Experiments in reversal of hormonal polarity at Buchenwald

ln contrast to the compulsory castration and typhus fever experiments, the hormonal experiments on homosexual men at Buchenwald are quite well documented. They were conducted in strict secrecy on the orders of the SS by the Danish doctor Carl Peter Jensen, alias Carl Vaernet. He went to Germany in 1942 after being forced to give up a practice he had had in Copenhagen since 1934. His contact with the leader of the Danish Nazi Party, his colleague Frits Clausen, must already have cost him a lot of patients in the first year of the war. In summer 1943 he was brought to Himmler's attention by the SS Reich Doctor, Dr Grawitz. Vaernet's claim that his hormonal research in the thirties had made it possible to cure homosexual men aroused Himmler's undivided interest. He gave instructions for Vaernet to be treated with 'the utmost generosity', and to be given the possibility of continuing his research in a Prague cover firm coming under the Reichsführer-SS, 'German Medicines Ltd.' By July 1944 he was in a position to start the human experiments. Buchenwald concentration camp was instructed to place five prisoners at his disposal.

Surviving documents tell us about the choice and temporal sequence of the experiments. Together with Schiedlausky, the Waffen-SS garrison doctor at Weimar-Buchenwald, Vaernet first selected the five prisoners during a visit to Buchenwald in late July 1944, then nominated a further ten on 8 December. According to a memorandum (from the prisoners'sick bay?) four of the five selected in July were identified as homosexuals and one as an SV or Sittlichkeitsverbrecher [sex criminel]. Of the December batch all we know (from a memorandum drawn up in October) is that six of them had been castrated. It is very likely that these too were pink-triangle prisoners, so that altogether at least ten male homosexuals would have been subjected to Vaernet's experiments.

A total of fifteen prisoners were selected. Vaernet 'operated' on twelve men - if that term can be applied at all in the nightmarish conditions of the camp. What actually happened is that he made an incision in the groin and implanted a hormone preparation in the form of a briquette; the release of hormones was then checked through examination of the blood and urine.

What seems to us today a macabre experiment was heralded by Vaernet as a great success. But in his reports to the SS leadership he did not say a word about one effect which was nevertheless quite apparent to him. If the victims readily gave the answers expected of them, they did so partly at least in the hope that they would be pronounced 'cured' and soon released from the terrible reality of the concentration camp. To the SS Reich Doctor Vaernet suggested three results of 'direct importance to the war': the maintenance or restoration of a full capacity for work, the better possibilities of sustenance, and an increase in the birth-rate.

Little is known of the victims' fate. One prisoner was already dead by December 1944. But of those who may have survived, we do not know of any who applied for compensation after 1945. (This is true also of persons born after 1910, who might have been likely to take advantage of the new regulations for the compensation of victims of sterilization and castration that came into force in the late 1980s.)

As for the perpetrators, the experiments were not explicitly mentioned in the list of charges at the Nuremberg doctors' trial. The SS doctors Schiedlausky and Ding were condemned to death for other profoundly inhuman experiments. Vaernet himself evaded responsibility by fleeing to South America.

Source : Hidden Holocaust ?, Günter Grau, London: Cassell, 1995. Translated from German by Patrick Camiller.

Photo (en bas) : Carl Vaernet ; (en haut) : Expérience pratiquée sur un déporté par le personnel médical de Buchenwald.

Pink-triangle prisoners at Buchenwald

Pink-triangle prisoners at Buchenwald concentration camp

Not long after the establishment of the Nazi regime homosexual men were already being sent to concentration camps. In many cases this happened as an exemplary measure of terror. Corresponding regulations were only issued some time later to give an appearance of legality. Himmler's order of 14 December 1937 and his decree of 12 July 1940 defined the target groups as sex criminals, by which he especially meant 'corrupters of youth', 'rent boys' and those with related previous convictions. Thus, not every man convicted under Section 175 had to reckon with deportation to a concentration camp after the end of his sentence. And yet, where political considerations were involved, the provisions could be interpreted in such a way that an arbitrary attribution of one of the above labels opened the way to such a harsh punishment.(1)

