Atlas›Domain XVI · Historical, discredited & harmful›Guide 057
Guide XVI-057

Castration and testosterone implants of homosexual men under Nazism

Carl Værnet1944Buchenwald, Germany
A 33 · L 50 · M 1720 interventions in the Trinity explorer
Client cardCompare
[source: …] where a claim comes from[uncertain] not confirmed in a primary source[synthesis] the writer's reconstruction

1. Introduction

Version followed: the account of the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum (USHMM) Holocaust Encyclopedia and the Buchenwald and Mittelbau-Dora Memorials Foundation for the persecution and camp imprisonment of gay men; the Danish encyclopedia Lex (entry by Niels Høiby, University of Copenhagen, co-author of the 2004 Danish study of Carl Værnet) for the Buchenwald hormone-implant experiments; German government and major-news sources for post-war rehabilitation. Where sources differ (notably on dates and numbers), each version is named.

This is a state abuse, not a therapy. Under National Socialism the German state criminalised sex between men under Paragraph 175, imprisoned thousands of gay men in concentration camps under the pink triangle, gave courts and later camp commandants the power to order castration, and allowed SS-sponsored pseudo-medical experiments meant to "cure" homosexuality, most notoriously the hormone implants given to homosexual prisoners at Buchenwald in 1944 by the Danish SS physician Carl Værnet [source: USHMM, Gay Men under the Nazi Regime; Stiftung Gedenkstätten Buchenwald und Mittelbau-Dora; Lex, Carl Værnet]. The underlying idea, that homosexuality was a defect of the body that the state could remove by surgery or hormones, was false; none of these measures changed anyone's sexual orientation, and the men subjected to them suffered mutilation, illness and, in some cases, death [source: Lex; Stiftung Gedenkstätten; synthesis].

The psychotherapist does not "use" this history. What changes in the psychotherapist's own work is the capacity to recognise this history when it appears in a client's life (as family history, as a survivor's or a post-war convicted man's own past, as collective LGBTQ+ memory, or as the background to present-day orientation-change claims), to assess its effects, and to support mourning, meaning-making, recognition and repair [synthesis].

2. Framework

Session number and length follow the client's needs and the setting; what follows is a structure for the psychotherapist's own work [synthesis].

Historical phases of the abuse, in outline (for orientation, not for teaching):

  • 1871–1933: criminal law. Paragraph 175 of the German criminal code, introduced in the German Empire in 1871, criminalised sex between men [source: Stiftung Gedenkstätten].
  • 1933–1935: castration enters the law; Paragraph 175 tightened. From late 1933 German courts could order castration for certain sexual offenders; men convicted under Paragraph 175 could at first not be castrated without supposed "consent", and some agreed in order to secure early release [source: USHMM]. That this power came from the November 1933 Law against Dangerous Habitual Criminals is [uncertain: not verified]. In 1935 the regime significantly expanded and tightened Paragraph 175 [source: Stiftung Denkmal flyer; Stiftung Gedenkstätten].
  • 1936–1945: police campaign and camps. In 1936 Heinrich Himmler set up the Reich Central Office for the Combating of Homosexuality and Abortion within the criminal police, working closely with the Gestapo [source: USHMM]. Scholars estimate about 100,000 arrests and about 53,400 convictions under Paragraph 175 in the Nazi period; between 5,000 and 15,000 men were imprisoned in camps as homosexual offenders, usually marked with a pink triangle; an unknown number died there [source: USHMM]. From November 1942 camp commandants officially had the power to order forced castration of pink-triangle prisoners [source: USHMM]. About 700 men were deported as homosexuals to Buchenwald and Mittelbau-Dora; about half did not survive [source: Stiftung Gedenkstätten].
  • 1944–1945: the Buchenwald experiments. Værnet, an SS doctor, implanted hormone capsules in homosexual prisoners at Buchenwald, some of whom had been castrated, aiming to make them heterosexual [source: Lex]. The USHMM catalogue's description of a documentary dates the experiments to 1943 [source: USHMM collections, Pink Triangle]; Lex and campaign sources give 1944 [source: Lex; Tatchell]. Numbers and deaths are in the Harm account.
  • 1945–1994: the second persecution. Men convicted under Paragraph 175 stayed in prison after the war; West Germany kept the 1935 Nazi version of the law, weakened it in 1968 and the reunified state removed it in 1994; criminal persecution in East Germany lasted until the 1980s; men persecuted as homosexuals were denied recognition and compensation as Nazi victims for decades [source: USHMM; Stiftung Gedenkstätten]. Værnet escaped to Argentina in 1946 and died in Buenos Aires in 1965 without trial [source: Lex].
  • 1990s–present: recognition. In the 1990s the German government acknowledged persecuted homosexuals as Nazi victims; in 2002 it overturned Nazi-era Paragraph 175 convictions and made the men eligible for compensation [source: USHMM]. On 12 December 2003 the Bundestag resolved to build the Memorial to Homosexuals Persecuted under Nazism, opened in Berlin on 27 May 2008 [source: Stiftung Denkmal flyer]. In June 2017 the Bundestag voted to overturn post-war Paragraph 175 convictions and to compensate the men [source: CNN, 24 June 2017].

