Another difficulty is that very few lesbians shared testimonies about their experiences during this time. This is partially because the topic of sexual relations between women remained taboo for decades after the Nazi era.

Based on the French novella “Carmilla,” which would also inspire Hammer Films’ Karnstein Trilogy a decade later, “Blood and Roses” is notable for launching Roger Vadim’s fruitful collaboration with cinematographer Claude Renoir, who would later shoot Vadim’s cult classic, “Barbarella.” StarringMel Ferrer as Leopoldo De Karnstein and Elsa Martinelli as Georgia Monteverdi. During the Nazi regime, lesbians could not continue to live and socialize as they had during the Weimar Republic. Much of German society saw lesbians as social outsiders, meaning people who did not fit into the mainstream. As such, they had a higher risk of being denounced and then targeted by the Nazi regime. Some women engaged in sexual relations with their fellow female prisoners. It is important to note that such relations do not always fit neatly within the category of “lesbianism.” This is because not all women who engaged in same-sex relations were lesbians. Some women developed same-sex relationships and later described them as a source of comfort in the camps. Others even saw them as necessary for survival. The Nazis believed that German women had a special task to perform: motherhood. According to Nazi logic, lesbians were women and should thus be mothers. They had a responsibility to give birth to racially pure Germans, called “ Aryans .”It is difficult to know what role lesbians’ sexuality played in their detention. Sometimes their arrest had little or nothing to do with the fact that they were lesbians. At other times, their sexuality may have played a role. This was especially the case regarding arrests prompted by denunciations. Denunciations frequently affected people considered social outsiders. Denunciations of Lesbians Besides being a genuinely considerate movie with some thoughtful meditations on religion and culture, it has the added thrill of having super erotic sex scenes, made possible because: It was bad enough that the prison institution took ownership of my body―that I was caged and stripsearched on a regular basis and had already been sexually harassed by male guards.” Various right-wing and centrist political groups, as well as mainstream religious organizations, sought to counter this aspect of Weimar culture by promoting their own version of German culture. This version was rooted in classical music and literature, religion, and the family. In some cases, these groups blamed others for corrupting German culture. They blamed, for example, Jews, Communists, and Americans. Nazi Attitudes towards Homosexuality

Directed by Michael Almereyda (“Twister”) and starring Elina Löwensohn as Nadja and Peter Fonda as Van Helsing, this ’90s arthouse horror features a David Lynch cameo as a morgue attendant. Lynch also lends his name as executive producer. Knox admits that prison relationships can be about sex. But mostly, she writes, it’s about human connection. The Nazis did not systematically prosecute or persecute lesbians solely because of their sexuality. Under the Nazi regime, there was no official law or policy prohibiting sexual relations between women. This is unlike the case of gay men. As a queer woman myself, I was mostly concerned that the two female characters ate a whole plate of spaghetti without brushing their teeth before commencing intercourse. The Nazis did not create any separate policies that singled out lesbians as a problem for Aryan procreation. Their reasoning drew on widespread attitudes about the differences between male and female sexuality. The Nazis concluded that Aryan lesbians could easily be persuaded or forced to bear children. Lesbian Responses to the Nazi Regime

Vampyres (1974)

But even in cases when lesbians were arrested and sent to concentration camps, the records can be hard to find. One of the greatest challenges is that lesbians were rarely identified as such in official records from the Nazi era.

During the Weimar Republic , German society experienced complex social, political, and cultural transformations. On the one hand, the Weimar Republic was defined by political turmoil and violence. It was also a time of economic distress. On the other hand, Germans had greater political and social freedoms. The atmosphere gave rise to artistic movements, an expanded press, and increasingly visible alternative cultures. It remains a research challenge to find historical sources related to lesbian experiences under the Nazi regime. Ever since Director Sebastián Lelio's Disobedience premiered at TIFF in 2017, it's been the talk of the town among the five queer women who care about this kind of stuff. The film tells story of Orthodox Jewish lesbians in London: Esti (Rachel McAdams) caught in a loveless relationship with a Rabbi, and Ronit (Rachel Weisz) trapped in a series of meaningless heterosexual hookups. Because there was no single law or policy that applied to sexual relations between women, lesbians had a wide range of experiences in Nazi Germany. These experiences were not solely determined by their sexuality. Rather, other factors shaped lesbians’ lives during the Nazi era. Among them were supposed “racial” identity, political attitudes, social class, and gender norms. Based on these factors as well as others, some lesbians (especially those who were working class) were imprisoned or sent to concentration camps. In these instances, they were classified as political prisoners or asocials. Jewish lesbians largely faced Nazi persecution and mass murder as Jews. In most cases, their sexuality was a secondary factor. The Germans and their collaborators murdered an unknown number of Jewish lesbians during World War II. Before the Nazis: Lesbians in the Weimar RepublicThe Nazis classified prisoners in concentration camps into groups according to the reason for their imprisonment. By 1938, these groups were identified with various colored badges worn on camp uniforms. Men imprisoned for allegedly violating Paragraph 175 had to wear a pink triangle. The badge identified them as “homosexual” ( homosexuell ) according to the classification system.