FACT CHECK: Yes, transgender people were victims of the Holocaust.
Moira Deeming's lawyer allegedly claimed that LGBTQ+ people did not exist in 1940’s Germany and implied trans people were not victims of Nazis.
Readers are advised that this story contains transphobia and holocaust denial.
It was shared on X by various accounts that in the Australian Federal Court today, barrister Sue Chrysanthou, SC, representing Moira Deeming MP in a defamation case, allegedly claimed that LGBTQ+ people did not exist in 1940s Germany and implied that the Nazis only targeted gay men, not trans women.
The court case is a defamation proceeding Ms Deeming brought against the leader of the Victorian Liberals for suggesting she had ties to Neo-Nazi groups as a result of the Let Womens Speak event in 2023 which was well attended by a Neo-Nazi group.
The claims brought up by Sue Chrysanthou were within the context of questions about whether Moira Deeming was aware of how Nazi Germany persecuted LGBTQIA+ people.
By suggesting that LGBTQIA+, and specifically trans, people didn’t exist in 1940s Germany, the argument denies the Nazi regime's persecution of transgender people, a view commonly associated with Holocaust denial.
Lucy from Naarm is not alleging Moira Deeming nor Sue Chrysanthou are Nazis or Nazi Sympathisers, only that the alleged viewpoints shared are aligned in many ways, which should have implications for the ongoing legal cases.
In 2022, the Regional Court of Cologne ruled that denying transgender people were victims of the Nazis qualifies as “a denial of Nazi crimes”, also known as, Holocaust Denial.
Claim: Nazi’s only rounded up gay men.
Verdict: False
It is widely understood that in Nazi Germany, transgender people were prosecuted, forcibly de-transitioned, imprisoned and murdered in concentration camps, including Auschwitz-Birkenau.
Though the term 'transgender' wasn’t universally adopted until the 1990s, gender-diverse people have existed throughout history. In Western history, however, transgender identities have often been framed through a cisnormative lens, undermining their legitimacy. In other cultures, Hijara, Brotherboys and Sistergirls and Kathoey are all understood to be accurately described as transgender and gender diverse.1
Before the Nazi regime, Weimar Germany was a hub for transgender research and rights, largely due to the pioneering work of Dr. Magnus Hirschfeld. In 1919, Hirschfeld founded the Institute for Sexual Science in Berlin, advancing early transgender healthcare, including sex reassignment surgeries. Hirschfeld also convinced the Police to develop “transvestite passes” which allowed transgender people to avoid legal ramifications for violating crossdressing laws.
On May 6, 1933, members of the Nazi Student League attacked the Institute for Sexual Science. That same day, the Nazi paramilitary group Sturmabteilung burned thousands of the institute’s books, erasing critical research on transgender healthcare and history.
Under the Nazi regime, transgender women were specifically targeted for arrest and being a transgender woman was considered an aggravating factor in the criminality of homosexuality.
To quote a nazi-era book titled ‘A Paper on the problem of transvestitism’; “Officials often claimed that transvestitism was an aggravating factor, something that made the case direr, the accused person more deserving of a heavier sentence. In general, transgender people who could distance themselves from homosexuality were more likely to get off with a warning from police. Yet I have seen cases in which transgender people whom police deemed “heterosexual” nevertheless suffered. One such case is R.'s —police forced her to de-transition, and she spent time in a concentration camp”2
Transgender women were also targeted for death via Nazi concentration camps, a form of persecution now referred to as transfemicide — the systemic murder of transgender women. As Historian Laurie Marhoefer notes “The Nazi state reserved its worst violence for trans women. In particular, women who came to the attention of police as they continued to live publicly as women after 1933 were in danger.”3
Transgender men were also targeted in Nazi Germany, with many being imprisoned and murdered in concentration camps. However, there were rare cases where trans men were permitted by Nazi authorities to live as men, despite these exceptions the majority of transgender men faced severe repression and persecution.
The Nazis denied the transness of many of the men and women victimised by their regime by simply labelling them as gay men/women. Sue Chrysanthou’s alleged comments suggesting that the Nazis only victimised gay men, appear to mirror these despicable acts and act as an echo of the denial of the identities that the transgender victims of the holocaust faced.
The comments allegedly made by Sue Chrysanthou and implicitly supported by Moira Deeming are examples of historical revisionism that dangerously border on Holocaust denial.
And Moira Deeming is wondering why the Liberal Party thought she’s a Nazi sympathiser?
Lucy from Naarm is not alleging Moira Deeming nor Sue Chrysanthou are Nazis or Nazi Sympathisers, only that the alleged viewpoints shared are aligned in many ways, which should have implications for the ongoing legal cases.
If this material raises concerns for you, contact Lifeline on 13 11 14 or find other ways you can seek help in Australia, the US, the UK, or internationally. —Lucy
Bauer, H. (2017). The Hirschfeld Archives: Violence, Death, and Modern Queer Culture. Japan: Temple University Press.
Voss, Ein Beitrag zum Problem des Transvestitismus, 4.
Marhoefer L. Transgender Life and Persecution under the Nazi State: Gutachten on the Vollbrecht Case. Central European History. 2023;56(4):595-601. doi:10.1017/S0008938923000468
this is incredible work, thank you
kicking own goals. what a great strategy in a defo case