Phases of the psychotherapist's work [synthesis]:

  1. Preparation and historical literacy. Goal: accurate knowledge of the history, its post-war continuation, and the profession's part in it. Move on when the therapist can name the main facts, their sources and where sources disagree.
  2. Recognition and assessment. Goal: notice when this history is present (family, identity, a client's own conviction, commemoration, present-day "cure" claims) and assess its meaning, distress, risk and needs. Move on when the client's question and the risk picture are clear.
  3. Safety and stabilisation. Goal: manage suicide risk, acute shame or re-traumatisation, and any current exposure to orientation-change practices. Move on when risk is managed and the client can approach the material without being overwhelmed.
  4. Processing, mourning and repair. Goal: grief work (including ambiguous loss), shame and silence work, intergenerational meaning-making, and repair of family narratives. Move on when the client can hold the history as part of a story rather than a secret or a wound that runs their life.
  5. Recognition, advocacy, commemoration and follow-up. Goal: support any wish to seek rehabilitation or compensation, research family history, visit memorials, testify or campaign; plan follow-up. Ending when the client's own goals are met.

3. Guiding principles

The principles below are the psychotherapist's stance and are [synthesis] except where tagged.

  • No orientation is a disorder to be cured. Practical meaning: the therapist never treats, refers to or supervises any attempt to change a client's sexual orientation or gender identity; the Nazi "cures" are history, not a debate.
  • Accuracy before narrative. Practical meaning: state the facts as the memorial institutions state them, say where they disagree (1943 or 1944; how many men), and do not inflate or minimise.
  • Victims are never named; dignity first. Practical meaning: in notes, teaching and conversation use role descriptions; follow the client's choice about naming their own relative.
  • Persecution did not end in 1945. Practical meaning: assess the post-war layer (continued prosecution until 1994 in the West and the 1980s in the East, decades without recognition) as carefully as the Nazi-era layer [source: USHMM; Stiftung Gedenkstätten].
  • Silence is part of the injury. Practical meaning: expect families who never spoke of a relative's imprisonment or conviction; explore the silence without forcing disclosure.
  • Medicine's role is part of the history. Practical meaning: name that physicians designed and carried out these measures; this helps clients who distrust health professionals and keeps the therapist humble.
  • Client-led pace. Practical meaning: the client decides how far into the history to go; no graphic detail is needed for healing.
  • Collective and individual trauma differ. Practical meaning: distinguish a client's own experiences from inherited or collective memory, and do not assume that every LGBTQ+ client carries this history.
  • Affirmation without appropriation. Practical meaning: support LGBTQ+ identity and pride while keeping the history the client's, not the therapist's cause.
  • Not only gay men. Practical meaning: lesbians, trans people and sex workers were also persecuted, though the statute named men [source: Stiftung Gedenkstätten]; do not exclude their histories.
  • Recognition is reparative. Practical meaning: official acts (2002 and 2017 laws, the 2008 memorial) can matter clinically; offer information, not pressure [source: USHMM; CNN; Stiftung Denkmal flyer].
  • Safe messaging on suicide. Practical meaning: speak about deaths in camps and later suicides without method detail or glamorising, and always pair risk with help.
  • Perpetrator descendants are clients too. Practical meaning: hold guilt and shame in families linked to perpetrators without excusing the acts.
  • No dual roles that cloud judgement. Practical meaning: if the therapist is also active in a commemorative or campaigning group the client joins, weigh this under APA Ethics Code Standard 3.05 (Multiple Relationships) [source: APA Ethics Code].

