Persecution of gays in Germany began in earnest after Nazis rose to power. They were on a moral crusade and considered the Weimar Republic’s tolerance of gays and lesbians to be decadence that had to be wiped out because it threatened the Aryan race. They arrested more than 100,000 men on charges of being gay, with more than 50,000 convicted and of that number, anywhere from 5,000 to 15,000 were sentenced to the concentration camps. And the Nazis treated them harshly in the camps. In fact, some of those sent to camps were purposefully mischaracterized as gay because they would be dealt with more harshly than other classes of prisoner:

From 1937 to 1939, the peak years of the Nazi persecution of homosexuals, the police increasingly raided homosexual meeting places, seized address books, and created networks of informers and undercover agents to identify and arrest suspected homosexuals. On April 4, 1938, the Gestapo issued a directive indicating that men convicted of homosexuality could be incarcerated in concentration camps. Between 1933 and 1945 the police arrested an estimated 100,000 men as homosexuals. Most of the 50,000 men sentenced by the courts spent time in regular prisons, and between 5,000 and 15,000 were interned in concentration camps.

The Nazis interned some homosexuals in concentration camps immediately after the seizure of power in January 1933. Those interned came from all areas of German society, and often had only the cause of their imprisonment in common. Some homosexuals were interned under other categories by mistake, and the Nazis purposefully miscategorized some political prisoners as homosexuals. Prisoners marked by pink triangles to signify homosexuality were treated harshly in the camps. According to many survivor accounts, homosexuals were among the most abused groups in the camps.