The Men with the Pink Triangle

There is almost no literature on the persecution of homosexuals during the Hitler regime. Only little information is available about the discrimination, humiliation and murder of homosexuals during the years of the Third Reich. While in concentration camps Jews had to wear the Yellow Star, for homosexuals the Pink Triangle was the visible sign.

Tens of thousands, but probably hundreds of thousands of homosexuals were thrown into concentration camps during the Nazi regime until 1945 and were at the mercy of the SS henchmen, suffering torture and torment until death redeemed them. No detailed record was kept of this category of inmate. The homosexuals were at the lowest level in the concentration camp hierarchy, along with the Jews. However, while the worst was over for the surviving concentration camp prisoners at the end of World War 2, the men and women with the Pink Triangle continued to be prosecuted and ostracized from society. Author Heinz Heger did not have to endure the treatment described in this book himself. He relentlessly reports on the shameful events in the Sachsenhausen and Flossenbürg concentration camps, which one of the very few surviving men with the Pink Triangle told him about.

Heinz Heger was the pseudonym of the Austrian writer Hans Neumann. With this book he wrote down the experiences of the homosexual concentration camp survivor Josef Kohout from Vienna and in 1972 published the first comprehensive report on imprisonment in a concentration camp from the perspective of a gay man. The book became important for the gay movement. However, after the war Josef did not receive any compensation for his imprisonment in the concentration camp from the Republic of Austria. He tried to no avail to have the term of imprisonment recognized as a substitute contribution period for his pension. Josef was particularly outraged by the fact that SS guards did have their “service time” in the concentration camp counted as insurance contribution time against the pension, provided that they could not be proven to have committed crimes.

This book has become a classic and in the course of LGBT History Month I would like to recommend it to everyone in our queer community to understand what the Pink Triangle was really about and how people 80 years ago were brutally tortured and beaten to death because of their sexual orientation and their same-sex love. The few surviving victims, however, withheld their concentration camp imprisonment partly out of shame, partly out of fear. Remember it wasn’t too long ago that in most countries homosexuality was considered a crime. The descriptions in “The Men with the Pink Triangle” are all the more valuable. Certainly not an easy read due to the realistically told stories that become so vivid in the reader’s mind. Nevertheless, or perhaps because of that, the book is a must read for our community in order to raise awareness of the hatred and bestial methods of the Nazi regime against us and to prevent such crimes from happening again.

The book is unfortunately sold out in English, but can be found in various antiquarian bookshops.