4. Intervention inventory

The interventions below are the psychotherapist's own work; steps not drawn from a cited source are marked [synthesis]. None of them involves carrying out, describing or referring to any castration, hormonal or other orientation-change practice.

4.1 Building the therapist's own historical literacy

  • Purpose / when: before working with clients for whom this history matters; it prevents errors that clients experience as a second erasure.
  • Steps: (1) Read the USHMM encyclopedia articles on gay men under the Nazi regime and the Buchenwald memorial foundation's material on pink-triangle prisoners. (2) Learn the four layers: the 1871 law and its 1935 tightening; arrests, camps and castration powers; the Buchenwald experiments; the post-war continuation to 1994 and later recognition (2002, 2008, 2017) [source: USHMM; Stiftung Gedenkstätten; Stiftung Denkmal flyer; CNN]. (3) Note the disagreements (1943 or 1944 for the experiments; numbers of men involved). (4) Keep a one-page reference with sources rather than relying on memory.
  • Example language (illustrative): "Before we go further, I want to make sure I understand the history the way the memorial institutions document it, so you are not correcting me as we go."
  • Watch for: relying on films, social media or campaign material alone; over-certainty about contested numbers. Working: the therapist can answer basic factual questions accurately and say "sources differ" where they do.

4.2 Recognising when this history is present

  • Purpose / when: at intake and throughout; the history often arrives indirectly (a great-uncle "who was in a camp but nobody said why", a grandfather convicted in the 1950s, a client's distress after visiting Berlin or Buchenwald, anger at a news story about "cures").
  • Steps: (1) Listen for cues: German, Austrian or occupied-territory family history; unexplained imprisonment; a relative "who never married" and was silent about the war; references to Paragraph 175, the pink triangle or castration. (2) Ask an open, non-leading question. (3) Record the cue and the client's own words, not your hypothesis.
  • Example language (illustrative): "You said your great-uncle was imprisoned and the family never explained why. Would you like to say more about what you know, and what you wonder about?"
  • Watch for: assuming every camp story is the same story; pushing a gay identity onto a relative the client does not describe that way. Working: the client feels the topic is speakable.

4.3 Assessing the impact: individual, family and collective layers

  • Purpose / when: once the history is on the table; to plan care.
  • Steps: (1) Map whose story it is: the client's own (a man convicted under post-war Paragraph 175), a relative's, or collective LGBTQ+ memory. (2) Ask about current symptoms (intrusive images, shame, anxiety, low mood, sleep), meaning ("what this says about us") and functioning. (3) Ask how the family handled it (silence, secrecy, shame, pride). (4) Screen for suicide risk (4.12) and current exposure to orientation-change practices (4.13). (5) Use a family tree or timeline drawn with the client if they want one, marking 1935, 1945, 1969, 1994 and 2002/2017 as reference points [source for dates: USHMM; Stiftung Gedenkstätten; CNN].
  • Example language (illustrative): "Let's sort out which parts of this happened to you, which happened to your family, and which you carry as part of a wider history. Each part may need something different."
  • Watch for: turning assessment into interrogation; diagnosing a family pattern from thin evidence. Working: client and therapist share a clear picture of what needs attention.

4.4 Accurate psychoeducation about the history

  • Purpose / when: when a client holds myths ("the castrations were voluntary", "the doctors were trying to help", "it ended in 1945") or is unsure what happened.
  • Steps: (1) Ask what the client already knows and where it came from. (2) Offer short, sourced facts: that "consent" to castration was sought from imprisoned men who were offered early release, and that from November 1942 camp commandants could order it by force [source: USHMM]; that the hormone implants aimed to make men heterosexual and failed [source: Lex]; that persecution continued after the war [source: USHMM; Stiftung Gedenkstätten]. (3) Give no procedural detail. (4) Offer the memorial institutions' pages for further reading.
  • Example language (illustrative): "The memorial museum's account is that the word 'voluntary' meant a choice made in prison, with release held out in exchange. That is not consent as we understand it."
  • Watch for: information overload; graphic questions from the client that may be self-punishing. Working: the client's account becomes more accurate and less self-blaming.

