homosexuals and the holocaust

homosexuals and the holocaust

The Aryan race, the “pure” race   were suppose to be superior to all others. People who were considered homosexuals along with the Jewish people, where given no more thought than what was given a mangled mute.   That attitude towards gays didn't change legally until in 1940, when anti-gay laws where altered and only then ,did it become illegal to target gays.   In the beginning homosexuals where sent to prison for a six month term, but by 1940 they where being sent straight to the concentration camps. In the concentration camps gays where given a pink triangle. The color was chosen because in the early nineteen hundreds   pink was concentrated a man's color. It was just a shade of red. The pink triangles are larger than any of the triangles. This way they could be picked out more easily than the others. Prisoners that are forced to wear the pink triangle are beaten and poorly treated by not only prison guards, but by other prisoners as well. Homosexuals were to speak only to others with a pink triangle. They were only permitted to sleep in their night-shirts with the lights on and their hands above their blankets. If caught not abiding these rules, the prisoner was placed over the horse and given 25 lashes. Or if it was winter, they would be taken outside and that   person would be drenched with water and left in the cold for an hour. Many did not survive this abusive treatment.
The work in the quarry especially at Flossenburg is excruciating work.   I have been given the task of building materials clerk:
            “God, how happy I am to get out of the death-pit! An end
              to the daily beatings of the Capos, an end to seeing the
              daily mutilation of my fellow-prisoners, my tormented
  and despairing complains in pain. At last a different
  kind of work”.(44)
At the shooting range those wearing the pink triangle had to use wheel barrows to pile up earth and clay as an artificial mound. But after a few days a group...