that they are very much (an unfortunately too loudly heard) minority.

The problem is that trans lobbyists have used privilege and old boys networks to influence organisations worldwide into declaring that up is down. But we're reaching the point where that stops working as the intended indoctrination method and instead leads to growing distrust of said organisations and intellectuals in general. The kind of environment in which populism grows.

Have they found any trans Holocaust victims who were neither Jewish nor prosecuted for homosexual acts yet?

Well said. This was primarily an attack on homosexuals, with some sex fetishists caught up in it.

Yes, one of the doctors who carried out that surgery later went to work for the Nazis, carrying out human experiments on people in concentration camps.

Thanks for the scold. I think you need to educate yourself about the very real difference between transvestites and the 21st century invention of transgenderism. There is no evidence to suggest that the people to whom you refer thought they were born in the wrong body, they simply liked dressing as women.
History is obviously not set in stone, with new information being discovered all the time, but the rewriting of history can also occur, and those who support this ideology are VERY good at that. The whole ideology is based on a lack of factual information or evidence, so excuse me if I’m not going to be swayed by one article.

Malcolm Clark has an essay on Substack called Trans and the Nazis The biggest lie of all. I can't link it and it needs a paid subscription to read it all.

Aren’t you just some ‘rando on the internet’?

There's a website dedicated to the history of the institute.

(Website is naturally in German but you can click on the US/UK flag to read it in English)

'The Institute museum was the only one of its kind in the world. Thousands of photographs could be viewed there: pictures of sex criminals, neurotics, the mentally disturbed; pictures of eccentric sexual practices, perversions, and the instruments and tools used for them; historical photographs, entire files on brothels from all time periods and from throughout the world; photos of prostitutes, homosexual men, tranvestites, lesbians, exhibitionists, sadists, masochists, pimps, kleptomaniacs, and many, many more. ...

In short, all that was collected here was like a labyrinth of human passions and aberrations! We had countless objects that had served to satisfy sexual fetishisms: a collection of about a hundred pairs of women's kid leather shoes in all colors; boots, including some that were laced-up well past the thigh. In the same museum room there was an exhibition case filled with braids and locks of hair that one, single braid-cutter had cut off and collected. From a panty fetishist we inherited a selection of the most beautiful, varied, exquisite, and intimate pieces of lingerie that have ever been worn. ...

One of the strangest collections we had were the abortion instruments that women from all eras and peoples had used to perform abortions. The exhibition was rounded off with precise statistics that interested scholars from all over the world.

In a separate room, we had a sizable collection of pornographic books that spoke of healthy and sick love, in pictures and in writing, in prose and in verse, in all languages. . . ."'

https://www.hirschfeld.in-berlin.de/institut/en/ifsframe.html

They do it because they know most of their supporters won’t fact check, they live in a fact free zone.

Germany is deeply ashamed of the Nazi period and has been captured by GI in any case so rulings like that, just like when a UK judge makes a mad ruling is not worth the paper its written on.

And given the Nazis were keen to advance their version of science (by experimenting on people and researching behaviour), if this institute was by a Nazi, they would have been all keen for it to remain.

Good grief - would you please all listen to yourselves.

evidence aplenty (including a German court ruling in 2022) that trans people were targeted by the Nazis and sent to concentration camps. Read here: https://www.smithsonianmag.com/history/new-research-reveals-how-the-nazis-targeted-transgender-people-180982931/

it is worth also noting for those saying that this is a rewrite of history, that it was also only in the 1980s that gay people and gypsies were also formally recognised as having been targets of the Nazism. That is to say that, groups that have been historically oppressed and who are/were marginalised, take longer for recognition of historical atrocities that occurred to them to come about.

for those of you still unsure I urge you to visit the NS museum in Munich, which will show you evidence aplenty that this is not some modern “transwashing” but rather dark modern history that you are very willingly ignoring.

Thank you. It may have been s Malcom Clark thread on Twitter I saw. I'll go and have a look on his substack.

Think of that quote about a nice warm bath of someone else's oppression.

This refers to the Institute for Sexuality Science set up by Dr Magnus Hirschfeld which was violently suppressed and smashed up by the Nazis in 1933. Hirschfeld had been campaigning for the decriminalisation of homosexuality for many years.

It was targeted mainly because Hirschfeld was Jewish and because of its research into homosexuality. So he was a hate figure for the NSDAP, the “Jew corrupting decent Germans”. Hirschfeld himself had sensibly gone into exile as early as 1931, having been threatened by the Nazis before they even came to power.

The concept of a man really being a woman did not exist at the time. But it did do research into cross-dressing and Hirschfeld is credited with inventing the word transvestite. There were also experiments with hormone treatment and vaginoplasty, which is presumably where the “trans clinic” stuff comes from.

Curiously, the first person to undergo this surgery, a Czech citizen who went by the name of Dora Richter, returned to Czechoslovakia, survived the war under German occupation and was not sent to a concentration camp or killed. In fact the worst thing that happened in this person's life was having to leave Czechoslovakia when the ethnic Germans were expelled after the war.

I think either Dennis Kavanagh or Malcolm Clark have researched and written about this.

I'd really like some good sources around this. My son told me JKRowling was a holocaust denier because she said the Nazis didn't target trans people. I said she wasn't because the holocaust is the annihilation of 6 million jews and there is little to no evidence trans people were targeted by Nazis. He mentioned the destruction of this institute because Wikipedia says it's true. While my understanding is that the institute researched aspects of sex and sexuality and was targeted because Jewish academics were targeted I got that off Twitter so just as terrible a source as Wikipedia. If anyone knows of a good academic paper analysing original sources for the reasons behind the destruction of the Institute and its papers I would be very interested.

No there was a clinic, too. They provided sex education, contraception, treatment for STIs and impotence and did carry out early gender reassignment surgery.

Absolutely

Again, for the hard of thinking, this.

I don't even think it's about having no historical awareness. They just like to appropriate other people's oppression and wear it like a fashion accessory.