Today is International Holocaust Remembrance Day, so I was wondering, is anything known about whether the Nazis caught actual zoos and what happened to them?
Wikipedia says
Gay men in Nazi concentration camps were identified by a pink triangle on their shirts, along with men convicted of sexually assaulting children and bestiality.
and there is a statistic about Convictions under §§ 175, 175a and b (1933–1943), with 175a making gay sex illegal and 175b bestiality, but I don't see a breakdown of the numbers anywhere and its source is a book that is probably not available online.
I tried googling a bit, but I'm not finding anything, I guess because nobody really cares.
There are references to bestiality related to concentration camps and the holocaust, but they are of this nature (quote from miletski's book):
During World War II, human-animal breeding experiments were conducted by Dr. Josef Mengele, a Nazi physician of the notorious Auschwitz concentration and extermination camp. He was reported to be obsessed with bestiality, and was bent on creating a hybrid that could eventually replace slave labor for menial tasks. He used the large camp source of young Jewish and Polish girls in the Auschwitz concentration camp for this purpose. Mengele had his St. Bernard, Baron, copulate with approximately 500 female prisoners. He constructed a special rack for this purpose, where the woman was firmly strapped, with her legs spread wide (Blake, 1972; Rosenfeld, 1967; The Wild Animal Revue, 1992c).
Dr. Mengele also had ponies have sexual intercourse with women. Another special rack was constructed for that purpose. Often, however, the part of the rack supporting the pony and preventing it from inserting his whole penis gave way. The pony’ s penis then ruptured the victim, who would bleed to death, while Dr. Mengele stood calmly by, taking notes (Rosenfeld, 1967; The Wild Animal Revue, 1992c). The editor of The Wild Animal Revue (1992c) points out that it is interesting to note that most historical accounts of Dr. Mengele ignore his bestiality crimes and obsession. He suggests that perhaps they were too taboo for the popular press at the time.
Mengele’ s girlfriend, Irma Grese, who was an SS prison guard, in charge of 18,000 female prisoners at Auschwitz, would also use Baron as a sexual, sadistic agent on her prisoners (Rosenfeld, 1967). Klaus Barbie, the infamous “ Butcher of Lyons,” used to force female prisoners to perform sex acts with animals as a means of degrading them, according to war crimes testimony. Over the years, there have also been persistent rumors that Hitler’ s mistress, Eva Braun, engaged in sex acts with dogs (The Wild Animal Revue, 1992c).
I haven't looked at the sources, but frankly, this sounds like bullshit someone made up to vilify the nazis even further by painting them as sexual deviants, as if that was meaningful or necessary.
As the holocaust victims article says, the nazis were far more concerned with forcing people to conform to a "traditional" view of sexuality:
According to the USHMM website, "Nazi Germany did not seek to kill all homosexuals. Nevertheless, the Nazi state, through active persecution, attempted to terrorise German homosexuals into sexual and social conformity, leaving thousands dead and shattering the lives of many more."
tl;dr: Did the nazis target zoophiles? If so, what happened to them?
I'm sure there were plenty of zoophiles killed. However, they might not have been Jewish, or the ones subject to that torture or experimentation.
Like you said, the Nazis were more concerned with using animals to degrade and experiment on human beings. The Nazis knew that sex with animals was taboo or defilement in the Jewish and other stigmatized religions, so they used it as a means of degrading people of those cultures and religions. They viewed these people as being "the lowest form of animals" and experimented on them instead of animals. The Nazis held certain animals to a higher status, but I'm not clear on their views of all animals. This somewhat obscures the fact of whether or not certain types of animal rights or welfare activists are headed in such a direction.
I could be wrong, but it does make sense that zoophiles would be the target of other experiments. Likewise, a zoophile without any denomination might have just been executed, as the Nazis, like most dangerous religions and cultures, would view sex with animals as a threat to their Aryan pride or otherwise. In other words, sex with animals was an excuse to dehumanize human beings, otherwise without dehumanization even the Nazis would feel bad for killing them. They were by no means flawless as much as they claimed to be.
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Looks like the answer is no. Maybe the zeta verein or someone else could take a look at the archives of ITS or so https://www.its-arolsen.org/en/archives/overview-of-the-archival-holdings/general-inventory/
It's not that difficult to form a conclusion out of what we do know. We already know the answers according to their behaviors and beliefs. Holocaust denied or not, it doesn't matter who the perpetrators or victims were, the answer is still the same. I will explain from the "socially accepted" point of view.
The Nazis would use sex with animals to demean, degrade, and dehumanize people. They are the ones who would use zoophilia as an excuse to trash human dignity for the purpose of taking human life. The Nazis were not into zoophilia themselves, they were only into the application of bestiality as a weapon.
Most mainstream religions, including Judaism, follow doctrines that label sex with animals as "taboo" or an offense worth the death sentence. There is no single religion most discriminating of zoos, however the religions which the Nazis persecuted are full of prideful and deceitful people. They might talk you into sex with animals for the opportunity to stab you in the back, or "guilt trip" zoos as the means of changing them and recruiting them into their cults. This is why the Nazis hated these religions.
In reality, it doesn't matter if it was the Nazis or the Jews the Jews or the Nazis, any other political party or denomination. In modern times they are all the same thing using zoophilia for the same purpose... As an excuse to dehumanize, exploit and harm human beings, zoophile or not.
all of my wat