Buchenwald concentration camp started operating in 1937 and was soon admitting its first homosexual men. By the end of 1938 28 prisoners were already wearing the pink triangle; the figure went up to 46 by late 1939 and stood at 51 two years later. As a result of Himmler's directive of 12 July 1940 - 'in future, after their release from prison, all homosexuals who have seduced more than one partner should be taken into preventive police detention'- the number of male homosexuals also rose at Buchenwald, passing a hundred for the first time in 1942. At the end of 1943 the camp held 169, and a year later 189. The figures were small in comparison with the total number of prisoners there - well below one per cent in every year.(2)

Deportation was justified on the absurd grounds that 'encouragement to perform regular work' would help to cure male homosexuals of their unnatural inclinations'. According to Heydrich's cynical classification of 1941, Buchenwald was a Category II concentration camp. This meant that, together with Flossenbürg, Neuengamme and Auschwitz, it was to be used for 'severely disturbed persons in protective custody' who were still 'capable of being educated'.

Their daily life was governed by the inhuman conditions of the camp. In addition there was the stigma of being a homosexual, which gave them a dangerous special status. They were isolated in many different senses: from their friends, who did not dare write for fear of themselves being registered as homosexuals; from their family, which out of 'shame' might disown father or son and might in the case of death - as we know from the file of Karl Willy A. - even refuse to accept the urn or hold a funeral; and from other groups of prisoners, who avoided men with the pink triangle both to keep clear of suspicion and because they shared the widespread prejudices against 'queers'. But the homosexual prisoners were also isolated from others like themselves, for gay men are seldom bound together by anything more than their sexual orientation. There was no question of the kind of solidarity that was evident among political prisoners or Jehovah's Witnesses. And they had correspondingly little influence in the prisoners' structure of communication and authority.

Until autumn 1938 male homosexuals were allocated to the political blocks. But from October they were sent en masse to do quarry work in the punishment battalion, where inhuman working conditions and the arbitrary violence of the SS claimed ever more victims. In the summer of 1942 they started to work with other prisoners in the war industry, and in the autumn or winter of 1944 were deported to the centers producing V-2 weapons in the 'Dora' out-camp near Nordhausen.(3) Catastrophic conditions of internment, heavy labour in the underground galleries and a generally poor state of health brought death to most of them. Thus, 96 homosexual prisoners died between 8 and 13 February 1945 alone - more than half the number interned in Buchenwald up to that time.

Reports of fellow-prisoners, such as Walter Poller who worked as a doctor's secretary in the sick-bay in 1939 and 1940, indicate that most of the homosexuals deported to Buchenwald were castrated.(4) But it has since become known that they were also used for the dreadful typhus fever experiments. As these were very incompletely documented, we cannot definitively gauge the scale on which they were carried out.(5) So far five homosexual men have been identified in this context; and the refusal to hand over the dead body of Karl Willy A. suggests that he too should be counted among the victims.

The situation of homosexuals at Buchenwald concentration camp
Report from spring 1945 (Extracts)(6)

[... ] Until autumn 1938 homosexuals were divided among the political blocks, where they went relatively unnoticed. In October 1938 they were sent en masse to the punishment battalion and had to work in the quarry, whereas previously all other units had been open to them. Apart from a few recorded cases, every member of the punishment battalion had the prospect of being transferred after a certain time to a normal block where living and working conditions were significantly better, but this possibility did not exist for homosexuals.

Precisely during the hardest years they were the lowest caste in the camp. In proportion to their number they made up the highest percentage on transports to special extermination camps such as Mauthausen, Natzweiler and Gross Rosen, because the camp always had the understandable tendency to ship off less important and valuable members, or those regarded as less valuable. In fact, the wider deployment of labor in the war industry brought some relief to this type of prisoner too - for the labor shortage made it necessary to draw skills from the ranks of such people, although in January 1944 the homosexuals, with very few exceptions, were still going to the 'Dora' murder camp, where many of them met their death. The striking fates of a few homosexuals at Buchenwald may afford some insight into the conditions.

