Homosexual men were persecuted, imprisoned and driven to death during the Nazi era. Homosexual relations continued to be a crime after 1945. Article 175 of the German criminal code, which prohibited sex between men, was tightened by the Nazis. The law was amended several times in the West and East, but it was not fully abolished until 1994. Finally, in 2002, the gay movement succeeded in getting the German Bundestag to apologise to homosexual victims of the Nazi regime.
