Where did the pink triangles come from?
- I can't answer that question; perhaps no one can. We don't know how the camp system of marking with triangles came into existence. We also don't know why specific colors were assigned to particular groups. Yellow - Jews, red - political prisoners, green - criminals, black - asocials (which included lesbians), purple - Jehovah's Witnesses, and pink - homosexuals. There were several marking systems.
Homosexuals were marked in some camps not with a pink triangle but with the letter "A" - from "Arschficker," which can be translated as "ass-f**ker." Pierre Seel, one of the few homosexual prisoners who survived the war and later told his story, was marked with a blue stripe in the transit camp Schirmeck-Vorbrück. Today, however, the pink triangle is undoubtedly the symbol most commonly associated with Nazi persecution of non-heteronormative people.
The legal basis for this persecution was Paragraph 175, introduced into the German penal code in 1871. How was it applied before the Nazis came to power?
- Based on data regarding criminal cases brought under Paragraph 175, we know that about 1,000 people were convicted annually in Germany. However, it’s important to remember that this paragraph didn't only penalize sexual relations between men but also pedophilia, bestiality, and incest.
When the Nazis intensified Paragraph 175 in 1935, it became possible to prosecute not just for male-to-male sexual relations but for the mere suspicion of them. Holding hands, a kiss, or a simple flirtation was enough. The number of convictions began to rise dramatically.
But there are issues with the numbers.
- We have estimates and know that between 10,000 and 15,000 men were sent to camps with pink triangles, 60 percent of whom did not survive. We often forget that homosexuals were also sent to other penal institutions, such as prisons, and their treatment varied over time. Things were different in 1933, different in 1935, and different again in 1938.
In the mid-1930s, a man could be sentenced to six months in prison and then released. He could be left alone or subjected to operative actions, like a setup. This was the case of Heinz F., a KL Buchenwald prisoner who, after serving his sentence, was arrested in a park where he was lured into the bushes by two undercover agents. Finally, he could be sent directly from prison to what was called protective custody, to correct what the security organs considered too lenient a sentence, and from there straight to a camp—this was the case of Heinz Heger, who was really Josef Kohout, co-author of the book "The Men with the Pink Triangle."
It’s also important to remember that the situation was different in the Reich, different in the annexed territories, different in occupied Holland, and different again in Poland, specifically in the General Government, where this legislation was not introduced.
Why not? After all, a Pole could be killed for anything.
- That's true, but when a German and a Pole were caught in a relationship, both were convicted under Paragraph 175. However, the former was sent to a camp, and the latter could be imprisoned or killed. I know of several such cases and continue to dig through documents because no one has ever researched this topic.
In the world?
- No, in Poland. West of the Oder, the subject has been thoroughly researched, and everything that could be done regarding the pink triangles has been done. In Poland, the topic is essentially untouched.
Why?
- Because it's uncomfortable; it’s better not to deal with it here. And I'm not just talking about the "good change" of the new government, which wants to use history as a political tool and dictate what can and cannot be researched. It was the same under previous governments.
And in Germany?
- After 1989, they seriously addressed the forgotten victims of Nazism, including homosexuals. Research was conducted, books were written, and the victims were commemorated.
Why only after 1989?
- Because some of the archives of the former concentration camps were in East Germany (GDR), where the communist regime had its own historical policy, in which there was no place for pink triangles.
And in West Germany (FRG)?
- Paragraph 175 was only completely removed from the penal code in 1994, and the full Nazi version remained in force until the late 1960s. This is why we have so few testimonies from homosexual prisoners. They were simply afraid to speak after the war. After all, the law hadn't changed, and they could still be sent to prison even in a democratic country. I know of such a case. The victims either didn't want to or couldn't speak. They feared criminal and social consequences.
This is why "The Men with the Pink Triangle" was published in the early 1970s under the pseudonym Heinz Heger, hiding the aforementioned concentration camp prisoner Josef Kohout and his friend Johann Neumann [the book has just been published in Poland by the KARTA Center, with notes and an afterword by Joanna Ostrowska - editor's note]. So, it’s a hybrid testimony, created from the conversations of these two men.
I would add that it was only in May of this year that Germany granted the right to compensation for those convicted of homosexuality.
