A pink triangle, two-and-three-quarter inches high, worn on the left
side of the jacket and on the right leg of the trousers, was the symbol
which branded the homosexual inmates of the Nazi concentration camps.
Most of them perished. In the words of a non-gay survivor: "I saw
quite a number of pink triangles. I don't know how they were eventually
killed. ... One day they were simply gone." The daily agony of
their lives is recalled by Dr L.D. Claassen von Neudegg, a gay survivor
of the Sachsenhausen camp:
What were the events leading to the Nazi persecution of homosexuals and
the atrocities of the concentration camps?
In the early nineteenth century Germany was a loose confederation of
individual separate states, and homosexuality had been effectively legalized in several of them which had adopted the Code Napoleon. However, Prussia still retained laws which punished homosexuality with imprisonment and flogging. Following the Franco-Prussian War,
when King Wilhelm established the Second Reich in 1871 he reversed the general tendency towards legalization, and adopted the
harsh Prussian code for the entire nation. The anti-gay law in question
is Paragraph 175, which outlawed "lewd and unnatural
behavior," prescribing prison sentences ranging from one day to
five years.
The adoption of this code was a major setback to the work of the
world's first gay rights activist, Karl Heinrich Ulrichs (1825-95). He
had been arguing the case in humerous pamphlets that homosexuality was
as natural as left-handedness, and that gays were entitled to full
civil rights including marriage. In 1871 he was forced to stop
publishing his pamphlets; eventually he went into exile to Aquilla in
the Southern Appenines, where he died in 1895.
Ulrichs' fight was taken up by men such as Adolf Brand, who in 1891
published the first gay magazine, Der Eigene,
which ran continuously until 1929, and by Magnus Hirschfeld, who
published Sappho und Socrates in 1891. Brand,
Hirschfeld and Max Spohr got together in 1897 to establish the first
gay rights organization, the Wissenschaftlich-humanitäaut;res
Komittee (Scientific Humanitarian Committee). Though it had only 70
members by 1900, it nevertheless had managed to publish 23 books on
homosexuality in its education efforts, and eventually it managed to
collect several thousand signatures of prominent people on a petition
to repeal Paragraph 175.
The German gay world was thriving, in spite of the fact that between
200-300 men a year were imprisoned for violating Paragraph 175. Berlin
in 1895, with a population of 2½ million, had 40 gay bars, and,
according to the police, nearly 2000 hustlers. Drag balls were openly
advertised in the straight media. In 1905
alone there were 320 publications on
homosexuality. Groups such as the Social Democratic Workingmen's Party
— founded on the principles of Marx and Engels — publicly
supported gay rights.
A severe blow fell in 1907, when Prince Philip zu Eulenburg and other
prominent men in government circles were involved in a homosexual
scandal which the newspapers sensationalized into an anti-gay witch
hunt. There were trials, libel suits, suicides, and a dramatic fall in
the membership of gay organizations. This was partly because
Hirschfeld, much to his discredit, was persuaded to give testimony
identifying one of the gay men on trial as having "typical
identifiable homosexual characteristics.".
In 1910 the government proposed outlawing lesbian acts. The bill failed
to pass, and the controversy strengthened ties between gays and the
women's movement, such as the League for the Protection of Mothers and
Sexual Reform. Despite the Eulenberg scandals, the gay movement
received much support. In 1917 the Soviet Union abolished all anti-gay
legislation, and the German Communists supported Hirschfeld's Law
Reform Proposal of 1927.
In 1919 Hirschfeld set up the Institute for Sexual Science in Berlin,
which soon had 20,000 volumes on its shelves, and a large staff to
counsel gays and to educate society. Other gay organizations were
quickly established, including a gay community center and a committee
to coordinate their law reform efforts.
But fascism was in the air, and we should not forget that Hirscfeld was
Jewish as well as gay. As early as 1920, in Munich, he was attacked by
anti-Semites, who bragged in a newspaper report that they so badly
disfigured his mouth that he "could never again be kissed by one
of his `disciples'." Later the same year he was attacked by the
Nazis, this time left on the pavement with a fractured skull.
