PARAGRAPH 175

Year: 1999
USA: New Yorker Films
Cast: Rupert Everett (narrator), Klaus Muller, Karl Gorath, Pierre Seel, Arnette Eick, Gad Beck
Director: Robert Epstein
Country: USA
USA: 76 mins
USA Release Date: 13 September 2000 (Limited Release - New York)

Synopsis

Paragraph 175
An unnatural sex act committed between persons of male sex or by humans with animals is punishable by imprisonment; the loss of civil rights may also be imposed. German Penal Code 1871

This is a documentary about the persecution of homosexuals during the Nazi regime. Between 1933 and 1945, according to Nazi documents, approximately 100,000 men were arrested for homosexuality. Roughly half were sentenced to prison and approximately 10,000 to 15,000 were sent to concentration camps. The death rate of homosexual prisoners in the camps is estimated to be as high as sixty percent (among the highest of non-Jewish prisoners), so that by 1945 only about 4,000 survived. The persecution of gays continued in post-Nazi Germany as criminals under the Nazi sodomy law until 1969.