Homosexuals

"We were also forbidden to approach nearer than five meters of the other blocks. Anyone caught doing so was whipped on the 'horse' [table] , and was sure of at least 15-20 strokes. Other categories of prisoner were similarly forbidden to enter our block. We were to remain isolated as the damnedest of the damned."

~ Heinz Heger

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In the Nazi philosophy, homosexuality was detrimental to the morality and military strength of the German nation, and was a threat to the purity and proliferation of the Aryan race. Homosexuality was thought to contribute to a declining birth rate, which would lead to a weakening of the German defense. It was feared that homosexuality would spread like a plague, causing the masculinity of Germany to be questioned. Homosexuals were labeled "antisocial parasites" and "enemies of the state." The Nazis determined that homosexuality was to be eliminated for the good of the state.

It is ironic that among the leaders of the Nazi Party, there were homosexuals. Between 1933 and 1934, a man named Ernst Roehm was the leader of the Nazi Stormtroopers. He was admittedly homosexual and was a member of the Hirschfeld's League for Human Rights. Adolf Hitler and Heinrich Himmler (leader of the SS) were friends of Roehm. However, when Leftists attempted to diminish and discredit the Nazi Party, they using the charge of homosexuality among the Nazis, Hitler began to see Roehm as a threat to his authority. On June 30, 1934, Roehm and several other homosexuals among the Stormtroopers were murdered along with more than 1,000 of Hitler's opposers. This incident is known as the "Night of the Long Knives."

Following this incident, Himmler created the Reich Central Office for the Combating of Homosexuality and Abortion in 1936. Waves of severe persecution of homosexuals followed. Himmler had determined that homosexuality threatened racial purity, reasoning that "all this which take place in the sexual sphere are not he private affair of the individual, but signify the life and death of the nation..." (Jewish Virtual Library). It was decreed that homosexuals would be rounded up for court trial and punishment in prisons, mental institutions,or in concentration camps. This would ensure that pure Aryan blood would continue to be cultivated and harvested for the German State. Approximately 100,000 homosexual men were accused and arrested with about 55,000 being convicted. Of these, 5,000 to 15,000 were sentenced to concentration camps.

In the Camps

Once in the concentration camps, male homosexuals were identified by a pink triangle worn on the front of their uniform. Often they were offered a shorter term in the camp if they consented to castration, or midway through the war, by order of a camp commandant. In the camp, homosexuals were also referred to as 175-ers because the revised Paragraph 175 of Nazi Ciminal Law greatly enlarged punishment for "indecencies between men", and directly labeled homosexuals as a criminal, even seditious, group. They were looked down upon as degenerate and weak, and so were shunned and abused by fellow inmates and guards alike. Records suggest that this increased abuse caused a higher death rate (possibly four times greater) than among other groups from overwork, starvation, physical abuse, and murder (Nazi Ideology).

"The windows had a centimetre of ice on them. Anyone found with his underclothes on in bed, or his hand under his blanket - there were checks almost every night- was taken outside and had several bowls of water poured over him before being left standing outside for a good hour. Only a few people survived this treatment... and it was rare for any gay person taken into the sick-bay to come out alive."

-Heinz Heger. The Men with the Pink Triangles.

Heinz Heger, a survivor of the camp Sachsenhausen, described the typical work day in his book The Men with the Pink Triangles. They rose as early as 5 a.m., and within a half-hour had to wash, dress, make their beds, and eat a bowl of flour, soup, and a piece of bread. Roll-call followed. Any who had died the night before had to be brought to the roll-call, tallied, then taken to the mortuary for burning. An example of their work was to  remove snow from outside their compound, moving it from the left side of the road to the right side of the road. They had to do this with their bare hands, throwing the snow into a container. When the job was finished, they would repeat the procedure only to move the snow back to the left side of the road. This left their hands frost-bitten and bloody. In the summmertime, the same process was performed with sand and dirt.

The uniform of a homosexual with

a pink triangle sewn on the front.

"The Cure" - Eugenics

In their quest to strengthen  and purify the Aryan race, Hitler promoted the use of eugenics, the science of improving hereditary traits through selective breeding and surgical experimentation. One of the most active practcers of eugenics was Carl Vaernet, a Danish SS Physician. He received funding for laboratory facilities and equipment, as was given the right to use homosexual prisoners in the camps for his experimentation. Vaernet claimed to have developed a cure for homosexuality, surgically imbedding testosterone implants inside the inmates. Follow-up reports offered no conclusive findings.

Because lesbians had the ability to bear children, Nazi eugenics attached a measure of usefulness to them. Therefore, lesbians were not as ruthlessly persecuted by the Nazis. However, their freedom to associate with one another was curtailed.

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