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Few are told of the other segments of "undesirables" who were forced into the same fate. This book helps the common reader understand why Hitler began his hateful anti-homosexual campaign.Through the survivor's stories, it paints a vivid portrait not only of the despicable depths of hatred to which men can sink, but it also shows us the undefeatable spirit of the human race to withstand and move on from such adversity. Under the Nazi regime, homosexual men were confined to death camps where they were forced to wear pink triangles as a symbol of their crime. The Roma (Gypsies), political prisoners, and homosexual men were among those also targeted for extinction.So many young gay people today don't realize the important significance of the pink triangle ~ they think it just another symbol of pride, and don't realize that it has been reclaimed from a horrific history in which many men died for their sexuality. I cannot recommend this book enough ~ it is only through realizing what we have been through that we learn what we will be able to overcome. They were at the bottom of the camp hierarchy, brutalized and abused past the point of human endurance. In this book, the horror of life in the Nazi's concentration camps is revealed through diaries, interviews with, and letters from survivors.Every school child learns that the Nazis tried to exterminate the Jews.
However, as I say, the book lacked focus. I thought this book was good, however it lacked focus. SInce its not a narrative like Plant's book its tougher to sit and read, however, it was much more concise and structed. It discussed variosu circumstances and people surrounding the holocaust, but failed to make an attempt at why -- why were homosexuals, singledout along with the jews, communists, gypsies, ect.Gunter Grau's "Hidden Holocaust" which is a collection of primary documents does take a stab at this question. It's difficult to be critical of a book in a field of study with so little additional research. It's one of a handful of other texts on the issue of gay persecution during the holocaust.Plant's personal relation to the gay persecution certainly makes thebook emotional at times (and often hard to stomach).
But this publication may well be more relevant now than ever because a crucial part of history may be fully discarded, and by ignoring it risks it happening again. Lidner's proposing further legislation to remove sexual orientation as a protected class in the state of Minnesota's hate crimes laws. Writer Heinz Heger miraculously survived six years (1939-'45) of concentration camp horrors: the ever-present smell of death, the sound of war, the filth, and the inhumanity from which more died than survived. More broadly, though, Heger's memories are less about his persecution because of his sexual orientation and more a shattering testament to the horror that was the Holocaust and to the evil that man can do. That vital component in probably the darkest chapter in human history coincidentally now, in 2003, is being threatened by a state legislator in Minnesota. The sheer number of victims of Hitler's Nazi Holocaust during the Third Reich is so numbing that piling on more numbers may not even register.
"Men With the Pink Triangle." chronicles one survivor's eyewitness account of a then-young Viennese student remanded to an East German concentration camp and branded with a pink triangle, the sign of its bearers as homosexuals. How he justifies his homophobic crusade based on his argument that gays weren't gassed by their Nazi captors is unclear. But the numbers are higher than the 6 million usually given and almost always in reference to the Jewish victims. Republican Arlon Lidner claims that no such persecution of gays in Nazi Europe ever occurred and is somehow tying that argument to his proposal to repeal his state's human rights amendment that protects gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgendered persons from discrimination. With the generation of Holocaust survivors steadily being silenced to death, the cries from the written accounts like Heger's and others should not and cannot cannot be denied. Some estimates are up to double that number when other categories of what Hitler decried as "degenerates" are added, and this book calls attention to one such group, either forgotten or ignored by history, but present nonetheless.
Herger's first-hand account is chilling but embarrassing because it wasn't until the 1970's, when gay liberation gained a foothold in social rights movements, that Nazi persecution of gay people was even acknowledged.
I expected to see shocking photos and gut wrenching first hand accounts of tragedy, etc but simply found a historical account that would be helpful as a textbook. Overall, this book is quite informative and eye opening, but a little dry. I would recommend this for anyone interested in the subject matter, but not necessarily as free reading. Plant gives incredible detail into the lives of those in charge of the persecution of homosexuals by the Nazis in World War II. In addition to a behind the scenes look into Nazi operations, including biographies of SS Himmler and Roehm, Hitler's top officials, Plant puts it all in the context of what gay Berlin/Germany was like at the time and leading up to WWII.
The author was separated from a dear friend in the early 1930's and began a search for him long after WWII ended. Unfortunately you will not get that here - not even the usual pictures unidentifiable starved dead bodies stacked up all over the place.This is more of a one man's search for his long lost childhood buddy. There is some well known high level history of the era thrown in just for filler.This book is a very easy read, but if you are truly interested in the history of the era, there are a lot of far better books on the market. OK, we know what the Nazis thought of Jews, so woowoo, it does not take a lot of imagination to figure out what they thought about Jewish homosexuals. With a title like "The Pink Triangle" one would expect a lot of antidotal stories of Third Reich horror.
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