Showings of Hirschfeld's first pro-gay film Different from
the Others (featuring Conrad Veidt, star of
The Cabinet of Dr Caligari) were regularly
disrupted by the fascists. In one such incident in Vienna in 1923 they
shot and wounded several members of the audience. The National
Socialist Party issued their offical view of homosexuals on May 14,
1928:
Anyone who even thinks of homosexual love is our enemy.
Some of the Nazis were of course gay themselves, but it is dangerously
naive to believe the the Nazis ever "tolerated"
homosexuality. An instructive illustration is provided by the case of
Ernst Röhm, Head of the SA or storm-troopers.
Röhm's Brownshirt militia — mostly undisciplined soldiers
and roughnecks from the city-slums — contained many gay men, and
there was debauchery in the ranks. Röhm himself was careless of
his reputation: for example, in 1925 he pressed charges against a 17-
year-old hustler who had robbed him the "morning after."
Hitler knew of Röhm's homosexuality at least by 1927, as well
as that of others such as Edmund Heines, Karl Ernst, and La Paz, who
owed their promotions to their "services" to Röhm.
Heines would scour Germany picking up boys for his commander, and the
clique met often in Munich for orgies.
But Hitler was not yet strong enough in his own right either to quash
his rival (Röhm lead a 100,000-strong army) or to maintain
power without his help. He wisely decided to come to Röhm's
defence: "His private life cannot be an object of scrutiny unless
it conflicts with basic principles of National Socialist
ideology."
When Röhm's army grew to 500,000 men by 1932, Hitler saw a
threat and decided that Röhm's private life
did so conflict. Party Judge Walter Buch
arranged for the assassination of the gay leaders of the SA:
Röhm, Count Du Moulin, Eckhart, George Bell,
Stabsführer Uhl. But the plot was discovered, Buch was
denounced, and Röhm and Bell fled to their friend Major Karl
Mayr to find out who was behind the conspiracy.
Hitler removed the glove from his hand on June 30, 1934, which came to
be called "The Night of the Long Knives." A body of his
troops converged upon a Bavarian resort where they discovered
Röhm's men in the aftermath of a "party" —
dramatized in Visconti's film The Damned'
Röhm was found in bed with his chauffeur, and Heines in bed
with another man.
Heines and his boyfriend were ushered outside and perfunctorily shot,
while the rest were arrested as traitors. Simultaneously, 200 SA
leaders were rounded up in Berlin and massacred. Röhm was taken
to Stadelheim Prison in Munich by order of Himmler and Göring,
given a gun, and told to kill himself. He refused, saying: "Let
Adolf do his dirty work." They shot him down.
On the day that Röhm was murdered, Hitler issued an order to
purge all gays from the army, for he feared a Secret Order of The Third
Sex.
Although June 30, 1934, marks the beginning of the Nazi slaughter of
gays, active persecution had begun a year earlier, in 1933, when Hitler
had become supreme legal authority of the Third Reich. In that year the
following events too place:
All activities of Hirschfeld's League of Human Rights were banned, and
the gay emancipation movement was crushed.
The stage was set for what I call The Triumph of the Heterosexual Will.
I use this phrase because I think it is extremely important to
recognize that Nazism was preeminently an extreme form of the
heterosexual ideal, and what Christopher Isherwood called
"compulsive heterosexuality." Hitler's beliefs on this matter
are quite clear: "We must build a nation healthy to the core,
robust in its menfolk and absolutely feminine in its women."
Contrary to insidious post-war propaganda to the effect that the Nazi
regime was "riddled with homosexuals," the bulk of the Nazi
leaders, including those whom we most often associate with the
atrocities, were confirmed heterosexuals. Admittedly it is true that an
assistant commandant at Treblinka kept a harem of boys in drag, but
from an objective viewpoint this one instance is less
"horrifying" than the very many more harems of women
terrorized by heterosexual officers. If there is any "inherent
link" between a particular sexual lifestyle and a particular
political philosophy, then most of the evidence — and
all of the ideological evidence —
indicates that fascism and heterosexuality are made for one another.
Let us look at some of the typical Nazi leaders:
But let us look at the more important Nazi policies and viewpoints: all
of them examples of heterosexual ideology.
