Death through Work –
Imprisonment in the
Concentration Camps
Over the gates of many concentration camps were the words Arbeit Macht Frei, which translates as Work Makes You Free. But gay men arriving at the camps soon learned that the work they would be given would most likely kill them. Millions of Jews and hundreds of thousands of Roma were sent to the gas chambers after walking through these gates, but because the men arrested under Paragraph 175 were German Christians, they were spared that fate, only to die through work.
The gates at Sachsenhausen concentration camp.
The brutal treatment that a prisoner experienced upon arrest was just a taste of the horror that awaited him in a concentration camp (the name comes from the “concentration” of those imprisoned there). The camps were used as prisons and labor centers for the enemies of the state. As the number of people arrested by the Nazis increased, the number of camps grew. The first was Dachau, northwest of Munich, and during the next few years more were added: Oranienburg, north of Berlin; Esterwegen, near Hamburg; Buchenwald, near Weimar; Flossenbürg, close to the border with Czechoslovakia; Mauthausen, in upper Austria; and Ravensbrück (for women) and Sachsenhausen, both close to Berlin. The locations were crucial as the camps provided forced labor for mines, quarries, and factories; by 1942 the prisoners were being used to produce weapons for the German war effort.
Nazi concentration camps (solid black dots) were scattered around Europe. The major death camps were located in Nazi-occupied Poland.
Other camps were used for the efficient murder of Jews. Six sites were selected in Poland because they were close to railroad lines and were located in remote rural areas. The camps at Chełmno, Belzec, Sobibor, Treblinka, Majdanek, and Auschwitz were known as extermination or death camps. There, most arrivals were sent directly to the gas chambers.
The conditions for all prisoners were barbaric and grew worse with each passing year. The work was backbreaking, the barracks were bleak, and food rations could barely keep a person alive. Every day prisoners were forced to witness executions of other prisoners by shooting or hanging. Guards controlled the prisoners with a casual brutality. Survival was difficult for any prisoner.
On arrival at a camp, each prisoner became a number and a colored symbol. Yellow was for Jews, red for political figures, green for criminals, black for anti-socials, purple for Jehovah’s Witnesses, blue for non-German forced laborers, brown for Roma. And, of course, the pink triangle for men arrested under Paragraph 175.
Why pink was used for homosexuals remains unknown. It could be that pink was considered a feminine color, much as it is today, and would be humiliating for a man to wear. But that is simply conjecture. No documentation is available to confirm the reason that pink triangles were used to identify homosexuals.
This chart shows the various prisoner markings used in the concentration camps.
Lesbians who were arrested and sent to concentration camps did not wear the pink triangle. They wore the black triangle as anti-social prisoners. Researcher Claudia Schoppmann studied the fate of lesbians and reported the following:
The number of women who were subjected to the horrors of the concentration camps because they were lesbians cannot be documented. What is definitive is that there was no systematic persecution of lesbians that was comparable to the persecution of gay men. Most lesbians were spared a fate in the camps if they were willing to conform. Lesbians were not victims of the Nazi regime per se. (26)
Homosexuals were not only the targets of abuse and violence from the guards, but they also suffered abuse at the hands of other frustrated and angry prisoners. One survivor described the pecking order in the Schirmeck-Vorbruck camp. “There was a hierarchy from the strongest to the weakest. There was no doubt that the weakest in the camps were the homosexuals. All the way to the bottom.” (27)
When the guards discovered that a prisoner was homosexual, he was often targeted for harsh treatment. “Because of my pink triangle I was separated from other inmates,” reported one man who was a prisoner at Camp Natzweiler close to Strasbourg, France. “An SS sergeant together with a kapo mistreated me in the most brutal manner…three times their fists hit my face, especially my nose, so that I fell on the floor three times; when I managed to get up again, they continued battering and beating me…. I then staggered back to my barracks covered with blood.” (28)
In many camps homosexuals were housed apart because the Nazis believed that homosexuality was a disease that could spread to the other prisoners. At night in the barracks the lights were left on so that the guards could monitor behavior. The men were forced to sleep with their hands on top of their blankets to prove that they were not masturbating. If a man was caught asleep with his hands under the covers, he could be sent outside naked, have a bucket of water poured over him, and made to stand for hours – even in the dead of winter. A particularly painful punishment was being suspended by the wrists on posts, with the arms tied behind the back.
