the ordeal of homosexual deportees in Nazi camps told in a documentary

It is a long-forgotten part of the history of the concentration camps. The documentary The pink triangle: Homosexuals and lesbians facing Nazismdirected by Michel Viotte and broadcast at 10:40 p.m. on France 5, Sunday May 12, returns, thanks to numerous archives, to the hell experienced by homosexual deportees, as well as the means implemented by the Nazi regime to eradicate LGBT+ people , particularly targeting gay men.

During the Weimar Republic, between 1918 and 1933, Berlin was still considered a “world capital” of homosexuality, as recalled in a France Inter documentary, due to of its numerous transvestite balls, its clubs and the diversity of its meeting places. A wind of freedom is blowing over Germany, which is also a pioneer in terms of homosexual activism. Despite the prohibition of intimate relations between men in the Penal Code, the authorities demonstrate tolerance, which promotes the development of gay and lesbian identities in the country.

L‘arrival of’Hitler in power marks theat the end of this “Golden age”. The Nazi regime considered homosexuals, and more particularly men, to be deviant. uA radical repressive system was put in place and reached its climax with the arrest, deportation and death of several thousand homosexuals in the camps, under the rule of Heinrich Himmler.

Deportees distinguished by a pink triangle

Between 5,000 and 15,000 Germans were deported because of their sexual orientation. Often isolated in specific buildings, they are prohibited from approaching other prisoners so as not to “contaminate” because of “their dissolute morals”. In order to distinguish them, they are identified by the number 175 or the letter A, but above all by a pink triangle.

Walter Schwarze, who testifies in the documentary, was interned in the Sachsenhausen camp, near Berlin. “People were taken in alphabetical order, and they were hit on the head or on the back, tell the former prisoner. I received my prisoner number accompanied by a pink triangle. Rose meant ‘slut’.” The SS ordered him to take a rope and hang himself, telling him that he would never leave this camp again, which he finally succeeded in doing.

Homosexuals are assigned to the hardest jobs. A way of annihilating them through work, hunger and torture. But they were also victims of repeated sexual assaults and rapes by Nazi dignitaries and the kapos who supervised the deportees.

Forced sex with deported women

The Austrian Josef Kohout testified to this in 1972 in a book, Lhe men with the pink triangle, certain passages of which are read in the film: “I had nothing to do other than put myself under the protection of a dean or a Kapo (…) who would guarantee me extra food. In exchange, I had to be his friend and share his bed. (…) This desire to survive the bestiality of the SS had its price. It was necessary to get rid of all ideas of morality, decency, and honor.

The Nazis also set up, in certain camps, what they described as programs of “re-education”. Brothels are created on site to force gay men to sleep with women considered antisocial, who wear a black triangle. A test which is part of an exercise called “standardization”. Josef Kohout says: “It was not only unpleasant, but it was a real torment. What relief was expected for me? What feeling of pleasure could I have felt at the sight of the girl who, exhausted, lying on the bed, lifted her legs and shouted ‘Just do it, just do it’. Especially since an SS man was watching us through the peephole.”

Homosexual camp survivors find freedom in a society where homophobia remains the norm, even in the law. Homosexual relations between men were not decriminalized until 1968 in East Germany and the following year in West Germany. Paragraph 175 only officially disappeared from the Penal Code in 1994 in reunified Germany. And only in 2022 will the German Parliament place care a victims of Nazism “at the center of the commemoration ceremony”.

The documentary The pink triangle: Homosexuals and lesbians facing Nazismdirected by Michel Viotte, is broadcast on Sunday May 12, at 10:40 p.m., on France 5 and on the france.tv platform.