The voice of authority in sexual ethics was Professor Max von Gruber of
Munich University, an arrogant heterosexualist. His book
Sexual Hygiene — the textbook of the
Nazis — first appeared in 1927 in an edition of 325,000 copies. It
condemned homosexuality and masturbation, and preached that:
In order to promote the heterosexual ideal, the Nazi government under
Göring provided quick promotion for civil servants who married
early. "Matrimonial Credits" were issued to women as an
economic incentive to procreation. Under this system, interest-free
loans were granted, with a 25% remission for the birth of each
child. A mother producing Gruber's four-children ideal did not have to
pay back any of the loan. By 1935, 650 million Reich Marks had been
distributed to one million mothers.
Prostitution, though technically illegal, was tolerated because it
increased the population and was believed to counteract homosexuality.
In decrees issued on September 9, 1939, and on March 16, 1940,
medically-supervised brothels were officially set up on the front for
the use of Himmler's unmarried SS men. In 1943, 600 women from Paris,
Poland, Bohemia and Moravia were recruited to supply 60 brothels, each
of which served 50 clients a day. Some were used for biological
experimentation: in the Klosterstrasse brothel in Stuttgart, for
example, the women wore special sheathes to collect their partner's
semen, which was then gathered for tests to devise a plasma substitute.
(Bizarre but true.)
These brothels were supplemented by the Nazi stud-farms, called
"Founts of Life" — huge child-producing factories for
the elite, of which there were 13 in 1944.
The women's movement was of course crushed as completely as was the gay
movement. More precisely, it was perverted. "Reich Mother-in-
Chief" Gertrud Scholtz-Klink, head of the Women's Association,
declared: "The German woman must be such that she does, and does
gladly, all that is required of her." And Frau Siber of the
Ministry of the Interior declared: "In woman's womb reposes the
people's future, and in her soul the heart of the nation." Women
became factory workers and/or a procreatrixes while they listened to
propaganda about obedience and devotion. The Nazis believed so strongly
in the myth of the "mother instinct" in all women that
lesbians — although treated with contempt — were not outlawed
or sent to the camps. Lesbians would, they believed, give way to their
"natural" mothering instincts if given half a chance, and, in
any case, they could be forcibly impregnated if necessary. Women sent
to the camps who were subsequently discovered to be lesbian, were
especially liable to be forced into brothel work as a "cure"
as well as a humiliation.
With such a rabidly heterosexual world-view, it is not difficult to
understand the Nazi's hatred of homosexuals. In a nation obsessed with
the birth-rate, homosexuality was a political crime. Rudolf Diels,
founder of the Gestapo, in 1934 lectured his colleagues on how
homosexuals had caused the downfall of ancient Greece. In 1935 all
local police departments were required to submit to the Gestapo lists
of suspected homosexuals; shortly there were 20,000 names on the index.
Reich Legal Director Hans Frank in 1938 issued orders for more rigorous
surveillance:
The one man most directly responsible for the Nazi persecution of
homosexuals was Heinrich Himmler. We have already noted that he was a
fanatic heterosexualist. On the other side of the coin, he was a
fanatic anti-homosexualist. By early 1937 gay men were being purged
from his SS troups at the rate of merely one a month, but in that year
Himmler gave a speech branding homosexuals as mentally diseased,
effeminate, cowardly, liars, traitors, irresponsible and disloyal.
In his address to the Bad Tölz conference he ordered that gay
SS men should be routed out, stripped of rank, expelled, court
martialed, and imprisoned for the duration allowed by Paragraph 175.
This was accompanied by private instructions to his generals:
Himmler was also directly responsible for much of the anti-gay
propaganda drummed into the masses. For example, he enlisted the help
of scholars to prove that the "noble" race of ancient Germans
solved the problem by drowning homosexuals in bogs and fens. Professor
Eckhardt of Berlin University, the authority on legal history, said:
Male homosexuals were the lowest of the low. They were placed in the
Level 3 camps: Dachau, Fühlsbüttel, Grossrosen,
Lichtenburg, Mauthausen, Neuengamme, Ravensbrück and
Sonnenburg. There they were placed under "triple camp
discipline," which meant that they were subjected to harder work,
less food, and stricter supervision than the other inmates. When they
fell sick they were not allowed treatment in the clinics, and were left
to die or were killed with large injections of morphine.
