Nazi Persecution of Homosexuals:
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Sanje Woodsorrel

Sanje is a film studies major and history double major. She is in her third year here at UCSB. She learned qutie a bit about the Holocaust in her junior high and high school history classes, and then learned much more through her history classes in college. She has learned very little about the non-Jewish victims of the Holocaust, so this project is researching something new to her. Most of her previous lessons on the Holocaust foccused on the war surrounding it, or on the Jewish victims in it. Sanje had previously heard a talk from a survivor when, in high school, a woman came to speak to her history class. This woman was the mother of her junior high English teacher who survived Auschwitz, although, like many others, she had had the tattoo removed after the war. For this project, she read the book Nazi Extermination of Homosexuals, and researched websites about the play and the film Bent, which the book discusses. (discussion of Nazi Extermination of Homosexuals)

Rachael Binning

My name is Rachael Binning and I am a second year history major at UC Santa Barbara. While attending History 33D, Interdisciplinary Perspectives on the Holocaust, I became aware that in addition to Jews, many lesser-known minorities were persecuted under Nazi leadership. I feel that it is very important that these minorities are recognized as well as and should not be forgotten. Because of this, I chose to do research on the persecution of homosexuals of before and during World War II. (discussion of The Men With The Pink Triangle)

Megan Keir

My name is Megan Keir and I am a second year English major at UCSB. I feel that I have learned a lot about the Jewish Holocaust, but until this project have not really closely examined other aspects of this tragedy. Studying another group of persecuted individuals has confirmed in my mind the fact that Nazis feared what they did not understand and went to the most drastic means in recorded history to rid their culture of their fears. The justifications these people fabricated for the systematic murder of anyone not conforming to a specific societal role are fascinating to me. The fact that not only one person, but instead an entire culture accepted this ideology can only be described as unfathomable. (discussion of Hidden Holocaust)

Tara Forster

My name is Tara Forster. Currently I am a secon year Political Science major at the University of California, Santa Barbara. When I was in seventh grade we had Holocaust speakers come and talk to us, it is the only thing that I remember learning that year. She spoked with such conviction and pride. It was amazing. Upon arriving to college, I learned that my roommate and I had a common interest in history, so together we signed up for this class. There is a small difference between what I was learning back then and what I am learning now. When you are little you mostly hear about the six million Jews who were killed becaue they were the group that was supposed to be exterminated completely. But there were a million or so others who were also kept in concentration camps, murdered, starved, and everything else the Jews went through. So I used this group project to learn about these groups, we chose homosexuals. Not only were homosexuals put in concentration camps, but they were also discriminated against in the camps by other victims. This project was a good way to learn about the other minorities who were treated cruelly during the period between 1933 and 1945. (discussion of The Pink Triangle: The Nazi War Against Homosexuals)