Trans+ History Week: The persecution of trans people by the Nazis still echoes down the ages

Trans+ History Week 2025 has begun and its founder, Marty Davies, wants everyone to know that trans people have always existed.

During the Weimar Republic – a period in German history following World War One, before the rise of the Nazis – the country was an epicentre for LGBTQ+ people, with movements supporting transgender and gender-non-conforming folks.

That all changed when Adolf Hitler took power in January 1933. An early hint of the wave of deadly discrimination queer and trans people would face soon followed. 

On 6 May, fanatical Nazi students raided the Institut für Sexualwissenschaft, roughly translated as the Institute of Sexology. Tens of thousands of books, papers and research were taken from shelves and burned. 

The institute, headed by Magnus Hirschfeld, was an academic foundation devoted

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