A survivor of one of these camps reports on the arrival of a new
homosexual inmate, a healthy young man:
When morning came, his breathing had become an audible rattle. He was
again beaten and kicked. Then he was tied to a post and placed under an
arc lamp until he began to sweat, again put under a cold shower, and so
on. He died toward evening. Bronchial pneumonia was given as the cause
of his death.
A full account of the treatment of gay men in the camps is available in
Rudolph Hoess's Commandant of Auschwitz.
Hoess joined the SS in 1933, and became Rapport-führer at
Dachau in 1935. He did not quite approve of the whippings, but could
not figure out what else to do with the
Strichjungen — the hustlers and most
"obvious" gay men who were rounded up in the city streets and
shipped to the camps: "A constant stream of reports about their
activity began to flow from every block. Punishment had no effect
whatever."
Hoess was later transferred to Sachsenhausen, where he found there were
even more homosexuals. He regarded it as an "epidemic" and
had them all placed in one block, under a commander who "knew how
to deal with them." They were forced to carry out the most
difficult work in the camp: pushing metal rollers for paving, working
in the clay pit of the Klinker Brickworks. Hoess says:
Hoess observed that many gay men in his camps formed deep and lasting
relationships:
No one knows how many homosexual men were killed by the Nazis before
and during the war. But let us look at some figures.
First, on the home front. The number of homosexual men (non-military)
convicted under Paragraph 175 and sent to prison were:
These very large numbers of convicted homosexual
civilians suggest a much higher figure for
the front lines — where most of the men were — and the
concentration camps (for which there are few records).
In every camp in which he served — Dachau, Sachsenhausen,
Auschwitz, and Ravensbruck — Hoess says there were
"many" homosexuals. It is very clear from his account that
homosexuals constituted a significant proportion of the inmates: his
comments imply that there were nearly as many homosexuals in Dachau as
there were Jews, which would have been about 12% of the prison
population in 1936. This does not include those homosexuals who arrived
at the camps by train and proceeded directly into the gas chambers, nor
does it include the SS gay men who were brought to the camps and
"shot while attempting to escape."
The death toll for all inmates was 8 million. It is impossible to
estimate how many of them were homosexuals. But Hoess, according to his
own estimate, personally supervised the extermination of 2,000,000
homosexuals, Jews, Gipsies, communists, and Russian soldiers: this
would imply that he alone could have killed
at least 15,000 homosexuals, the figure often cited for the total
number of homosexuals killed in the concentration camps. Concentration
camp records were systematically destroyed by the Nazis, and surviving
records are sparse and incomplete, so there are no really reliable
figures for how many men were dealt with under Hitler's "final
solution" to "the homosexual problem". The estimate
ranges from 430,000 (which is probably too high) to 10,000 (which is
probably too low).
Detailed statistical analysis of surviving records indicates that
homosexual prisoners were systematically placed in the hardest work
commandos (notably the gravel pits at Dachau and the brick works where
all of the homosexual inmates of Sachsenhausen worked); that the death
rate for homosexuals was 50 percent higher than for political
prisoners; that they received more brutal and more frequent extra
punishments than the other prisoners; and that they formed the highest
percentage of prisoners who were "transported" (the Nazi
euphemism for transfer to the gas chambers). One survivor of Dachau
reported: "The inmates with the pink triangles never lived long,
they were exterminated by the SS with systematic swiftness."
By all accounts, hardly any of the homosexual inmates of the
concentration camps survived. The pink triangles were spurned by all
other groups in the concentration camps, and most non-gay survivors
even today refuse to acknowledge the existence of their fellow gay
prisoners. After the war, homosexuals were denied the reparations given
by the German government to other groups, because they were still
classified as criminals under German law. They were even denied state
pensions to compensate for the amount of time spent in the
concentration camps. They could be re-imprisoned for "repeat
offences," and were kept on the modern lists of "sex
offenders." The humane institutions of every country have
condemned the treatment of all of the victims — except for
homosexuals. On annual days of mourning for the victims, few countries
officially mourn for homosexuals. To the survivor's comment that
"one day they were simply gone" we might add "and today
are all but forgotten."