L. Adloff, a librarian at the State Library in Berlin and a collaborator of the left-leaning periodical Die Weltbühne, was arrested as a political suspect in 1938; he was also under suspicion of homosexuality. In summer 1938 he was sent as a political to Buchenwald concentration camp. In October 1938, when all homosexuals and others under suspicion were sent to the punishment battalion, he had the sign of homosexuals, a pink triangle, put on him and went to work in the quarry. In January 1939 he was sent to Mauthausen concentration camp, where terrible conditions prevailed. While working in the quarry there he suffered a leg injury which developed into a huge inflammation, and in the same year he was shipped as an invalid to the concentration camp at Dachau. After severe mistreatment at the hands of the Dachau sick bay kapo 'Heathen joe' [Heiden-Sepp], he was sent as an invalid to Buchenwald camp, then returned as an invalid to Dachau, then sent back to Buchenwald in autumn 1941 where he finally remained and died. This constant moving of broken people had the result that they died off like flies with every change of conditions. In Dachau in 1941 he picked up a sentence for some trifling incident, and although he was already punished in Dachau he received 25 lashes twice more in Buchenwald as well as a few weeks in a detention cell. Jail was then an absolutely deadly place to be: he had long been written off in his block before the sheer miracle of his return. But meanwhile the leg inflammation, which had never healed, developed in such a way as to cause serious damage to his heart. As he was a naturally strong person and had enormous will-power, he pulled himself along for another month until pleurisy prepared the end in April 1943.

In the spring of 1942 a Berlin writer called Dähnke was sent to the camp as a homosexual. The main reason for his internment, however, was political statements which had brought him to the attention of the Gestapo. One morning, after he had been working for several months in the quarry, he was taken by someone on fatigue duty to the sick bay and presented to the camp doctor as suffering from TB. As a matter of fact he was having chest trouble. The camp doctor at first wanted to put him in the TB unit for treatment, but when D., not knowing how things stood, mentioned that he was really there for political reasons, the doctor sat up and took notice, realized that he was dealing with a homosexual, and had him taken into the room reserved for the death list. Two days later he was given the lethal injection. H. D., an office worker born in 1915, was arrested on 20.4.1938 because of an illegal trip abroad to Prague. He had tried to make contact with the Russian Consulate in Prague so as to get away from Germany; the Gestapo suspected him of being an underground Communist courier. At the same time, a friend with whom he had been in a relationship of trust was arrested and forced to confess. The charges of high treason had to be dropped, because nothing could be proved against D. and nothing could be got out of him. So he only received three-and-a-half years' imprisonment for unnatural sex acts. After serving his sentence, he was sent to Buchenwald in November 1941. The first impression he had was of the bodies of various people who had died in the punishment battalion, which were thrown in front of the door like sacks of flour. On the same evening a young homosexual hanged himself - everyone calmly went on eating, nobody cared a jot about it. Still on the same evening, a prisoner who had already been there a long time told him that he would have to work in the quarry, that the kapo was a terrible man, that especially §176 people (relations with juveniles) were done for, and that he should be careful although there was no point in keeping quiet about anything. After an agonizing sleepless night, D. decided to prepare himself for every eventuality: he mentioned to the kapo that he had been told such and such and that he did not want to hang himself, and asked him for advice about what he should do. But he got the exact opposite of what he wanted. The kapo, Herzog, was a former member of the foreign legion, extremely brutal, apparently homosexual-sadistic and with a frightening tendency to become frenzied; if someone was beaten by him it was all over. Herzog was determined to find out who had spoken to D. and he threatened him with some terrible things. But as D. realized that it would mean curtains for his comrade in suffering, he refused to reveal the name of the man who had warned him. The next day he was sent to work on the quarry wagon - an exhausting and dangerous job. Anyone who could not keep going was tossed on the wagon and then dumped on a heap of stones. Then Herzog either trampled them to death without further ado, or poured water down their throat for so long that they suffocated. If anyone still survived, Herzog treated him as a malingerer and crushed him underfoot. Although D. was young and strong, the work exhausted him so much that only the end of the day saved him from collapse. Next morning the friend who had warned him, now grateful for his silence, took him to another part of the quarry where the work was a little easier and where he was out of the kapo's line of sight for the next few weeks. After three weeks or so, however, Herzog remembered him, again asked for the name and presented him with an ultimatum: at a certain hour he would drive him through a cordon of duty sentries. D. knew this was deadly serious and he was ready for anything. He was saved by a sheer miracle. An hour before the appointed time, Herzog was called to the door and quite unexpectedly released from the camp. (The word later went round in the camp that he had been stabbed to death in his home area.) On 4.1.42 D. was sent to the typhus fever experimental ward, where young homosexuals were favorite guinea-pig material. He came through the illness but suffered from heart trouble as a result. On 15.7.42 he was discharged from the ward to perform light quarry work. Meanwhile things had become quite wild in the block. Assisted by isolation from the other camp and more supported than supervised by the SS, a number of bandits were completely terrorizing the workforce, stealing the packets they were supposed to receive since winter 1941, and holding real orgies of brutality and the most shameless sadism. Sexual abuse and the foulest murder were the order of the day. The battle still raging between politicals and the Greens (criminals) who wanted to get control still tied the hands of the Reds for the time being. Only after some months was it possible to clean out the Augean stables - which was made casier by the fact that some of the guys were sending each other to kingdom come. One incident described by D. throws a revealing light on the conditions. The punishment battalion was not allowed to smoke. But people on the typhus ward bought things like everyone else, and that included tobacco. As they had also not been allowed to smoke on the typhus ward, they all naturally had a small stock of tobacco and cigarettes. The first thing the block elder, a former SS man, did was to ask all those who returned to hand over their tobacco. When they hesitated for a moment, he singled one out, spread him over a table and counted out 25 lashes - whereupon the tobacco and cigarettes shifted double-quick into his pocket.