A prisoner at the Sachsenhausen concentration camp described the sound the prisoners made when they were suspended from the poles as the “Singing Forest – the howling and the screaming were inhuman…inexplicable. Beyond comprehension.” (29)
The odds against survival were huge, but the odds improved if one could find a kapo. There were cases when a kapo might help a young gay prisoner in exchange for sexual favors, but these relationships were always at the whim of the kapo. And the kapo could always find a new “dolly boy,” as they were called, from the recent arrivals, and dispose of the previous one easily. Being a “dolly boy” was not an option for older or less attractive men.
With their arms tied behind their backs, prisoners were supended by the wrists from these poles, which still stand at Sachsenhausen concentration camp.
Many gay men faced another horror in the medical chambers of the camps. When Richard Plant studied the fate of gay men in the camps, he concluded that Nazi doctors performed experiments on prisoners, and homosexuals were used in disproportionately large numbers for these so-called scientific procedures. (30)
Medical labs, now clean and on view for concentration camp visitors, were the scenes of horrific “scientific” experiments performed on prisoners.
The experiments were performed for a variety of reasons, including finding the cause of homosexuality. The experiments often caused sickness, mutilation, or death. Castration was considered an option to cure homosexuality. Some men were told they would be released from prison if they agreed to be castrated.
Others were not given the option and were castrated without their consent. Toward the end of the war, when Germany was running out of soldiers, pink triangle prisoners were granted a slim chance of survival – if they agreed to castration, they would be allowed out of camp to join the German army at the front. The prisoners knew they were being used as cannon fodder. Serving at the front meant almost certain death.
There are no known statistics for the number of homosexuals who died in the camps, but their death rate has been estimated to be as high as sixty percent – among the highest of non-Jewish prisoners.
A fragile strip of cloth, two inches long and less than an inch wide, with its number and pink triangle sits in the United States Holocaust Museum in Washington, D.C. It is the only pink triangle known to have been worn by a prisoner who can be identified. That prisoner was Josef Kohout, the first survivor to tell the world of the horrors endured by homosexuals in the concentration camps.
Josef Kohout was born into a wealthy Catholic family in Vienna, Austria, in 1917. The family home may have been religious, but it was a tolerant one that respected others, regardless of religion, race, or language. Josef’s father held a high-ranking position in the civil service, and the family had great expectations for their son’s future. As a teen, Josef was attracted to other boys. He tried going out with girls, but he knew deep down that he preferred to be with boys.
Josef kept his feelings to himself, although by the time he was nineteen, he was sure that he was homosexual. Because he had difficulty living with this secret, he told his mother, hoping for her support. Her response did not disappoint him. “My dear child,” she told him, “it’s your life, and you must live it. No one can slip out of one skin and into another; you have to make the best of what you are…you are my son and can always come to me with your problems.” (31)
A tiny, fragile strip of cloth with its number and pink triangle sits in the United States Holocaust Museum in Washington, D.C. It is the only pink triangle known to have been worn by a prisoner who can be identified. That prisoner was Josef Kohout.
Josef was twenty-two when he went to university to further his studies in the hope of becoming an academic. He quickly found a group of friends with similar interests, and within that group he fell in love with the son of a high Nazi official. Fred was two years older than Josef and was studying medicine at Vienna’s world famous medical school. Josef found much to admire in Fred, with his forceful personality, masculine appearance, and athletic body. And Fred was smitten with Josef’s Viennese charm and his athleticism. The two young men fell into a comfortable relationship and planned their future together – a future that was never to happen.
On a Friday in March of 1939 at about 1 p.m., the Gestapo came to the Kohout home and summoned Josef to Gestapo headquarters at the Hotel Metropol for a meeting at 2 p.m., only an hour later. Josef was concerned, but didn’t think it was anything very serious. He figured that if it had been serious, he would have been taken right away. Still, he was apprehensive, as was his mother. Her last words were, “Be careful child, be careful.” (32) Josef left home never realizing that he would not see his mother or anyone else in his family for another six years.