Copyright © 1975, 1998 Rictor Norton. This essay
was originally published in Gay News No. 82,
6-19 November 1975. It is believed to be the first time that an article
on the subject was published in a British publication. I have made some
amendments in the light of new information since 1975. The sources
include Jiom Steakley, "The Gay Movement in Germany" and "Homosexuals
and the Third Reich," in Body Politic, Issues
9, 10, 11; John Lauritsen and David Thorstad, The Early
Homosexual Rights Movement (1864-1935) (New York: Times
Change Press, 1974); W.I. Scobie, "Death Camps," in Gay
Sunshine No. 25; Hans Peter Bleuel, Sex and
Society in Nazi Germany (Bantam, 1975); Gerald
Reitlinger, The SS: Alibi of a Nation
(Viking, 1968); Rudolf Hoess, Commandant of
Auschwitz (London, 1959); and Gillian Rodgerson, "Out of
the shadow of the pink triangle," news feature in Gay
Times, November 1995, pp. 40-41; Rüdiger
Lautmann, "The Pink Triangle: The Persecution of Homosexual Males in
Concentration Camps in Nazi Germany,", in Licata and Petersen (eds),
The Gay Past (1985), pp. 141-60.
After roll call on the evening of June 20, 1942, an order was suddenly
given: "All prisoners with the pink triangle will remain standing
at attention!" Our detail commander barked: "Three hundred
criminal deviants, present as ordered!" We were registered, and
then it was revealed to us that in accordance with an order from the
Reichsfuehring SS, our category was to be isolated in an intensified-
penalty company, and we would be transferred as a unit to the Klinker
Brickwords the next morning. The Klinker factory! We shuddered, for the
human death mill was more than feared. ... Forced to drag along twenty
corpses, the rest of us encrusted with blood, we entered the Klinker
works. ... We had been here for almost two months, but it seemed like
endless years to us. When we were "transferred" here, we had
numbered around 300 men. Whips were used more frequently each morning,
when we were forced down into the clay pits under the wailing camp
sirens. "Only 50 are still alive," whispered the man next to
me. "Stay in the middle — then you won't get hit so
much."
Paragraph 175
Scandal
It is not necessary that you and I live, but it is necessary that the
German people live. And it can live if it can fight, for life means
fighting. And it can only fight if it maintains its masculinity. It can
only maintain its masculinity if it exercises discipline, especially in
matters of love. Free love and deviance are undisciplined. Therefore,
we reject you, as we reject anything which hurts our people.
The gay movement nevertheless almost achieved its major aim in 1928:
the Reichstag Committee, by a vote of 15 to 13, approved the Penal
Reform Bill which abolished all homosexual crimes. But before the law
could be put into effect, in 1929 the stock market crashed, the Bill
was tabled, and the Nazis were swept into power.
Ernst Röhm
Night of the Long Knives
A law was passed requiring the sterilization of all homosexuals,
schizophrenics, epileptics, drug addicts, hysterics, and those born
blind or malformed. By 1935, 56,000 people were thus
"treated." In actual practice, the homosexuals were literally
castrated rather than sterilized. In 1936, as part of the clean-up
campaign preparatory for the Olympics, homosexual meeting places were
raided in Hamburg and on one night alone 80 homosexuals were brought to
Concentration Camp Fuhlsb&#uuml;ttel.
Triumph of the Heterosexual Will
And so it goes. Not to mention the heterosexual festivities of the
lower middle-class heterosexual imagination: the gala beer fests
organized by Christian Weber, Hitler's bodyguard, with ladies of easy
virtue supplied by the Reich Labour Service; Viktor Lutze's "booze
bangs"; the orgiastic "Night of the Amazons" in the
grounds of the Schloss Nymphenburg in 1939, or Göring's similar
"Birth of Aphrodite" exhibition.
Sexual Hygiene
Sexual intercourse takes place within wedlock. ... The purpose of
marriage is the procreation of children and their upbringing. National
growth requires marriage to produce at least four offspring.
Von Gruber was the guardian of Germany's racial heritage, the foremost
advocate of selective breeding. Under his influence the National
Socialist Teachers' Association undertook the re-education of children
concerning geneology, genetics, and racial theory. By 1941, 41 training
centers were preparing 215,000 teachers to propagate his theories,
using as a text the Primer of Racial Hygiene.
