I generally find that academic sources don't exclude non-Jewish accounts: it's just that Jews made up the large majority of victims under the final solution, and the Soviet PoWs (the other big demographic) were mostly worked to death or shot, which does not leave as much a record, especially considering there was no oppression prior to 1941.
If you live in the UK, I recommend visiting the Imperial War Museum in Lambeth, London. They have a large exhibit on the holocaust which covers all the persecuted groups. I will find you some written sources shortly.
The Holocaust was preceded by a wider programme of eugenics called "Racial hygiene", where persons suffering from mental or physical disabilities could be forcibly sterilised.
From the Law for the Prevention of Genetically Diseased Offspring, 1933:
(i) Anyone who has a hereditary illness can be rendered sterile by a surgical operation if, according to the experience of medical science, there is a strong probability that his/her offspring will suffer from serious hereditary defects of a physical or mental nature.
(ii) Anyone is hereditarily ill within the meaning of this law who suffers from one of the following illness: (a) Congenital feeblemindedness. (b) Schizophrenia. (c) Manic depression. (d) Hereditary epilepsy. (e) Huntington’s chorea. (f) Hereditary blindness. (g) Hereditary deafness. (h) Serious physical deformities.
(iii) In addition, anyone who suffers from chronic alcoholism can be sterilized.
If the Court had decided finally in favour of sterilization, the sterilization must be carried out even against the wishes of the person to be sterilized.
I hope this scratches some more of the surface for you, but really you would need to read deep into the subject to get the full picture. I'd strongly suggest trying to find a museum near you with an exhibit: that's the best way to get the variety of sources you want without having to take a history class.
Lots of resources on the treatment of homosexuals in the Third Reich here: http://www.ushmm.org/research/research-in-collections/search-the-collections/bibliography/gays-and-lesbians#h11
I once did a presentation on the topic in a political science class. There are a number of significant differences between the treatment of Jewish people and gay people during the Nazi era / Holocaust. For one, it was easier to hide that you were gay (even though as the above source notes, the gay scene in certain German cities in the 20s was, relatively speaking, flourishing), not only due to blending in, but also because the persecution was much more focused on targeting Jews, who were the main culprit the Nazis identified for societal problems. Also, a smaller percentage of those people sentenced for the crime of being homosexual were actually sent to concentration camps. Gays, like other inmates, were treated abhorrently in concentration camps, but estimates of what percentage of them were executed varies. The highest I've seen is 60%, whereas for Jewish prisoners it was more like 67% — but it's hard to really know.
Not to in any way underestimate the persecution of gays during the Holocaust, but it didn't have the same character of "genocide" as did the persecution of Jews. This if you consider absolute numbers of execution (millions of Jews compared to thousands of gays; of course, some of the Jews were gay, but were executed for being Jewish), the relative rate of those arrested to those ultimately executed, and of course the more intense focus of the Nazi regime on the "Jewish problem."
To clarify:
I'd like to read up on specifically how Nazi Germany treated other persecuted groups during World War 2. I feel like alot of the reading I can find is on Jewish persecution but I realise there were more groups involved and would like to read up on them. Specifically the homosexual community, gypsies, political prisoners, slavs and disabled people.
Was their treatment the same or did it have specific differences. When they were separating Jewish people to go to certain camps, what were they doing with the other people?
I've heard of the Nazi's doing medical experiments of twins and forced sterilisation on disabled peopled. Any other examples like this would be great and sources would be terrific.
Thanks
As a follow-up question: I remember that in school, we were taught that there were classifications other than "Herrenrasse" and "Untermensch" (i. e. "to be exterminated"), for instance judging Slavs or Turks. Given the bureaucracy of their operations, I would expect to find very clear lists or similar about the class people were assigned, but I can't. So how accurate is that notion? If such a system existed, was there a precise ranking for different races, or were they all just grouped diffusely between the classes mentioned above?
Since we have some great responses to your question, here's a great book/source list for you OP that you can pick through. A majority of these sources deal with: Gypsy accounts, Handicapped individuals, Little people, Twins, children.. Ect. Ect I have used a majority of these for certain articles; they consist of personal accounts and are all primary sourced. Only thing is that these sources centre around Auschwitz Birkenau.
Berenbaum, Michael, and Abraham J. Peck, eds. The Holocaust and History: The known, the Unknown,the Disputed, and the Reexamined. Indianapolis: Indianapolis University Press, 1998.
Brozan, Nadine. "Out of Death, A Zest for Life." The New York Times. November 15,1982.
