Homosexuals
How many homosexuals were sent to concentration camps?
The Holocaust
1900–49 in LGBT rights Persecution of homosexuals in Nazi Germany and the Holocaust Holocaust victims The Holocaust Persecution
1900–49_in_LGBT_rights-1943 Persecution_of_homosexuals_in_Nazi_Germany_and_the_Holocaust-Abstract Holocaust_victims-Homosexuals The_Holocaust-Spanish_Republicans Persecution-Roma
  Heinrich Himmler issues a directive that allows homosexuals to be released from concentration camps if they underwent castration. However, those who were released under this edict were sent to fight in the Dirlewanger Brigade, which for practical purposes was a death sentence. As Allied forces begin liberating Nazi concentration camps, some American and British jurists conclude that the camps did not technically constitute prisons. If a gay man had served part of a prison sentence for violating Paragraph 175, he could be returned to prison to serve the remainder of his sentence. It is unknown how many men were returned to prison.  
Upon the rise of Adolf Hitler, gay men and, to a lesser extent, lesbians, were two of the numerous groups targeted by the Nazi Party and were ultimately among Holocaust victims. Beginning in 1933, gay organizations were banned, scholarly books about homosexuality, and sexuality in general, were burned, and homosexuals within the Nazi Party itself were murdered. The Gestapo compiled lists of homosexuals, who were compelled to sexually conform to the "German norm. "Between 1933 and 1945, an estimated 100,000 men were arrested as homosexuals, of whom some 50,000 were officially sentenced. Most of these men served time in regular prisons, and an estimated 5,000 to 15,000 of those sentenced were incarcerated in Nazi concentration camps. It is unclear how many of the 5,000 to 15,000 eventually perished in the camps, but leading scholar Rüdiger Lautmann believes that the death rate of homosexuals in concentration camps may have been as high as 60%. Homosexuals in the camps were treated in an unusually cruel manner by their captors. After the war, the treatment of homosexuals in concentration camps went unacknowledged by most countries, and some men were even re-arrested and imprisoned based on evidence found during the Nazi years. It was not until the 1980s that governments began to acknowledge this episode, and not until 2002 that the German government apologized to the gay community. This period still provokes controversy, however. In 2005, the European Parliament adopted a resolution on the Holocaust which included the persecution of homosexuals. 
Homosexuals were also targets of the Holocaust, as homosexuality was incompatible with Nazism because of their failure to reproduce the "master race". This was combined with the belief among the Nazis that homosexuality could be contagious. Initially homosexuality was discreetly tolerated while officially shunned. By 1936 Heinrich Himmler led an effort to persecute homosexuals under existing and new anti-homosexual laws. More than one million homosexual Germans were targeted, of whom at least 100,000 were arrested and 50,000 were serving prison terms as convicted homosexuals. An additional unknown number were institutionalized in state-run mental hospitals. Hundreds of European homosexual men living under Nazi occupation were castrated under court order. It is estimated that between 5,000 and 15,000 homosexual men were imprisoned in concentration camps, but it is difficult to put an exact number on how many perished in them. According to Heinz Heger, an Austrian survivor, homosexual men "suffered a higher mortality rate than other relatively small victim groups, such as Jehovah's Witnesses and political prisoners." Male homosexuals in Nazi concentration camps were identified with a pink triangle on their shirts. Lesbians were not normally treated as harshly as homosexual men: they were labeled "anti-social", but were rarely imprisoned for engaging in homosexuality. The irony of this is that many of the early Nazi party founders were homosexuals. Adolf Hitler, in particular, was listed as a homosexual in Vienna police records, likely due to his arrests for acting as a gay prostitute. Nazi Germany did not seek to kill all homosexuals. Nevertheless, the Nazi state, through active persecution, attempted to terrorize German homosexuals into sexual and social conformity, leaving thousands dead and shattering the lives of many more.  
After losing the Spanish Civil War many republicans fled to France. With the subsequent fall of France, many were sent to concentration camps, particularly the Mauthausen-Gusen concentration camp, where about 7000 died. 
Along with Jews, Homosexuals and others, the Roma Gypsies were rounded by the Nazi Regime of Germany and sent to the death camps. 