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Pink Propositions Pink Propositions The Experience of Gay Men in Third Reich Concentration Camps Broc Gantt !1 Broc Gantt HIST:407 Dr. Phillips April 17, 2019 Introduction Hoards of scholarship exists on the Nazi regime and their sadistic concentration and extermination camps, but nevertheless one group seemed to fall through the cracks and go largely unnoticed by academia in the years since the camps were liberated. The men with the pink triangle have been repeatedly looked over and seen by many, it seems, as a group whose history of oppression under this tyrannical regime was something to be whisked aside rather than confronted head on. This practice would be deeply unfair to any group marginalized by such an evil regime, but it is even more unfair that history has focused so little on the experiences of the men who bore pink triangles, given that these men were often treated with a special brand of disgust and contempt by the Nazis. The men who were forced to wear pink triangles were, of course, those identified by the Nazis as “homosexuals”.1 In a system devised by the regime to categorize prisoners based on their alleged offenses, the homosexuals occupied one of the lowest rungs of the ladder; they were beneath violent criminals, political adversaries to the regime, immigrants, “Gypsies”, Jehovah’s Witnesses, and “asocials”.2 Based on 1 Heinz Heger, The men with the pink triangle: the true life-and-death story of homosexuals in the Nazi death camps (Los Angeles: Alyson Books, 1980), 31. 2 Heger, The men with the pink triangle, 31. !2 observations of how the men were treated in the Sachsenhausen and Flossenbürg camps, it seems as though they were situated on a similar level with the Jews,3 and even that is a questionable assessment, with much evidence suggesting that the Jews were not treated quite as horribly as the homosexuals. It is not difficult to imagine how men who engaged in sex with other men would come to be targeted by a political apparatus which so clearly cherished its assessment of masculinity as a strictly defined, superior trait which all German men should strive to embody and exude. Despite the fact that the Nazis were the ones who began rounding up these men for the sake of imprisoning and (if not converting) exterminating them on account of their sexual orientation, the legal parameters that helped facilitate these transgressions were not put in place by the Nazi regime. Paragraph 175 of the German Criminal Code had been in place since 1871,4 which outlawed sexual contact between males, and between humans and animals. Even though this law had been in place, it wasn’t strictly enforced for the sake of condemning homosexual conduct between consenting adults.5 In fact, Berlin was seen as a sexually progressive haven in the late Weimar period,6 and there was growing support through social movements for the removal of Paragraph 175 from the penal code.7 However, when the Nazi Party came to power in 1933, much of the anti- Paragraph 175 movement was brought to a halt. Prominent members of these 3 Heger, The men with the pink triangle, 43. 4 Craig Kaczorowski, “Paragraph 175.” GLBTQ Encyclopedia (2004), 1. 5 Kaczorowski, “Paragraph 175”, 1. 6 Kaczorowski, “Paragraph 175”, 1. 7 Kaczorowski, “Paragraph 175”, 1. !3 campaigns were jailed,8 and their voices silenced by censorship from the Nazi- controlled government.9 The motivation for the Nazis’ animosity towards homosexuals stems, in large part, from their obsessive view of masculinity. For many Nazi leaders, the concept of sex between men was incompatible with their definitions of masculinity on account of the fact that gay sex, by nature, involves one man being penetrated by another which they saw as inherently passive, feminine, and weak.10 As such, the notion of a man willingly subjecting himself to penetration by another man was seen as harmful, not only to that man’s masculinity, but to the concept of masculinity in general, and therefore the stability of the Reich. Efforts to end such practices based on Paragraph 175 were put into place, which gradually increased until the late 1930s, at which time the Schutzstaffel (Hitler’s paramilitary police organization, also referred to as SS men) were conducting investigations to identify and out men who had sex with other men. Subsequently the outed men were placed in concentration camps. It is at this point that the story begins for a young man, whom shall simply be referred to as “Jörg”. Jörg was gracious enough to offer an account of his experience under the Nazi Regime on the condition of anonymity, and his is one of the only accounts available today from a gay man who spent years imprisoned by the Nazis and survived to tell his story. One of the most remarkable elements of Jörg’s story is that not only did he survive two of the Nazis’ sadistic oppression and extermination apparatuses, the 8 "Kurt Hiller, Victim of Nazi ‘Gestapo’, in Serious Condition, Paper Reveals." Jewish Daily Bulletin (New York: October 16, 1933), 3. 