4.5 Working with a descendant of a pink-triangle prisoner

  • Purpose / when: a client whose relative was imprisoned, castrated, experimented on, or died in a camp.
  • Steps: (1) Let the client tell what they know; name the gaps without filling them. (2) Explore what the relative's fate means to the client (grief, anger, identification, shame). (3) Work on ambiguous loss where the fate is unknown, as the fate of many of the Buchenwald experiment subjects is reported to be [uncertain: secondary, unverified]. (4) Support rituals of remembrance the client chooses (4.10). (5) Discuss whether the client wants to research archives (4.15).
  • Example language (illustrative): "You don't know how his life ended, and that not-knowing seems to sit with you every day. We can make room for both the grief and the questions."
  • Watch for: the client merging their own identity with the relative's suffering; secondary traumatisation from reading archives. Working: the relative becomes a remembered person, not only a victim.

4.6 Working with an older man convicted under Paragraph 175 after the war

  • Purpose / when: a client (or a client's parent or partner) prosecuted in West or East Germany after 1945; in 2017 about 5,000 such men were estimated still to be alive [source: CNN].
  • Steps: (1) Recognise the conviction as state persecution, not a personal failing. (2) Explore the life consequences (job loss, family rupture, hiding, internalised shame). (3) Offer information that the 2017 law overturned post-war convictions and provided compensation, as reported, and that there was an age-of-consent caveat that excluded some convictions [source: CNN]. (4) Signpost to legal or official advice on current application rules; whether applications are still open, and the deadline, are [uncertain: not verified]. (5) Support the client's decision either way.
  • Example language (illustrative): "The state that convicted you has said, in law, that the conviction was wrong. Whether you apply for anything is your choice; I can help you think it through."
  • Watch for: hope or bitterness about small compensation sums (the 2017 amounts were criticised as insufficient [source: CNN]); bereavement and isolation in later life. Working: shame decreases; the client tells his story on his own terms.

4.7 Working with descendants of perpetrators or of the medical staff involved

  • Purpose / when: a client who learns a relative was an SS physician, camp staff, police officer or judge involved in persecution.
  • Steps: (1) Separate the client's moral responsibility from the relative's. (2) Hold the mixture of love, horror and shame. (3) Explore what the client wants: knowledge, distance, acknowledgement, repair. (4) Support constructive actions the client chooses (learning, commemoration, donation, speaking) without prescribing them.
  • Example language (illustrative): "You are not responsible for what he did. You are responsible for what you do with knowing it, and you get to decide what that is."
  • Watch for: excusing or minimising the acts; the client punishing themself. Working: the client can speak of the relative truthfully without collapse.

4.8 Working with families split by silence

  • Purpose / when: families in which a relative's imprisonment, castration or conviction was hidden, often for decades, as the denial of recognition until the 2000s made likely [source: Stiftung Gedenkstätten].
  • Steps: (1) Explore what each generation knew and why it stayed silent (fear, shame, continuing illegality). (2) Help the client decide what to say to other relatives and when. (3) If joint sessions are wanted, agree ground rules and consent from each participant. (4) Address the impact on LGBTQ+ members of the present family.
  • Example language (illustrative): "The silence made sense when speaking could still put people in danger. The question now is what silence costs you, and what you'd like to change."
  • Watch for: outing a living person without consent; one relative using the history against another. Working: the family can talk about it without rupture.

4.9 Working with LGBTQ+ clients carrying collective memory

  • Purpose / when: LGBTQ+ clients for whom the pink triangle and the persecution are part of identity, fear or politics, especially when current events revive them (the Buchenwald memorial foundation's exhibition notes a new upswing in homophobia in several countries [source: Stiftung Gedenkstätten]).
  • Steps: (1) Validate the connection between history and present fear. (2) Distinguish current, realistic threats from historically shaped fear, without dismissing either. (3) Explore resources: community, chosen family, pride, the reclaimed pink triangle [source: Stiftung Gedenkstätten]. (4) Address minority stress in current life.
  • Example language (illustrative): "When you see that news, the history isn't abstract. Let's look at what's real danger now, what's memory, and what helps you stay steady."
  • Watch for: hypervigilance and isolation; the therapist's own political positions entering the room. Working: the client feels both safer and more connected.