For whom? All those who wore pink triangles are no longer alive.
- Indeed, they didn't live to see it. After the death of Rudolf Brazda, the last known survivor who wore a pink triangle in a concentration camp, there’s no one left. However, those who were convicted under Paragraph 175 from 1945 to 1969 are still alive.
When did the first prisoner with a pink triangle enter a camp?
- In 1933, several years before the war broke out.
Heinz Heger writes about the worst degradation that homosexuals faced in the camps—being cursed at, spat on, raped, beaten, forced into pointless tasks like moving snow from one place to another with their bare hands, grueling work in quarries, torture, and being killed by being forced to retrieve a cap thrown onto electrified wires or simply being shot at as a target on a shooting range. Was it like this in every camp?
- The situation depended on the type of camp, the commandant, and the kapo. KL Dachau was a model camp where they taught how to manage similar facilities. There were regulations, for example, specifying how many lashes were due for a particular offense, but practice varied widely.
In "The Men with the Pink Triangle," we read that Jews and homosexuals were the lowest in the hierarchy.
- With the difference that Jews were to be exterminated en masse, while homosexuals were theoretically to be re-educated but practically exterminated through the worst jobs and torture. But no one will force me to rank the suffering of victims, although in Poland, we love to do this. Who suffered more? Who had it worse? Of course, the Poles suffered the most—that’s the narrative of the current government. Then the Jews, and possibly others, generally less important.
The point of remembering the persecution of homosexuals and other forgotten victims of Nazism, such as Jehovah's Witnesses, mentally ill individuals, or forced sex workers, is not to rank suffering but to give them a voice, to include them in the broader narrative.
The numbers, fetishized in Poland, also don't matter. "Why bother with them if there were so few?" - I've heard this countless times. There were 122 prisoners with pink triangles in Auschwitz. Does that mean their suffering was less?
122 in Auschwitz alone, yet there are only a handful of testimonies from those with pink triangles.
- Unfortunately, we can count them on our fingers. We have the incomplete account of Pierre Seel, who after being in the camp was sent to the front. We have Gad Beck and his romance with Manfred Lewin, a Jew deported to a camp. We have Karl Gorath and Heinz Dörmer. Finally, we have Stefan Kosiński, the only Polish prisoner with a pink triangle who decided to tell his story. It’s published in several languages but not in Polish. That probably says enough about our country.
Cursed boys.
- Cursed, stigmatized, uncomfortable. The topic of forgotten victims of Nazism is taboo in Poland. In the West, there are entire shelves of books about them in bookstores; here, the shelves are empty.
Is that why "The Men with the Pink Triangle" is such an important book?
- Because for the first time, more than 40 years after its publication in Germany, Polish readers will get a book about how homosexuals were persecuted in the Third Reich. Because it was the first printed testimony of a prisoner with a pink triangle in history. Josef Kohout and Johann Neumann probably thought no one else would dare, that the world would forget the victims with pink triangles.
Luckily, it hasn’t been forgotten, at least not entirely. Even the Holocaust Museum in Washington opened a separate exhibit dedicated to the pink triangles.
- This was thanks to the researcher and curator of the exhibition, Klaus Müller. It’s of great significance because the Holocaust Museum in Washington is one of the most prestigious institutions in the world dealing with the Holocaust. In 2000, a major symposium on the persecution of homosexuals by the Nazis was held there, attracting scholars from all over
the world.
Is there an exhibition at the Auschwitz-Birkenau Museum dedicated to homosexual victims who were sent to that camp?
- No, there is no such exhibition.
Why not?
- Ask the museum director, not me. Perhaps the pink triangles don’t fit the museum's narrative, but it’s worth knowing that the museum has quite a few documents on this topic, such as transport lists and photographs. I know that there are plans to change the permanent exhibition designed in the Communist era. Let’s hope that the new exhibit will include the testimonies of the forgotten victims of Nazism.