9 “Kurt Hiller”, Jewish Daily Bulletin, 3. 10 Richard Plant, The Pink Triangle: The Nazi War Against Homosexuals (New York: Henry Holt & Company, 1986), 89—91. !4 Sachsenhausen and Flossenbürg concentration camps, but that he was able to maintain more influence in these situations than many of his fellow prisoners. A variety of factors led Jörg to find himself in positions where, despite the atrocities he endured, he was able to maintain enough of his own willpower and agency to secure more favorable conditions for himself in the camp, gain favor with some of the guards, and ascend to a position of power over some of his fellow prisoners.11 It is imperative to note that despite the advantages Jörg had that other prisoners did not, he was very much still a prisoner and a victim in this situation, subject to the commands and sadistic whims of the SS men. Given this, Jörg’s ascension to the role of Capo (a prisoner selected to lead a group of fellow prisoners during daily activities and work assignments)12 is an even more remarkable feat, especially when one remembers his placement at the bottom of the constructed caste system. This paper seeks to highlight the instances where a person’s sexuality would have played a key role in shaping a their experience, and to note the differences between the experiences of general prisoners and those of gay prisoners. Given the general lack of scholarship on the experiences of same sex-attracted men in the Nazi concentration camps, there has been seemingly no work done by historians to examine how a man like Jörg could rise to the position of a Capo—this paper will specifically hone in on this question, seeking to identify which factors helped establish the course of this man’s remarkable experience to become a Capo. 11 Heger, The men with the pink triangle, 90. 12 Nikolaus Wachsmann, Kl: a history of the Nazi concentration camps (New York: Farrar, Straus, and Giroux, 2015), 18. !5 The “Homosexual” KL Experience Initial Arrest, Prison Sentence, and Transport Jörg’s experience began with his arrest in 1939, where he had been summoned to the Gestapo Headquarters, without being given any information regarding the reason for his summoning. Upon his arrival, he was ushered into a room to meet with a cold, impatient man referred to as Herr Doktor, who questioned Jörg and accused him of being “a dirty queer”.13 Jörg denied these accusations, but was presented with evidence in the form of a love letter written on the back of a photograph of he and his lover Fred. Unable to further deny his involvement with Fred, he admitted to having been romantically and sexually involved with him, and was placed under arrest by the now content Herr Doktor. Fred happened to be the son of a prominent Nazi Party member, and Jörg suspects that this is how the Gestapo was able to procure the photograph. He also suspected that Fred’s father was able to utilize his influence to ensure his son’s safety, though this is never confirmed.14 Upon his arrest, he was given an unusually hasty trial, and within two weeks he was on his way to serve a six month prison sentence in Vienna.15 It is important to note that Jörg described his overall experience in the Vienna prison as being structured but not unkind. He notes that the guards treated the prisoners “with perfect correctness”.16 The most impactful event of Jörg’s initial sentence occurs on his first night in custody; 13 Heger, The men with the pink triangle, 21. 14 Heger, The men with the pink triangle, 24. 15 Heger, The men with the pink triangle, 25. 16 Heger, The men with the pink triangle, 25. !6 he endures an experience that will shape his beliefs in the upcoming years and provide a lens through which he will interpret the events happening around himself. The two men with whom Jörg shared a jail cell had heard that he was sentenced for violating Paragraph 175 and made sexual advances towards him, apparently expecting him to reciprocate their interest based on his sexuality.17 Upon Jörg’s angry refusal of their propositions, they insulted him and “the whole brood of queers” who they believed were beneath themselves, and they went on to proclaim their disgust that “the authorities should have put a subhuman such as this in the same cell as two relatively decent people”.18 Later that night, Jörg was appalled when these same two men decided to have sex with one another in the cell.
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