4.10 Preparing for and debriefing memorial visits and commemorations

  • Purpose / when: a client plans to visit the Memorial to Homosexuals Persecuted under Nazism in Berlin's Tiergarten (opposite the Holocaust Memorial; opened 27 May 2008 [source: Stiftung Denkmal flyer]), the Buchenwald memorial (which holds commemorations for homosexual victims, for example in October 2025 [source: Jüdische Allgemeine]) or another site.
  • Steps: (1) Explore hopes and fears for the visit. (2) Plan support: who goes with them, what they will do if overwhelmed, how they will close the day. (3) After the visit, debrief: what moved them, what was hard, what they want to carry forward. (4) Consider a personal ritual of remembrance the client designs.
  • Example language (illustrative): "What would you like to have with you when you stand there, and what would help you leave when you're ready?"
  • Watch for: acute grief or intrusive images after the visit; disappointment if the site does not "feel" as expected. Working: the visit becomes a marker of recognition rather than a trigger.

4.11 Shame work and the "second persecution"

  • Purpose / when: when clients or relatives carry shame because the persecution was not recognised after 1945, the law stayed in force, and former prisoners were stigmatised again [source: Jüdische Allgemeine; USHMM; Stiftung Gedenkstätten].
  • Steps: (1) Name the post-war layer explicitly. (2) Trace where the shame came from (law, family, church, medicine). (3) Contrast those voices with the state's later acts of recognition (2002, 2017) and the 2003 Bundestag resolution behind the memorial [source: USHMM; CNN; Stiftung Denkmal flyer]. (4) Use compassion-focused or narrative re-authoring methods the therapist is trained in.
  • Example language (illustrative): "The shame was handed to you by institutions that have since said, in law, that they were wrong. You don't have to keep carrying it on their behalf."
  • Watch for: shame turning into anger at the therapist or at the client's own identity. Working: the client's self-talk softens and secrecy decreases.

4.12 Suicide-risk assessment and safe messaging

  • Purpose / when: whenever shame, isolation, grief or current exposure to orientation-change pressure is present, and whenever the history of deaths in the camps comes up.
  • Steps: (1) Ask directly and calmly about suicidal thoughts, plans and past attempts. (2) Explore protective factors and reasons for living. (3) Make a written safety plan with the client; for means, discuss only safe storage and removal. (4) When the history includes deaths or suicides, speak of them without method detail or glamorising, and link them to persecution, not to identity. (5) Give crisis resources: 988 (US), Samaritans 116 123 (UK and Ireland), and local emergency services elsewhere. (6) Escalate per your service protocol if risk is high.
  • Example language (illustrative): "When people talk about this much shame, I always ask: have you had thoughts of ending your life? It's safe to tell me."
  • Watch for: identification with relatives who died; anniversary reactions. Working: the client uses the safety plan and reports less hopelessness.

4.13 Working with a client drawn to, or pressured towards, orientation-change "treatment"

  • Purpose / when: a client who asks to change their sexual orientation or gender identity, or whose family or community presses them towards hormonal, surgical, religious or psychological "cures".
  • Steps: (1) Explore the request without attempting change: whose wish it is, what the client fears, what they hope would follow. (2) Share, if helpful, that the Nazi-era medical attempts did not make anyone heterosexual [source: Lex] and that present-day conversion practices are covered in this doc's Conversion practices (SOGICE) guides, which give the professional bodies' statements. (3) Never refer to, recommend or supervise any orientation-change practice. (4) For any medical question (including hormones), route to the client's own physician; never advise starting, stopping or changing a medicine. (5) Screen for risk (4.12) and, for minors, safeguarding (4.14).
  • Example language (illustrative): "I won't try to change who you're attracted to, because that isn't something therapy can or should do. I'd like to understand what's making you want that so badly right now."
  • Watch for: the client experiencing refusal as rejection; covert participation in a programme elsewhere. Working: the client explores conflict about identity rather than seeking to erase it.

4.14 Duties when a colleague, institution or programme offers "cures"

  • Purpose / when: the therapist learns that a colleague, clinic, faith group or programme is offering orientation- or identity-change treatment, especially to minors.
  • Steps: (1) Do not participate, refer or supervise. (2) For a child or young person at risk, follow local mandatory-reporting and child-protection routes and document. (3) Raise concerns with the colleague where safe, then with the employer, licensing board or professional body under its published complaints process. (4) Seek legal or ethics advice on confidentiality limits. (5) Support any client affected (4.13).
  • Example language (illustrative), to a colleague: "I'm not able to be part of this, and I'm concerned it could harm the young person. I'll need to raise it through the proper channels."
  • Watch for: pressure from an institution; the therapist's own fear of conflict. Working: concerns are documented and acted on; the client is protected.

