News Release

Exhibition
San Francisco Main Library, Skylight Gallery, 6th Floor
June 18 – August 18, 2005

San Francisco - Thousands of homosexuals, primarily gay men, perished at the hands of the Nazis along with millions of Jews and other victims including, Roma (Gypsies), Poles, Soviet prisoners of war, Jehovah’s Witnesses, and the handicapped during World War II and the Holocaust.

The story of what happened to homosexuals in Nazi Germany is the subject of the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum’s traveling exhibition, Nazi Persecution of Homosexuals 1933-1945. This exhibition will be on display in the Main Library’s Skylight Gallery from June 18 – August 18, 2005. Also on display in the Main Library will be rare materials documenting the life and work of Dr. Magnus Hirschfeld (1868-1935), on loan from San Francisco collector Gerard Koskovich.

Between 1933 and 1945, Nazi Germany sought domination over Europe and, in what is now called the Holocaust, the total annihilation of Europe's Jews. As part of its effort to create a “master Aryan race,” the Nazi government persecuted other groups, including Germany's homosexual men. Believing them to be carriers of a “degeneracy” that threatened the nation's “disciplined masculinity” and hindered population growth, the Nazi state incarcerated in prisons and concentration camps tens of thousands of men as a means of terrorizing German homosexuals into social conformity. Through reproductions of some 250 historic photographs and documents, this exhibition examines the rationale, means, and impact of the Nazi regime's attempt to eradicate homosexuality that left thousands dead and shattered the lives of many more.

In association with the exhibition opening, Ted Phillips, Deputy Director of Exhibitions at the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum, will speak about his personal and professional journey in the process of curating this landmark exhibition. The program, Nazi Persecution of Homosexuals: Curating Invisible History, will be held on Tuesday, June 28, 2005 at 6:30 p.m. in the Main Library’s Koret Auditorium.

The following community organizations are working in association with the Library to present this program: Community United Against Violence (CUAV); Congregation Sha’ar Zahav; Friends of the Pink Triangle; The Gay, Lesbian, Bisexual, Transgender Historical Society; Goethe Institute; LGBT Alliance of the Jewish Community Federation; San Francisco Jewish Film Festival; The Working Group.

Nazi Persecution of Homosexuals 1933-1945 is organized and circulated by the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum. The San Francisco presentation is sponsored by the Friends of the San Francisco Public Library.

For more information, please call 415.557.4277.