The liquidation methods had meanwhile changed somewhat. Until early 1942 a sorting of new arrivals had undoubtedly been carried out in the political department. People - especially §176 homosexuals - were called to the door a few days after their arrival and moved into the cells. Some days later came the announcement of death. From spring 1942 the cell murders stopped. But to make up for it the second camp Führer, Gust, turned to the now compliant quarry kapo, Müller, generally known as 'Waldmüller' [forest miller]: he came to see him nearly every day, shook hands and regaled him with cigarettes, and no doubt gave him instructions. The number of people 'shot white attempting to escape' was terrifyingly high in the summer of 1942. For the sake of appearances, it was felt necessary to post quarry trustees as sentries to hold people back. D., who stood out from the others by his human qualities, was made a sentry and witnessed some hideous scenes. [...]

In autumn 1942 these quarry shootings came to an end. The greater use of prisoners' labour forced the SS to be a little more sparing with its 'human material', and the forces of order in the camp finally managed to wrest away its instruments of murder. Later, when conditions eased a little, D. managed to get sent to a better unit, to hold on in the camp by keeping a clean slate, and to appear as a witness at trials as one of the few to have survived.


(1) See in general R. Lautmann/W. Grischkat/E. Schmidt, 'Der Rosa Winkel in nationalsozialistischen Konzentrationslagern', in R. Lautmann, ed., Seminar: Gesellschaft und Homosexualität, Frankfurt/Main 1977, pp. 325-365.

(2) G. Grau, 'Homosexuelle im KZ. Buchenwald', in S. N. Rapoport and A. Thom, eds., Das Schicksal der Medizin im Faschismus, Berlin 1989, pp. 67-69; and W. Röll, Homosexuelle Häftlinge im KZ. Buchenwald, Weimar-Buchenwald 1991.