4.15 Supporting archival and family-history research

  • Purpose / when: a client wants to find out what happened to a relative.
  • Steps: (1) Clarify what the client hopes to find and what they will do if records are missing or distressing. (2) Point to memorial institutions as starting places (the Buchenwald and Mittelbau-Dora Memorials Foundation; USHMM) [source: Stiftung Gedenkstätten; USHMM]; specific archive services are [uncertain: not verified]. (3) Pace the reading: the client reads records with support, not alone at night. (4) Process what is found in session.
  • Example language (illustrative): "Records can answer questions and also bring new pain. Let's plan how you'll read them and who you'll talk to afterwards."
  • Watch for: compulsive searching; encountering degrading language in official records. Working: the client gains knowledge without being flooded.

4.16 Supporting advocacy, testimony and writing

  • Purpose / when: a client wants to campaign, speak publicly, write a family history or join a commemoration group (survivor campaigns led to recognition, and gay and lesbian self-organisation from the 1970s changed public views [source: Stiftung Gedenkstätten]).
  • Steps: (1) Explore motives and what success would look like. (2) Discuss privacy and consent for any living relative named. (3) Plan for public hostility and burnout. (4) Keep therapy separate from the campaign; if the therapist is also involved in the same group, consider APA Ethics Code Standard 3.05 [source: APA Ethics Code].
  • Example language (illustrative): "Speaking out can be healing and exhausting at once. How will you look after yourself when the reactions come in?"
  • Watch for: advocacy replacing grief; online abuse. Working: the client's activism feels chosen and sustainable.

4.17 Including lesbian, trans and other persecuted histories

  • Purpose / when: clients whose relatives or communities were persecuted although the statute named only men [source: Stiftung Gedenkstätten].
  • Steps: (1) Ask about the specific history rather than assuming it matches the gay-men narrative. (2) Acknowledge that these histories are less documented. (3) Support the client's own research and naming.
  • Example language (illustrative): "Most of what's written is about men. I don't want that to make your family's story smaller."
  • Watch for: the client feeling erased again. Working: the client's history is held as fully as any other.

4.18 The profession's own history in supervision and training

  • Purpose / when: for the therapist, teams and trainees; medicine's role in these abuses (an SS physician designing "cures", camp doctors) is part of the history [source: Lex; USHMM].
  • Steps: (1) Discuss in supervision how pathologising ideas about homosexuality were used by physicians. (2) Reflect on present-day equivalents (orientation-change claims). (3) Include this history in training on LGBTQ+-affirming care.
  • Example language (illustrative), to trainees: "These measures were carried out by doctors who believed they were treating an illness. That's why our stance matters."
  • Watch for: treating the history as remote. Working: trainees can link the history to present ethics.

4.19 Working with distrust of medicine and therapy

  • Purpose / when: clients or families whose distrust of doctors and therapists comes from this history or from later pathologising.
  • Steps: (1) Name the history and the reasons for distrust. (2) Be transparent about the therapist's stance and methods. (3) Invite the client to say when something feels like judgement.
  • Example language (illustrative): "Given what doctors did, it makes sense to be wary of me. Please tell me if anything I say sounds like the old idea that something is wrong with you."
  • Watch for: the client masking distrust; disengagement. Working: the client tests and gains trust.

4.20 Integration, ending and follow-up

  • Purpose / when: when the client's goals are met.
  • Steps: (1) Review what changed: knowledge, grief, shame, family relationships, recognition. (2) Identify anniversary dates and triggers (commemoration days, news). (3) Agree how to return if needed.
  • Example language (illustrative): "This history will stay part of your story. What do you want to remember about how you've learned to carry it?"
  • Watch for: abrupt endings around anniversaries. Working: the client has a plan and a sense of completion.

5. Handling problems

The problems below are the psychotherapist's own synthesis [synthesis] unless a source is given.