At Gestapo headquarters, Josef was ushered in to see an SS doctor. He stood waiting while the doctor continued to write at his desk. When the doctor finally looked up, he stared at Josef with cold, appraising eyes and said, “You are a queer, a homosexual. Do you admit it?” Josef was shocked and denied the accusation.
“Don’t you lie, you dirty queer!” the doctor warned. “I have proof.” (33)
He showed Josef a photo of Josef and Fred with their arms around each other’s shoulders in a friendly fashion. On the back of the photo was an inscription: “To my friend Fred, in eternal love and deepest affection!” Josef had given the photo to Fred the previous Christmas and now the photo was being used to condemn him as a homosexual.
The doctor passed Josef a document to sign confirming his homosexuality. There was nothing Josef could do but sign – the photo from 1938 was all the proof the Nazis needed. Josef was sent immediately to the police prison. When he asked if he could call his family from prison, he was told they would learn soon enough that he was not coming home.
His trial was held two weeks later, and he was sentenced to six months labor by the Austrian court for his homosexual behavior. Fred was also accused, but the charges were later dropped on the grounds of “mental confusion.” It was assumed that Fred was spared because his father was a high-ranking Nazi and had somehow managed to get his son out of trouble.
Josef was transferred to the Vienna district prison to serve his sentence; for six months he did domestic work, washing, cleaning, and delivering meals to prisoners. At the end of his term, however, instead of being released he was informed that he would be sent to a concentration camp – a destination of which he had only heard rumors. He hoped that the stories of people being tortured to death were exaggerations.
Pink triangle prisoners marched to the parade ground under the watchful eyes of Nazi guards.
In January of 1940, Josef was transported by train to the camp at Sachsenhausen, on the outskirts of Berlin. Prisoners were packed into cattle cars with heavily barred windows. The worst criminals were segregated in specially designed cars, each containing five or six barred cells. Josef was ordered into one of those cells with two other men – thieves who were scheduled to be executed for murder. When the two killers discovered that Josef was a “175er,” a “filthy queer,” they treated him with contempt and taunted him mercilessly. The trip lasted thirteen days, and Josef feared for his life each day. The men beat him regularly and, though they were so-called “normal” men, forced him to provide sex.
At the camp, the men in the transport were unloaded on the parade ground. They formed up in rows of five, for a roll call. One by one, each man was ordered to step forward and give his name and offence. When Josef announced he was arrested under Paragraph 175, the SS officer in charge gave him a violent blow to the face and threw him on the ground.
“You filthy queer, get over there!” he shouted. (34)
Other prisoners warned Josef to get up quickly or he would be kicked to death. All the “175ers” were herded to their block, stripped naked, and forced to stand barefoot in the snow. The SS officer, in his warm winter coat complete with fur collar, repeatedly struck the naked men with his horse whip, telling them that they would stay there until they cooled off. When they were finally allowed to go into the showers, they discovered that the water was ice cold. Josef was issued prison clothing. His trousers were too short, his jacket too small, but luckily his coat actually fit. His shoes were too large and reeked of sweat, but at least they were leather instead of the wooden shoes that many of the other prisoners received.
Homosexuals were housed in one barrack where they were under almost constant surveillance. The block contained about 250 men in each wing – unskilled workers, shop assistants, skilled tradesmen, musicians, artists, professors, aristocratic landowners, and even clergy. The lights stayed on all night, and here, too, the men had to keep their hands on top of the blankets.
Most of the other prisoners at Sachsenhausen were political prisoners or enemies of the state. Those with pink triangles were not allowed to speak to the other prisoners; if they were caught within 4.5 meters (5 yards) of the other barracks, the punishment was a brutal whipping of fifteen to twenty strokes.
