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Lettering: Up to Date, queer and feminist calendar of the Equal Opportunities Office of TU Dortmund University © Borgschulze​/​TU Dortmund
January 27

Memorial Day for the Victims of National Socialism

On the anniversary of the liberation of the Auschwitz extermination camp (January 27, 1945), the millions of people who were disenfranchised, persecuted and killed by the National Socialist tyranny are commemorated.

In Germany, January 27 was introduced as a day of remembrance in 1996 and designated as the International Day of Commemoration in Memory of the Victims of National Socialism by the United Nations General Assembly in 2005 (bpb 2020).

The vast majority of victims of National Socialism were Jewish; of the 1.1 million people who died in Auschwitz, one million were Jewish. The Sinti*zze and Rom*nja and disabled and lsbt*i people who were imprisoned and murdered by the Nazi regime are also commemorated (Boxhammer & Leidinger 2018; BMFSFJ 2020; Bosold & Hájková 2017; Plötz & Reusch n.d.). The tightening of Criminal Code Section 175 enabled the systematic persecution of gay, bisexual and other men who had sexual contact with men. Imprisoned in concentration camps, they were marked with the so-called Pink Angle (Zinn 2017).

Even though the victims of the extermination camps are often assigned to one group and remembered as such, they can also be part of other groups (Hájková 2018). For example, women who were imprisoned were labeled as "lesbian" or men who were labeled as homosexual could also be Jewish (Urgast 2017).

The role and responsibility of scientific institutions during and after the Nazi regime is part of an ongoing process of reappraisal and research (cf. Jung 2020). The use of forced laborers, the expulsion of Jewish academics and students, as well as research and teaching in line with National Socialist ideology are just a few examples of these (scientific) analyses (Benz, 2013). The procedure for the revocation of academic degrees, which was based on the "Law on the Revocation of Naturalization and the Revocation of German Citizenship" of 1933, is also the focus of the universities' reappraisal and rehabilitation work. Predominantly Jewish doctoral candidates and professors had their doctorates revoked in this way. Homosexuality and abortion were also reasons for the revocation of doctoral degrees under criminal law sections 175 and 218. Many universities officially rehabilitated those affected in the late 1990s (Weisbrod 2004; Haferkamp 2005).

Sources (in German)

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