  • The client is stuck on missing facts. Acknowledge that much is unknown (the fate of many pink-triangle prisoners is unknown [source: USHMM]); shift from finding answers to mourning the not-knowing; agree a limit on research time.
  • Overwhelm from graphic material. Stop, ground, and agree that no graphic detail is needed; return to the material only at the client's pace.
  • Resistance to the history ("it was long ago; it doesn't matter"). Respect it; explore what makes it uncomfortable; do not force connections.
  • Family conflict over disclosure. Slow down; clarify consent of each living person; consider separate sessions before any joint one.
  • Anger at the therapist or at institutions. Treat it as meaningful; acknowledge institutional failures, including the profession's; repair ruptures openly.
  • The client asks for change in orientation (4.13). Hold the boundary warmly; never attempt or refer for change; explore and screen for risk.
  • Disagreements in the sources. When a client cites a different date or number (for example 1943 rather than 1944 for the experiments), say that sources differ and give both [source: USHMM collections; Lex].
  • Disappointment with recognition or compensation. Validate it; LSVD described the 2017 compensation as insufficient [source: CNN]; explore what recognition would feel meaningful.
  • Non-adherence to safety plans. Review barriers, simplify, involve supports with consent, and reassess risk.
  • Secondary trauma in the therapist. Use supervision; limit exposure; attend to one's own reactions as an LGBTQ+ or non-LGBTQ+ clinician.
  • Political conflict in session. Keep to the evidence and the client's goals; do not take a side beyond what the sources state.
  • Risk of re-traumatising older clients. Go slowly; respect their language for themselves (which may differ from current terms).

Harm account

What was actually done

  • Criminalisation and mass arrest. Paragraph 175 (1871), tightened in 1935, criminalised sex between men; about 100,000 men were arrested and about 53,400 convicted in the Nazi period [source: USHMM]; the memorial foundation behind the Berlin memorial gives more than 50,000 convictions [source: Stiftung Denkmal flyer]. A Reich Central Office for the Combating of Homosexuality and Abortion, created by Heinrich Himmler in 1936, coordinated the police campaign [source: USHMM].
  • Camp imprisonment. Between 5,000 and 15,000 men were held in concentration camps as homosexual offenders, usually under the pink triangle; survivors described them as among the most abused prisoners, given punishing labour and subjected to physical and sexual abuse [source: USHMM]. At Buchenwald and Mittelbau-Dora about 700 men were held as homosexuals; most were put in the punishment company and forced to work in the quarry, and about half did not survive [source: Stiftung Gedenkstätten].
  • Castration. From late 1933 courts could order castration of certain sexual offenders; men convicted under Paragraph 175 were pressed to "consent", some in return for early release; from November 1942 camp commandants officially had the power to order forced castration of pink-triangle prisoners [source: USHMM].
  • Pseudo-medical experiments. Some pink-triangle prisoners at Buchenwald were subjected to "inhumane medical experiments" [source: USHMM]; the memorial foundation describes pseudo-medical experiments by doctors meant to "cure" homosexuality [source: Stiftung Gedenkstätten]. The Danish physician Carl Værnet (1893–1965), serving as an SS doctor, implanted hormone capsules in homosexual prisoners at Buchenwald, some of whom had already been castrated, with the aim of making them heterosexual [source: Lex]. He acted with Himmler's approval, according to the campaigner Peter Tatchell as quoted by the Jerusalem Post [source: Jerusalem Post, 2020]. Dates differ: 1944 [source: Lex; Tatchell] or 1943 [source: USHMM collections, Pink Triangle]. Campaign and secondary sources state that 17 men were operated on and that two died of infections linked to camp conditions [source: Tatchell; uncertain: secondary, unverified]; the fate of the others is largely unknown [uncertain: secondary, unverified]. Wolfgang Röll's 1996 study of homosexual inmates at Buchenwald (Journal of Homosexuality, vol. 31, no. 4) is the main peer-reviewed account [uncertain: not verified].
  • Impunity. After the war Værnet was sought by the Nuremberg tribunal and fled Denmark for Argentina in 1946, avoiding prosecution [source: Lex]. In Argentina he worked under contract to the Peronist health ministry under Ramón Carrillo, according to Tatchell as reported by the Jerusalem Post [source: Jerusalem Post, 2020], and, according to the USHMM catalogue's description of a 2014–15 documentary, gave similar hormone treatments to young people brought by their parents [source: USHMM collections, Pink Triangle]. Denmark did not seek his extradition [source: Tatchell; uncertain: secondary, unverified]. He died in Buenos Aires in 1965 [source: Lex].
  • Post-war persecution. Men convicted under Paragraph 175 stayed in prison after liberation; West Germany kept the 1935 law, and tens of thousands more men were convicted after the war (about 64,000 since 1945, according to CNN in 2017) [source: USHMM; CNN].

