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The law will apply to all men sentenced between 1945 and 1994 when homosexuality was finally decriminalised in Germany. Germany's anti-gay laws were considerably tightened under the Nazi regime when gay men could be sentenced to up to five years in jail and many were sent to concentration camps.
After World War II the Nazi-era laws were retained by both East and West Germany.
It is understood that, unlike New Zealand's proposed pardon system which will see convicted men having to prove that their sentence was not for other offenses then associated in law with homosexuality, German men will be automatically pardoned.