Clarksonweb. "Nazi Experiment Survivor Eva Mozes Kor Speaks at Clarkson University." filmed October 08, 2012. Youtube video, 3:04. Posted October 09, 2012. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dElQkxMxkKI.
EichmannTrialEN. "Eichmann trial - Session No. 46, 53, 62, 64, 68." filmed August 08, 1961. YouTube video, 44:05-53:46 Posted March 8, 2011. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dElQkxMxkKI.
Hayes, Peter, and John K. Roch, eds. The Oxford Handbook of Holocaust Studies. Oxford: Oxford University Press. 2010.
Hochstadt, Steve. Sources of the Holocaust. Newyork: Palgrave Macmillian, 2004.
Kanfer, Stefan and Peter Carlson. "The Life and Crimes of a Nazi Doctor." People. June 24, 1985.
Koren, Yehuda and Eilat Negev. In our Hearts We Were Giants: The Remarkable Story of the Lilliput Troupe-a Dwarf Family's Survival of the Holocaust. Newyork: Carroll & Graf Publishers, 2004.
Lifton, Robert Jay. Medical Killing and the Psychology of Genocide: The Nazi Doctors. Newyork: Basic Books, 1986.
Muller-Hill, Benno "Human Genetics and the Mass Murder of Jews, Gypsies, and Others." In The Holocaust and History: The Known, the Unknown, the Disputed, and the Reexamined, edited by Michael Berebaum and Abraham J. Peck Indianapolis: Indianapolis University Press, 1998.
Nyiszli, Miklos and Richard Seaver and Tibre Kremer. Auschwitz: A Doctor's Eyewitness Account. Newyork: Arcade Publishing, 1960.
"Out of the Ashes," Disc1. Out of the Ashes. Directed by Joseph Sargent. USA:Showtime, 2003.
Posner, Gerald :. and John Ware. Mengele: The Complete Story. New York: Cooper Square Press, 1960.
Schafft, Gretchen E. From Racism to Genocide: Anthropology in the Third Reich. Chicago: University of Illinois Press, 2004.
Smith, Lyn. Forgotten Voices of the Holocaust: A New History in the Words of the Men and Women Who Survived. London: Ebury Press, 2005.
Von Schirra, Bruno. "Die Erinnerung der Tater." DER SPIEGEL. September 28, 1998.
Weiss, Shila. The Nazi Symbiosis: Human Genetics and Politics in the Third Reich. Chicago: Chicago University Press, 2010.*
Your question is a bit more vague than you intended, which is why you haven't gotten many replies. The wording makes the context unclear. Are you asking to compare the holocaust to other genocides, curious about other groups being persecuted in general, or how other groups were treated within the sphere of the events we call the Holocaust?
I think you're asking about how other groups (homosexuals, gypsies, political prisoners) were treated by Nazi Germany in World War II and how it compared to the treatment of Jewish prisoners in concentration camps.
You can read The Men with the Pink Triangle: The True Life-and-Death Story of Homosexuals in the Nazi Death Camps by Heinz Heger, a first-hand account of a man taken to Sachsenhausen on the grounds of being a “degenerate.” I was told about this book in high school and it helped me better understand why LGBT activists reclaimed the pink triangle for visibility.
I'm not sure if you can access it as a non student but the USC Shoah Foundation has a huge collection of video taped interviews with holocaust survivors and all (or at least most) of them are transcribed. Therefore, even though most interviewees are Jewish, you can easily use the search function to find information on other groups such as homosexuals, gypsies, etc. I used this resource when I was in college to write a paper on the treatment of homosexuals in Germany between 1872 and 1972.
Tadeusz Borowski wrote some very good novels about his imprisonment in Auschwitz.
His describes what happened to Polish prisoners and I specifically remember few chapters about female non-Jewish sections of camp (I can't remember which one contained them, I read them in high school).
Also, I'm not sure about availability of English translations.
A better platform of enlightenment is http://schoolinland.com
The documentary film 'Paragraph 175' focuses specifically on gay victims of the holocaust, and is available with English subtitles.
Here's a bibliography from a paper I wrote in college concerning the holocaust. I'm sure there are better suggestion in the thread, but you might have access to one of these books and find it usefull.
Robert. Holy Hatred: Christianity, Antisemitism, and the Holocaust. New York:
Palgrave Macmillan, 2006
Press 1938
Roberts, Andrew The Storm of War, New York, NY Harper Collins, 2011
Erickson, Robert P., Heschel, Susannah Betrayal: German Churches and the
Holocaust, Minneapolis, MN Augsburg Fortress Publishers, 1999
2008
Catholic Church Lanham, MD, Lexington Books 2010