How it caused harm

  • Death and injury. About half the men held as homosexuals at Buchenwald and Mittelbau-Dora died; castration and the experiments inflicted permanent bodily harm and, in documented cases, death [source: Stiftung Gedenkstätten; Lex; Tatchell].
  • No effect on orientation. The experiments were meant to make men heterosexual [source: Lex]; there is no evidence they did, and the premise that homosexuality is a curable bodily defect was false [synthesis].
  • Coerced "consent". Castration offered in exchange for release turned bodily mutilation into the price of freedom [source: USHMM; synthesis].
  • Isolation inside the camps. Pink-triangle prisoners were often shunned by other prisoners and placed at the bottom of the prisoner hierarchy [source: USHMM; Stiftung Gedenkstätten].
  • Second persecution and silence. Survivors were denied recognition and compensation as Nazi victims for decades, the law stayed in force, and many died without apology [source: Stiftung Gedenkstätten; Jüdische Allgemeine]. The result was lifelong secrecy, shame and family silence, with intergenerational effects [synthesis].
  • Medical legitimacy lent to persecution. Physicians' involvement gave state persecution the authority of medicine and contributed to long-lasting distrust of health professionals among LGBTQ+ people [synthesis].

Recognising it today

  • In family histories: a relative imprisoned "for reasons nobody gave", a relative convicted in Germany before 1994, an unexplained family silence about a man's war years [synthesis].
  • In older clients: men prosecuted under Paragraph 175 after 1945, about 5,000 of whom were estimated still to be alive in 2017 [source: CNN].
  • In collective memory: distress, anger or fear among LGBTQ+ clients around the pink triangle, commemorations (for example the October 2025 Buchenwald commemoration [source: Jüdische Allgemeine]) or current homophobia [source: Stiftung Gedenkstätten].
  • In present-day "cure" claims: any offer to change sexual orientation by hormones, surgery, religious or psychological methods repeats the premise of these experiments; see the Conversion practices (SOGICE) guides in this doc [synthesis].
  • In misinformation: claims that castration was "voluntary", that the doctors were "treating" anyone, or that persecution ended in 1945 [source: USHMM; synthesis].

What to do instead and how to help those harmed

  • Supported care: LGBTQ+-affirming psychotherapy that treats sexual orientation as a normal variation, never a target for change; trauma-informed care for grief, shame and intergenerational trauma; medical questions routed to the client's own physician [synthesis].
  • Recognition and legal routes: Germany overturned Nazi-era Paragraph 175 convictions in 2002 and made the men eligible for compensation [source: USHMM]; in June 2017 the Bundestag voted to overturn post-war convictions with compensation of 3,000 euros per man plus 1,500 euros per year in prison, as reported, with an age-of-consent caveat that excluded some convictions [source: CNN]. Current application rules and deadlines are [uncertain: not verified]; clients should seek legal advice.
  • Memory and commemoration: the Memorial to Homosexuals Persecuted under Nazism in Berlin (Bundestag resolution 12 December 2003; opened 27 May 2008) [source: Stiftung Denkmal flyer]; the Buchenwald and Mittelbau-Dora Memorials Foundation and its "Rosa Winkel" exhibition [source: Stiftung Gedenkstätten]; the USHMM Holocaust Encyclopedia [source: USHMM].
  • Community and survivor organisations as reported: the Lesbian and Gay Federation in Germany (LSVD) commented on the 2017 law [source: CNN]; Aidshilfe Weimar organises Buchenwald commemoration events [source: Jüdische Allgemeine].
  • Reporting duties: report any orientation- or identity-change practice offered to a minor through child-protection and mandatory-reporting routes, and any offered by a licensed professional to the relevant licensing board or professional body [synthesis].
  • Crisis resources: 988 (US); Samaritans 116 123 (UK and Ireland); local emergency services elsewhere.

Sources

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