XPost: soc.women, alt.men.politics   
   From: tlf@bigpond.au   
      
   Homosexuals were one of the specially selected groups in the   
   concentration camps. Far less numerous than other prisoners,   
   they experienced a hell of a particular kind. The first   
   transport of homosexuals noted by the Nazis arrived at   
   Fuhlsbuttel concentration camp in the fall of 1933. This was a   
   new prisoner category. They were marked with the letter “A,”   
   which was later replaced by the pink triangle (Rose Winkeln). As   
   opposed to the Jews and the Roma, the Nazis intended not to   
   exterminate homosexuals, but to “reeducate” them. The death rate   
   among homosexuals was high, especially when compared to other   
   groups imprisoned for purposes of reeducation. Fifty-five   
   percent of homosexual prisoners died in the camps, as opposed to   
   40% of political prisoners and 34.7% of the Jehovah’s Witnesses.   
      
   Between 5,000 and 15,000 gays died in the camps, although this   
   figure might have been much higher since homosexuals, as opposed   
   to Jews and Roma, could easily conceal their otherness.   
   Homosexuals were treated as the lowest of the groups within the   
   prisoner population. As a rule, they obtained the worst labor   
   assignments, and were often rejected by their fellow prisoners   
   and treated as deviants. The camp capos who oversaw the labor   
   details also refused to help them. They had limited contact with   
   the outside world; it rarely happened that families maintained   
   contact with prisoners wearing the pink triangle, and their   
   friends outside had no desire to maintain contact with those who   
   were in the camps. Impulses of solidarity occurred sporadically   
   among the homosexuals themselves. As Raimund Schnabel writes in   
   his study of Dachau, “Those whose behavior could be called   
   perverted were seldom found among the homosexuals; nevertheless,   
   there were some sycophants and fraudsters. The prisoners wearing   
   the pink triangle never lived long. The SS murdered them quickly   
   and systematically.”   
      
   Little is known about the lesbians who were in the camps.   
   Historians are aware of only one document that lists a woman’s   
   homosexuality as the reason for her being incarcerated in the   
   Ravensbrück camp. The eleventh woman on a transport list to that   
   camp, arriving on November 30, 1940, is a 26-year-old Jewish   
   woman, Ella S. Next to her name, the word “lesbian” is written.   
   She was placed among the political prisoners, but little is   
   known of her subsequent fate. In Sachsenhausen, men wearing the   
   pink triangle were separated from the rest of the prisoners in a   
   so-called “sissy block.” More than 180 of them were confined to   
   this former student dormitory, without any distinction among   
   them: from unqualified manual laborers and shopkeepers to   
   musicians, professors, and clergymen, and even aristocrats and   
   magnates. Homosexuals were not allowed to hold any prisoner   
   functionary positions. They were also forbidden to converse with   
   prisoners from other blocks. It must have been feared that they   
   would entice others into homosexual behavior. There is evidence,   
   however, that such acts occurred more frequently in other blocks   
   than in the one for homosexuals.   
      
   Homosexual prisoners were forced to sleep in nightshirts and to   
   hold their hands outside the covers. This was supposed to   
   prevent masturbation. One prisoner recalled that “anyone caught   
   without underwear or with their hands under the covers—and there   
   were several checks each night—was taken outside, had several   
   buckets of water dumped on them, and was made to stand that way   
   for a good hour. Only a few survived, especially when there was   
   a centimeter of ice on the windowpanes. Bronchitis was prevalent   
   as a result, and it was rare for a homosexual to come back alive   
   from the hospital.”   
      
   A block supervisor in Gross-Rosen Concentration Camp (now   
   Rogoznica, Poland) was notorious for exceptional cruelty. As   
   Józef Gielo writes in his Gross-Rosen camp memoirs, “this German   
   convict and sexual pervert lured young boys into his room and,   
   after several days of having relations, murdered them in cold   
   blood. He also murdered anyone who witnessed his actions, even   
   accidentally.”   
      
   Homosexuals were assigned to particularly hard labor in   
   Sachsenhausen, Buchenwald, Mauthausen, Auschwitz, and other   
   camps. They labored in the Sachsenhausen cement plant and in the   
   underground factories near Buchenwald that manufactured V-2   
   rockets. Rudolf Hoess, who held the post of commandant of the   
   Sachsenhausen camp before being transferred to Auschwitz, was   
   convinced that sexual orientation could be changed through hard   
   labor. The results of this reeducation were lamentable: the   
   majority of the prisoners under his control died. The   
   Sachsenhausen camp, regarded until 1942 as “the Auschwitz for   
   homosexuals,” held large numbers of homosexuals. They labored   
   mostly at quarrying clay and making bricks in the camp.   
   Regardless of the weather, they had to push carts full of clay   
   towards the machines that produced the bricks. This work was   
   particularly difficult because the pits were almost empty; most   
   of the clay had already been dug out of them. The half-dead   
   prisoners pushed their carts uphill, urged on all the time by   
   the SS men and the capos guarding them. The carts ran on tracks,   
   but they frequently derailed and tumbled back downhill, crushing   
   defenseless prisoners who did not even attempt to get out of the   
   way. The sounds of breaking bones and the lashings of the blows   
   directed at the prisoners who remained alive could be heard.   
      
   L.D. von Classen-Neudegg, who survived Sachsenhausen   
   Concentration Camp, describes the death of some 300 homosexuals   
   laboring in the cement plant. “We learned that we were being   
   separated by a penal order and transferred the next morning to   
   the unit working in the cement plant. We trembled, because the   
   death rate among workers in that factory was higher than   
   anywhere else. Guarded by soldiers with automatic rifles, we had   
   to run to our workplace in rows of five. They hurried us along   
   with blows from their rifle butts and bullwhips. Forced to carry   
   twenty corpses, those who remained alive were covered with blood   
   by the time they got there. This was, alas, only the beginning   
   of the hell. Two-thirds of my fellow prisoners died within two   
   months. To kill someone attempting to escape paid off for the   
   soldiers. For each prisoner he killed, a soldier received five   
   marks and three days’ leave. They used the bullwhips most often   
   in the morning, when they were forcing us down into the pits.   
   ‘Only 50 are left alive,’ the man beside me whispered several   
   days later. A certain sergeant told me one morning, ‘that’s   
   enough. Do you want to cross over to the other side? It won’t   
   hurt. I’m an excellent shot.’”   
      
   Tomasz Gedziorowski, the author of the book Widma [The Spectres]   
   recounts the relations between a Dachau labor detail capo, Georg   
      
   [continued in next message]   
      
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