(3) For an account of the 'Dora'camp (but without any reference to the group of homosexual prisoners), see E. Pachaly and K. Pelny,'KZ Mittelbau Dora. Terror und Widerstand', Buchenwaldheft 28, Weimar-Buchenwald 1987.

(4) W. Poller, Arztschreiber in Buchenwald, Hamburg 1947.

(5) On the typhus experiments in general see W. Scherf, 'Die Verbrechen der SS-Ärzte im KZ Buchenwald. Der antifaschistische Widerstand. 2. Beitrag: juristische Probleme', diss., criminal law department, Humboldt University, Berlin 1987.

(6) Passages omitted here do not specifically refer to the situation of homosexual prisoners at Buchenwald. Cf. the unabridged version and commentary in Zeitschrift fur Sexualforschung, Vol. 2, 1989, pp. 243-253.


Source: Hidden Holocaust ?, Günter Grau, Cassell, 1995. Translated from German by Patrick Camiller.

Les homosexuels à Buchenwald

Sur la situation des homosexuels au camp de Buchenwald, dans le block 36, ces extraits du témoignage de Jaroslav Bartl :

"Nous travaillions dans la carrière de pierre dans des conditions impossibles, sous la menace perpétuelle des fusils des gardes SS, des hurlements et des coups des contremaîtres. Les accidents et les blessures mortelles étaient quotidiens, et il ne se passait pas un jour sans qu'un ou plusieurs détenus ne fût abattu. Presque chaque matin [...] le kapo recevait des SS une liste avec le numéro des détenus qui ne devaient pas rentrer. [...]

Un des sports favoris des contremaîtres était de matraquer les détenus alors qu'ils tractaient les wagonnets. En une demi-heure, nous devions les hisser sur cinq cents mètres puis les laisser redescendre tout en les retenant car leur poids leur faisait prendre une vistesse considérable. Quand un des chariots déraillait, le chariot suivant venait s'écraser contre les détenus, ce qui provoquait de graves blessures. Il arrivait souvent que l'on transportât à l'infirmerie un détenu dont la jambe avait été broyée. Une fois là-bas, il était définitivement perdu : un médecin SS lui faisait une injection mortelle." (Cité dans Homosexuelle Häfltlinge im Konzentrationlager Buchenwald, Nationale Mahn und Gedenkstätte Buchenwald, 1987.)

Egalement ce témoignage sur la situation des homosexuels dans le camp de concentration de Buchenwald, extrait des archives du camp :

"H.D., employé de commerce, né en 1915, a été arrêté le 20 mars 1938 alors qu'il s'était rendu illégalement à Prague [...] On avait arrêté en même temps son ami intime à qui on avait extorqué des aveux. Il fut donc condamné à trois ans et demi de prison pour "attentat aux moeurs". Après avoir purgé sa peine, on l'envoya en novembre 1941 au camp de concentration de Buchenwald. Ce qui l'impressionna en tout premier lieu à son arrivée furent les cadavres des détenus de la compagnie disciplinaire que l'on jetait comme des sacs de blé devant la porte. De plus, ce soir-là, un jeune homosexuel s'était pendu, et tout le monde continuait tranquillement de manger sans s'en soucier davantage [...] Le 4 janvier 1942, on l'envoya dans un laboratoire médical où l'on expérimentait la fièvre urticaire et où l'on utilisait de préférence de jeunes homosexuels comme cobayes humains. H.D. résista bien à la maladie bien qu'il eût plus tard à souffrir de troubles cardiaques [...]

Entre-temps, les homosexuels nouveaux venus, condamnés par l'article 175, étaient rapidement fusillés dans le bunker."

Source : Moi, Pierre Seel, déporté homosexuel, de Pierre Seel et Jean Le Bitoux, éditions Calmann-Lévy, 1994.

Illustration : Appel des détenus. Dessin de Walter Timm, Cycle Sachsenhausen (1945), condamné au titre du §175 et déporté au camp de Sachsenhausen de 1943 à 1945. (Orig : Homosexuelle Männer im KZ Sachsenhausen, Joachim Müller und Andreas Sternweiler, Schwules Museum Berlin, Verlag Rosa Winkel, 2000.)

