The near-forgotten history of the Holocaust's gay victims

William__F0ster · 2017-01-28T11:17:00+00:00

Before Hitler rose to power in 1933, Berlin was a hub of gay life ... That would end with gay people swept up in the Holocaust. But even when that was over and the community had ground to a halt, which would take decades to recover from, gay men faced long prison sentences and persecution.

To this day, the number of homosexual men interned and killed in concentration camps is unknown; it is estimated to lie between 10,000 and 15,000 people, of whom at least half died in the camps.

... Heinz F. recounts his ordeal in the camps ... Heinz was arrested again, on charges of homosexuality, and sent to a prison to wait for a trial.

‘I couldn’t understand all of this. And while I was there, nearly all the homosexuals were deported to Mauthausen,’ he says. ‘And nearly all of them were killed.’

Heinz himself was sent to Buchenwald, where prisoners were first labeled with ‘Paragraph 175’ on their jackets, before the pink triangle was introduced.

Instead of sending them to their immediate death, the Nazis selected the Germans in their camps for slave labor, castration or forced them to take part in human experiments.

Almost two thirds of the men held in the camps died.

‘Some of the Kapos held themselves so-called Piepels, young men who had to provide personal services in exchange for being exempt from hard work and enjoying privileges,’ historian Hermann Langbein writes in his book People in Auschwitz.

‘Many of them sexually abused their boys.’

And if [the survivors] rarely spoke about what happened to them in the concentration camps, it’s nearly impossible to find accounts of what happened afterwards, as the suppression continued.

Title	The near-forgotten history of the Holocaust's gay victims
Author	William__F0ster
Upvotes	1
Comments	1
Date	January 28, 2017 10:56 AM UTC (9 years ago)
Subreddit	Posted in /r/MensRights
Original Link	https://old.reddit.com/r/MensRights/comments/5qn31q/the_nearforgotten_history_of_the_holocausts_gay/
Archive Link	https://theredarchive.com/r/MensRights/the-near-forgotten-history-of-the-holocausts-gay.933115 https://theredarchive.com/post/933115

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