oa Initial Failures and Symbolic Successes: Transitional Justice for Homosexual Victims of Nazi Persecution in the Post-War Era

This paper addresses the successes and failures of transitional justice measures for homosexual victims of Nazi persecution in Germany. It will examine transitional justice for these victims within the framework of Ruti G. Teitel’s transitional justice genealogy, particularly the idea of the evolution of transitional justice into a steady- state. Transitional justice is examined from two perspectives: narrow and broad. The narrow perspective focuses on legal measures and formal reparations, while the broad perspective encompasses a wide number of tools, and in this paper will primarily refer to symbolic acts such as official apologies and memorialization. To examine these ideas, a combination of transitional justice theory and historical writing about homosexual persecution and justice measures will be utilized. This paper ultimately argues that narrow transitional justice for homosexual victims of Nazi persecution in Germany failed due to a lack of social and political transition for homosexuals in the immediate post-war period, which permanently harmed transitional justice efforts. As there is no queer homeland, LGBTQ+ individuals exist in a complicated state of a sort of permanent diaspora, joined by shared experiences, identity, and a unique type of cultural heritage. Ultimately it is a reunification of the international LGBTQ+ communities through the formation of political and social homosexual identity groups in the 1960s and onwards that allowed for the collectivization of bargaining power working towards change. As acceptance and visibility grew and diasporic communities of LGBTQ+ individuals were reunited and newly formed, it allowed for successes with symbolic measures in the steady-state era of transitional justice.