Triangles roses et signes distinctifs

Les populations [des camps] de doivent pas pour autant ne pas être identifiées, et même si leur destin commun semble scellé entre les barbelés. Identification indique marquage, pour une stigmatisation spécifique. Jean Vigreux rajoute : "Le déporté porte sur son pyjama rayé le triangle ou l'étoile qui stigmatisent. C'est une hiérarchie raciste et sociale établie et voulue par les nazis. Chaque déporté en camp de concentration ou d'extermination était confronté à la mort. Mort par la faim, mort par épuisement, mort par les maladies, par les expériences médicales, par les tortures ou les exécutions sommaires. Ou encore la mort par les chambres à gaz".

Un marquage sur les vêtements s'élaborera en effet peu à peu pour les détenus en camp d'internement et de concentration. Dans son livre sur "l'organisation de la terreur" paru en 1995 aux éditions Calmann-Lévy, l'historien Wolfgang Sofsky note : "Avec la réorganisation des camps, la SS introduisit en 1936 un système de catégories permettant de caractériser les groupes de détenus. Sur la partie gauche de la poitrine et sur la jambe droite des pantalons on cousait, à côté du numéro du détenu, un triangle de couleur (...) Les 'adversaires politiques', la première catégorie à être entrée dans les camps, restèrent d'abord sans signe distinctif. C'est seulement en 1937 qu'on introduisit pour eux le triangle rouge". Il précise : "L'élément décisif pour la figuration des classes sociales était le système des classifications, la taxinomie des couleurs, des triangles et des signes distinctifs."

Les autres détenus "criminels" recevaient ainsi un triangle vert, les "asociaux" un triangle noir, les homosexuels un rose, les émigrés un bleu, les Tziganes d'abord un triangle brun puis noir. Les Juifs portaient l'étoile de David à six branches. Les étrangers, le plus souvent identifiés comme "politiques", avaient sur le triangle rouge l'initiale indiquant leur nationalité, un "F" pour les Français, un "P" pour les Polonais, un "S" pour les Espagnols. Les prisonniers placés en compagnie pénitentiaire étaient signalés par un point noir au sommet de leur triangle. Les détenus des convois "nuit et brouillard" étaient marqués de larges bandes rouges, portaient une croix sur le dos et, à droite et à gauche, les lettres "NN" (pour "Nacht und Nebel"), que l'on retrouvait sur les jambes du pantalon. Quant à ceux qui étaient soupçonnés de vouloir s'évader, ils étaient signalés par une cible rouge et blanc sur la poitrine et sur le dos, pour être visés par les mitraillettes au moindre mouvement de foule suspect, comme sur un stand de foire.

Mais ces codifications visuelles étaient finalement moins à l'usage des SS pour mieux identifier ces populations captives dans la gestion des camps que pour créer en permanence un différentiel entre les détenus et entretenir entre eux une méfiance par la visibilité, la mise en blason, oserions-nous dire, de ces différences sociales. Elles signifiaient également une hiérarchie de l'avilissement à disposition des kapos.

Le triangle rose, à la couleur de petite fille dans le but de ridiculiser la masculinité, se généralisera peu à peu dans les camps après que de nombreuses lesbiennes aient porté le triangle noir des asociaux ou que la barrette bleue ait marqué certains homosexuels, confondus avec les catholiques réfractaires, comme Pierre Seel dans le camp alsacien de Schirmek. D'autres étiquetages existèrent, encore plus infâmes : un témoignage recueilli dans les archives du Mémorial de l'Holocauste de Washington, celui d'Erwin Forly, tchèque déporté pour homosexualité à Auschwitz, parle d'un étiquetage spécial : "Certains premiers déportés homosexuels durent porter autour de leurs hanches un tissu jaune arborant un 'A' majuscule. Il représentait l'initiale de 'Arschficker', littéralement 'baiseur de cul'." Mais quand le triangle rose sera finalement adopté dans la plupart des camps, il ne sera pas pour autant un triangle comme les autres. Pour être plus visible de loin, il faisait trois centimètres de plus de côté que tous les autres triangles. Comme le dit Heinz Heger : "les pédés, il fallait les reconnaître de loin !"