Matrimonial Credits
Hatred of Homosexuals
Particular attention should be addressed to homosexuality, which is
clearly expressive of a disposition opposed to the normal national
community. Homosexual activity means the negation of the community as
it must be constituted if the race is not to perish. That is why
homosexual behaviour, in particular, merits no mercy.
Himmler's Division II was responsible for the control of "illegal
parties and organizations, leagues and economic groups, reactionaries
and the Church, freemasonry, and homosexuality." Even after
serving their prison sentences, such "enemies of the state"
were taken into "protective custody"
(Schutzhaft) — a euphemism for
internment in concentration camps.
Heinrich Himmler
After serving the sentence imposed by the court, they will, on my
instructions, be taken to a concentration camp and there shot while
attempting to escape.
In 1941 Himmler sent a confidentail circular to the SS generals and to
the police:
Any member of the SS or police who engaged in indecent behaviour with
another man or permits himself to be abused by him for indecent
purposes, will, regardless of age, be condemned to death and executed.
In less grave cases, a term of not less than six years' penal servitude
or imprisonment may be imposed.
By "indecent behaviour" Himmler included not only copulation
but "touching the body of the other person, even when fully
clothed, also the act of kissing." This decision was welcomed by
both Goebbels and by SS Central Office Chief Gottlob Berger. In 1942
the Reich Ministry of Justice publicly adopted the death penalty for
homosexuals.
In assessing the racially pernicious sympton of degeneracy known as
homosexuality, we must revert to the Nordic principle that degenerates
should be exterminated.
Himmler's own belief is summed up in a statement he made to Felix
Kersten in 1940: "The homosexuals must be entirely
eliminated."
The Concentration Camps
When he arrived, he was seized and ridiculed, then beaten and kicked,
and finally spat upon. He suffered alone and in silence. Then they put
him under a cold shower. It was a frosty winter evening, and he stood
outside the barracks all through that long, bitterly cold night.
Another survivor writers:
I saw a rather effeminate young man who was repeatedly forced to dance
in front of SS men, who would then put him on the rack — chained
hand and foot to a crossbeam in the guard-house barracks — and
beat him in the most awful way. Even today I find it impossible to
think back on all my comrades, all the barbarities, all the tortures,
without falling into the deepest depression.
Strichjungen
It was hard work, and each of them had to complete a definite amount of
work each day. They were exposed to all kinds of weather, summer and
winter, since a stipulated number of truckloads had to be filled daily.
Quotas were regularly raised; men who collapsed were dragged away
— often not to be seen again. The alleged idea behind the hard
work was to make them "normal". This was supplemented by
primitive aversion therapy and medical experimentation having little to
do with so-called "cures." Neudegg recalls:
Experiments had been ordered involving living subjects and phosphorus:
methods of treating phosphorus burns were to be developed and tested.
I must be silent about the effects of this series of experiments, which
proceeded with unspeakable pain, fear, blood and tears: for it is
impossible to put the misery into words.
Gay men were given the opportunity to undergo "renunciation
tests" under Himmler's orders, but even if the gay men
"passed" the test and succeeded in being aroused by the
prostitutes provided for them, they were not released. Few of the men
gave up their homosexuality. Hoess reports: "Whenever they found
an opportunity, they would fall into one another's arms." And
"knowing they would never be set free," they suffered
additional psychological stress. Their work became even harder, and
they died like flies.
Should one of these lose his "friend" through sickness, or
perhaps death, then the end could at once be foreseen. Many would
commit suicide. To such natures, in such circumstances, the
"friend" meant everything. There were many instances of
"friends" committing suicide together.
But on the whole, many of the men with the pink triangles —
especially the Strichjungen and the most
swishy gays — did not give up without a struggle. As Hoess coldly
remarks: "It was often not easy to drive them to the gas
chambers."
The Death Toll
There are no civilian records for the remainder of 1943, nor for the
years 1944 and 1945. To this — a total of nearly 50,000 —
should be added a significant proportion of the 56,000 people subjected
to "sterilizaton."
CITATION: If you cite this Web page, please use the following citation:
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