Heinz Heger, or rather Josef Kohout, came from a Catholic, bourgeois family in Vienna. His father was a high-ranking civil servant, and his mother was a homemaker. At 22, he was denounced. He was sent to prison, then to preventive custody, and finally to various camps: Sachsenhausen, Flossenbürg, and Dachau. He spent six years there, experiencing the worst and witnessing unimaginable things. Particularly shocking is the description of the torture of a boy from Tyrol, whose genitals were placed in boiling water and a broomstick was inserted into his rectum. It's hard to read. Is there anything in "The Men with the Pink Triangle" that you, as a historian, would consider implausible?
- No, there are just some minor inaccuracies in the book, which I correct in the footnotes, and which are typical of individual testimonies. Anyone who deals with oral history knows that survivors don't remember certain things. Sometimes they mix what they saw with what they heard, sometimes something they read after the war seems like their own experience.
Heger describes his camp relationships with kapos. Did they help?
- A relationship with a kapo increased the chances of survival because the prisoner had protection, received better clothing, or more food. And this is the case with Heger/Kohout. But such a relationship could just as easily turn against the prisoner. Remember, the concentration camp was a microcosm full of dependencies, suspicion, and uncertainty. No one openly talked about any homosexual relationships, although everyone, including the SS guards, knew about them. This knowledge was used in disputes, for blackmail, and for settling various matters.
After KL Dachau was liberated by the Americans, Kohout returned home. He then learned that his father had committed suicide in 1942, most likely due to the harassment he faced when his son was arrested under Paragraph 175. He couldn't talk about his camp experiences, felt ostracized by his neighbors, and in the late 1960s, he told Neumann about life with a pink triangle, and the book was published in 1972. Kohout died 22 years later, never receiving compensation or an apology.
- Unfortunately, and he would probably have been pleased with how Germany treats the topic of pink triangles today. Homosexual concentration camp prisoners are now an integral part of the historical narrative. Research has been conducted and books written. When Chancellor Angela Merkel speaks in the Bundestag about World War II, she never forgets these victims, and in Berlin, next to the Memorial to the Murdered Jews of Europe, there is also a monument dedicated to the memory of homosexual victims of Nazism, which after a few years also included women.
With lesbians, there is a problem in this matter because, first, women were not subject to Paragraph 175, second, if they ended up in camps, it was not with a pink triangle but with a black one, and third, we don't even have estimates for the number of lesbians.
- Lesbians were not subject to Paragraph 175, but under Austrian law, which remained in effect after the Anschluss, Paragraph 129 penalized sexual relations between women. We know that several women were sent to KL Ravensbrück for lesbian contacts—of course, not with a pink triangle but a black one. We have the testimony of Annette Eick, who was persecuted in the early years of Nazi rule and later fled to London, and a few other women's testimonies collected by researcher Claudia Schoppmann. But there's still a lot to uncover in this area to ensure that no victim or group of victims is condemned to oblivion.
The KARTA Center cordially invites you to a discussion about the book "The Men with the Pink Triangle." The conversation with Professor Marcin Kula and Dr. Joanna Ostrowska, the author of the afterword, will be moderated by editor Krzysztof Tomasik. Krytyka Polityczna (ul. Foksal 16), June 29 (Wednesday), 6:00 PM. The book "The Men with the Pink Triangle" is available at Publio.pl.
Joanna Ostrowska. Born in 1983. PhD in humanities in history (Faculty of History, Jagiellonian University), graduate of the Institute of Audiovisual Arts at Jagiellonian University, the Department of Jewish Studies at Jagiellonian University, and Gender Studies at the University of Warsaw. She also studied film and television production at the Łódź Film School. She has taught at the Department of Jewish Studies at Jagiellonian University, Gender Studies at Jagiellonian University and the University of Warsaw, the Institute of Literary Research of the Polish Academy of Sciences, the Laboratory of Border Questions at the Adam Mickiewicz University, and at the Open Jewish University. Her research focuses on sexual violence during World War II and the forgotten victims of Nazism. Her book "Silenced" (Wydawnictwo Czarne), about organized forced sexual labor during the occupation, will be published this year. She is the author of the footnotes and afterword to Heinz Heger's book "The Men with the Pink Triangle," just published by the KARTA Center.
Mike Urbaniak. Cultural journalist and theater critic. He also writes about LGBT issues and contemporary Israel. He is a regular contributor to "Wysokie Obcasy" and the weekend magazine of Gazeta.pl. He blogs at panodkultury.com.