Tout sur-marquage fait partie du fonctionnement du camp, cet espace captif où il est impératif pour survivre d'avoir plus stigmatisé que soi. Finalement, le plus grand marquage est entre hommes et sous-hommes, comme le décrit Wolfgang Sofsky : "Au sommet, l'opposition raciste entre l'être humain et les sous-hommes. Les Slaves, les Tziganes, les Juifs tendaient à ne pas être du tout considérés comme membres de la société humaine. Ils constituaient une catégorie placée en marge, sinon au delà de toute socialité. La persécution prenait ici le caractère d'une élimination systématique. Le critère racial dominait tous les autres. Un juif de Belgique ou de France également classé dans la catégorie 'opposant politique' ou 'criminel' était d'abord un juif (...) En bas de l'échelle de la déviation se tenaient enfin les '175', les homosexuels. Bien qu'ils n'aient pas représenté un risque politique, ils occupaient une position marginale analogue à la catégorie des 'sous-hommes'. Les opposants idéologiques et politiques, autant qu'ils aient pu être combattus par les SS, faisaient partie de la société du camp. On les opprimait mais on les redoutait aussi. On ne livrait pas de véritable combat, en revanche, contre les groupes marginaux des asociaux et des homosexuels : ils étaient anormaux, nuisibles, superflus. A eux, le pouvoir du camp n'octroyait que la moquerie, le mépris et la mort".

A partir de 1933, les camps de concentration de Dachau et d'Orianenburg reçoivent de nombreux homosexuels, dont de nombreux militants et d'autres qui avaient pris le risque de la visibilité, la torture et la délation faisant le reste. L'historien Eugène Kogon, chargé par les Alliés d'un rapport après le procès de Nuremberg et auteur de 'L'Etat SS', a pu identifier quant à lui d'autres destinations pour les homosexuels : "Concernant les transports vers les camps d'extermination tels ceux de Nordhausen, de Natzweiler ou de Gross-Rosen, les homosexuels fournissaient le plus fort pourcentage". Eugène Kogon rajoute : "Le camp avait cette tendance compréhensible de se séparer d'éléments considérés comme moins importants, de peu de valeur ou sans valeur".

Une cruauté spécifique et meurtrière concerne donc les homosexuels, que confirme l'autrichien Heinz Heger, détenu à Auschwitz : "Jusqu'en 1942, afin de réduire le nombre de prisonniers, il était usuel que chaque camp envoie à différents moments un contingent d'une centaine de déportés ou davantage vers les camps d'extermination où ces derniers étaient gazés ou injectés. Le choix de ceux qui devaient être liquidés relevait de la responsabilité du secrétariat du camp des prisonniers, à la tête duquel se trouvait le doyen. Lorsque celui-ci était un déporté politique, on a toujours pu constater que la plus grande partie des déportés envoyés à l'extermination était formée, et de loin, de déportés au triangle rose". De la sorte, les déportés pour homosexualité se retrouvaient par exemple dans la carrière de pierres de Buchenwald. Détenu au bloc 36, l'homosexuel Jaroslav Bartl témoigne : "Nous travaillons dans la carrières de pierres dans des conditions impossibles, sous les hurlements et les violences des contremaîtres, et sous la menace des fusils SS. Les blessures et les accidents mortels étaient quotidiens. Le kapo recevait chaque matin une liste de détenus, avec leur numéro, qui ne devaient pas rentrer".

Source : Les Oubliés de la Mémoire, Jean Le Bitoux, Editions Hachette Littératures, 2002.

Photo : Nomenclature des signes distinctifs des déportés.

