JK Rowling Holocaust Denialism: Author Pushes Claims That Trans People Were Not A Target
On Wednesday, JK Rowling implied that Nazis never targeted trans people in Germany, calling it "a fever dream." She doubled down when challenged with sources showing trans persecution in Nazi Germany.
On Wednesday, J.K. Rowling implicitly denied that transgender individuals were targeted and that books about them were burned in Nazi Germany. This assertion contradicts abundant evidence that transgender people were among the first targeted by the Nazis' rise to power in Germany. This culminated in the looting of the Magnus Hirschfeld Institute of Sexology and the infamous burning of the initial decades of transgender healthcare research, as well as the internment, forced detransition, and murder of transgender citizens. When confronted with numerous scholarly sources, she instead linked to another thread that labeled the first transgender patient a "troubled male.”
The claims emerged after Rowling argued that doctors providing gender affirming care to transgender youth should face prison time. She also advocated for imprisoning leaders of Stonewall and Mermaids, charities serving transgender and queer individuals. Recently, the author has adopted more extreme positions regarding transgender people, including describing a prominent transgender woman and journalist in the United Kingdom as "A man…cosplaying."
The exchange promoting a denial that transgender people were targeted in the Holocaust was triggered by a tweet questioning why individuals like Rowling increasingly find themselves aligned with Nazis, who burned books on transgender healthcare and research in 1933. Rather than defending her position, Rowling seemed to dismiss the notion altogether that transgender individuals were targeted, asking, "How did you type this out and press send without thinking ‘I should maybe check my source for this, because it might’ve been a fever dream’?" When others provided her with sources, she responded by linking to an anti-trans account calling the first transgender woman to undergo gender reassignment surgery in Germany to a "troubled male.” The thread in question also denied that transgender people were targeted by the Holocaust.
Nazis indeed targeted transgender individuals in early Germany. The Institute of Sexology, led by Magnus Hirschfeld, was the first institute to advance the study and medical care of transgender people in Berlin. The institute provided transgender individuals with employment and “transvestite passes” for a form of legal gender recognition in the city. Many frequented safe spaces such as the Eldorado, a club depicted in photographs where trans people are seen smiling and engaging in conversation, dancing, and socializing.
Magnus Hirschfeld was intensely targeted during the rise of Nazism in Germany. Hitler notoriously labeled Hirschfeld "the world’s most dangerous Jew." An early edition of Nazi publication Der Stürmer, focusing on Hirschfeld, accused him of grooming youth, echoing contemporary attacks on LGBTQ+ individuals today. A few years later, the German Student Union, a Nazi-aligned youth group, looted the institute and burned thousands of books.
Transgender people were directly targeted by Nazi Germany for their gender identity and the way that they dressed. For example, transgender woman Liddy Bacroff was sent to a camp after police stated she was “fundamentally a transvestite” and “morals criminal of the worst sort,” where she was eventually murdered. Transgender woman Gerd R. was “forced by the Gestapo to stop living as a woman” and interred in a concentration camp, and later took her own life. Transgender woman Toni Simon was sent to a concentration camp after being deemed a “pronounced transvestite” and thus a “threat to Nazi society.” Many more sources detail the persecution of transgender people by Nazi Germany and the way in which they were targeted and research about them was burned.
In a special report by historian Laurie Marhoefer on behalf of Central European History Society of the American Historical Association, Marhoefer found:
“Nazi officials did not simply think trans women were gay men. They recognized trans women as different from gay men in ways that mattered. Nazi officials had a concept of “transvestitism” as distinct from, though related to, homosexuality. To quote Voss's 1938 book: “By transvestites we generally mean those persons who have the wish to primarily wear the clothing of the other sex and to act more or less as the opposite sex.” In all of the cases I have examined, state officials refer to the accused people as “transvestites,” even when they also identified them as homosexual (which they did not always do). Officials often claimed that transvestitism was an aggravating factor, something that made the case more dire, the accused person more deserving of a heavier sentence.”
A panel conversation released by the Museum of Jewish Heritage details how transgender people were persecuted in Nazi Germany:
Despite this historical context, Rowling reiterated her denial of this critical aspect of the history of fascism and genocide in Germany. When Alejandra Caraballo, a Harvard Clinical Instructor and transgender rights advocate, challenged her on Holocaust denial, Rowling modified her initial claims. She stated that transgender individuals were not the "first people targeted" and that the research was not burned—assertions that diverged from her original contention that transgender people were not persecuted in Nazi Germany. Moreover, she suggested that the Nazi practice of treating transgender women as gay men indicated they were not specifically targeted, implicitly endorsing the Nazi belief that transgender women possessed false gender identities—a perspective she has also promoted. Lastly, she linked to a thread that called Dora Richter, the first transgender patient to receive surgery, a “troubled male” and similarly denied the targeting of transgender people in the Holocaust.
Rowling is not alone in promoting denialist views regarding the Nazi targeting of transgender individuals during the Holocaust in recent months. Both the thread she shared and the error-ridden "WPATH Files"—an editorialized report over the World Professional Association of Transgender Health which Rowling has also promoted—draw comparisons between transgender care and Nazi ideology. These sources discuss Nazi history while either completely omitting or merely briefly mentioning the burning of the institute. They refer to a single doctor who later collaborated with Nazis in Germany, a phenomenon that was not unique to him while leaving out the several doctors who were forced to flee and their patients. Gay people, Jewish people, and other groups targeted by the Nazis also had members who collaborated, becoming symbols of the futility of collaboration with fascism.
The statements, while part of an ongoing history of escalating anti-trans rhetoric from the author, signify a shift towards extremist views against transgender individuals. Leading anti-trans voices worldwide echo these viewpoints. Meanwhile, conservative activists are advocating for transgender eradication and the cessation of all related care. Rowling's recent engagement with Holocaust denial concerning transgender individuals only fuels the same fires that incinerated books about transgender people a century ago.
Wow, how did we Nazi this coming?
This isn't just denying the Holocaust. This crosses the line into defending the Holocaust.