The days in the camp were grueling, beginning at 6 a.m. in the winter, or 5 a.m. in the summer. The length of a day’s work followed the amount of available sunlight. The most feared job was at the nearby brickworks, known as the death pit. It was here that Josef was sent. The working conditions were lethal, fatalities a routine daily occurrence.
No one was spared the camp’s brutal treatment. At the end of February, after he had been at Sachsenhausen for only a few weeks, Josef witnessed the arrival of a sixty-year-old Catholic priest. This tall, distinguished man came from an aristocratic German family. The arrival process, with its long, naked wait in the snow, was particularly difficult for him. When he was finally allowed to go to the barracks, his scalp bleeding from the rough shaving of his hair, he started to pray. The priest’s praying was reported to the SS who forced the other prisoners to watch as the priest was tied to a bench and beaten unconscious.
At morning roll call the next day – a dull, overcast day – when everyone was to assemble for roll call, the priest had to be carried to the parade ground. When the SS block sergeant raised his hand to beat the priest anew, a single ray of sunshine shone down on the priest’s battered face.
Many pink triangle prisoners died from the harsh working conditions in the Sachenhausen brickworks.
All the men on the parade ground, including the sergeant, looked to the sky. The ray of sunshine shone only on the priest. The sergeant let his hand fall to his side. By evening the priest lay dead. Deeply religious, Josef remembered the death of the priest and that single ray of sunshine the rest of his life.
Josef’s next job was just as horrendous as working at the brickworks. He was chosen to be part of a group that was to build a new firing range for the SS. Each day the men had to build the range while the SS practiced with their rifles. The SS preferred to practice with live targets. More than fifteen men were shot during the building of the range. Luckily, Josef was transferred out of the firing-range detail when he reluctantly agreed to provide sexual favors to one of the camp kapos. Josef had decided that his will to survive was far stronger than his commitment to decency; while it may have been degrading to have sex with the kapo, he believed it would help keep him alive.
In May 1940, Josef, only twenty-three, was transferred to the Flossenbürg concentration camp. He quickly learned that one camp was as bad as another, but he was determined to survive. He soon attracted the attention of a prison block senior – a kapo of importance and a ruthless safecracker. The man got young Josef an easy job as a clerk, and provided him with much-needed extra rations. The safecracker saved Josef’s life several times, but when he was transferred to another block, their relationship ended. Josef had no difficulty finding another kapo.
By 1942, Kohout himself was made a kapo – one of the few pink triangle kapos in the camps. He was put in charge of a group of men in the munitions factory. Since all able-bodied men were fighting for Germany, prisoners from the concentration camps now worked in the factories. The pink triangles were still considered degenerate, but manpower was desperately needed to keep the munitions factories operating. Josef created a strong work force in the camp, ensuring not only his survival, but also the survival of the men in his crew. He developed a system of instructions using numbers instead of German, making it possible for those who didn’t understand German to work and keep the factory operating.
In the summer of 1943, a prison brothel was established in Flossenbürg. This was part of Himmler’s bizarre idea of how to “cure” homosexuality. All pink triangle prisoners were compelled to make visits to the brothel to learn the joys of sex with women. The brothel was staffed with Jewish and Roma women from the Ravensbrück camp. They had been promised that after six months of service, they would be released. In reality, after their six months, they were shipped off to the Auschwitz gas chambers. Josef went to the brothel on occasion, but his brief visits did nothing to alter his sexual orientation.
Not surprisingly, the project was a dismal failure.
As the war effort continued to go badly for Germany through 1943, the need for soldiers grew, and Josef and others were offered the opportunity to have themselves castrated so that they could fight on the Russian front. When the camp commandant asked Josef if he had agreed to be castrated, Josef answered that he wanted to go home in the same state he came in. The camp commandant replied, “You and the whole pack of you queers, you’re never going to go home again.” (35)
But Josef Kohout did go home. At the war’s end he was still alive: he had survived six years in the concentration camps. He had never even said good-bye to his family in 1939. In the summer of 1945, a thin and drawn Josef Kohout made his way back to Vienna to see his mother. He had already discovered that his father had repeatedly tried to secure his release, or at least to visit to him, but had never been successful. Josef’s father had eventually committed suicide.