"Les homosexuels constituaient une minorité relativement insaisissable. Les Juifs représentaient une cible beaucoup plus facile. Ils indiquaient leur religion sur les formulaires de recensement, leurs certificats de naissance et autres documents administratifs. Les communistes, la principale cible des nazis en 1933, pouvaient également être identifiés grâce aux listes des membres du parti. La plupart des homosexuels étaient relativement invisibles. Le fait est que les nazis ne sont jamais réellement parvenus à savoir comment identifier les homosexuels, ou à les localiser. Cette simple inaptitude aurait en elle-même suffi à leur interdire la mise en oeuvre d'un "holocauste homosexuel" s'ils en avaient eu l'intention."

Texte : Why bother about homosexuals?, Geoffrey J. Giles, USHM

Photo : Buchenwald, hiérarchie du camp et membres de la police. (orig : USHM)

"A Buchenwald, le médecin SS Erwin Ding pratique des castrations forcées sur les détenus homosexuels. Un certain nombre d'entre eux mourront des suites de ces interventions. D'autres jeunes détenus homosexuels seront également sélectionnés par le Dr Ding pour participer sous la contrainte à des expériences pseudo-médicales sur la fièvre typhoïde. En 1944, à Buchenwald, le médecin SS Vaernet (de son vrai nom Jensen) utilise des déportés homosexuels pour tester ses théories sur l'inversion de polarité hormonale. Il greffe sur les détenus des glandes synthétiques de son invention, dans le but de les ramener à la normalité."

Texte : De l'Eldorado au IIIe Reich, congérence de Gerard Koskovich (lire).

Photo : Expérience pratiquée par le personnel médical de Buchenwald (orig : USHM)

Arbeit macht frei (Le travail rend libre).

"Les homosexuels masculins étaient affectés dans des proportions considérablement plus élevées aux travaux des Kommandos les plus pénibles et les plus dangereux, parmi lesquels la carrière et le rouleau compresseur de Dachau, la carrière de Sachsenhausen, les excavations de Dora, la carrière de Buchenwald ou les escoudades qui devaient ramasser les bombes intactes après les raids Alliés sur Hambourg."

Texte : De l'Eldorado au IIIe Reich, conférence de Gerard Koskovich (lire).

Photo : Déportés tchèques au travail dans la carrière de pierres d'Oranienburg. (orig : Schwules Museum, Berlin)

"Il arrivait souvent qu'on transporte à l'infirmerie un détenu dont la jambe avait été broyée [pendant qu'il travaillait dans la carrière de Buchenwald]. Une fois là-bas, il était définitivement perdu : un médecin SS lui faisait une piqure mortelle." (Jaroslav Bartl, déporté à Buchenwald.)

Texte : Les homosexuels à Buchenwald, Jean Le Bitoux...

Photo : Infirmerie au camp de concentration de Sachsenhausen. Dessin de Walter Timm, 1945. (Orig: Schwules Museum, Berlin)

"H.D., employé de commerce, né en 1915, a été arrêté le 20 mars 1938 alors qu'il s'était rendu illégalement à Prague [...] On avait arrêté en même temps son ami intime à qui on avait extorqué des aveux. Il fut donc condamné à trois ans et demi de prison pour "attentat aux moeurs". Après avoir purgé sa peine, on l'envoya en novembre 1941 au camp de concentration de Buchenwald. Ce qui l'impressionna en tout premier lieu à son arrivée furent les cadavres des détenus de la compagnie disciplinaire que l'on jetait comme des sacs de blé devant la porte."

Texte : Les homosexuels à Buchenwald, Jean Le Bitoux (lire).

Photo : Trois photos du camp de Buchenwald. (orig : USHM)

"Avant même d'accéder au pouvoir, Hitler avait ainsi proclamé que l'Etat racial n'avait pas pour rôle d'élever une colonie d'esthètes pacifistes et de dégenérés, mais avait pour idéal l'incarnation arrogante de la force virile."

La déchéance et la mort programmées pour les "dégénérés".

Texte : Le Triangle Rose, Jean Boisson (lire).

Photo : Survivants du camp de Buchenwald, avril 1945. (orig : USHM)