Homosexuals were never recognized as "victims" of Nazi persecution in either of the post-war German states. This is despite the fact that while the concentration camps they were branded with the pink triangle, signifying sexual preference. They were harshly mistreated by camp guards and fellow inmates. Two main factors produced this unsatisfactory state of affairs. For one, it is a reflection of mass widespread dislike toward homosexuals and their indecisiveness to prosecute their instigators due to fear of rejection among their peers towards their preference. Secondly, the interpretation of paragraph 175 of 1871 Reich criminal code, criminalizing 'acts of indecency' as well as sexual intercourse between two men, was not repealed until 1969. This meant that homosexuals who had been persecuted and sent to concentration c

The pink triangles worked in the clay pits of Sachsenausen, the quarries of Buchenwald, Flossenburg and Mauthausen; they shoveled snow with their bare hands in Auschwitz and elsewhere; they were used as living targets at the firing range; they had the dirtiest jobs in all camps. Towards the end of the war, they were told they would be released if they let themselves be castrated. The ones who agreed were shipped to the famous Dirlwanger penal division on the Russian front.

There are few resources dealing with the fate of lesbians under the Nazis. This is largely due to the fact that they were classed generally with the "anti-socials" to obliterate the fact of their actual existence, which effectively obliterates them from history.

Very little has been written about the tens of thousands of homosexuals who were the damnedest of the damned, the outcasts among the outcasts in the concentration camps. There are really only estimates of figures. During the twelve years of Nazi rule, nearly 50,000 were convicted of the crime of homosexuality. The majority ended up in concentration camps, and virtually all of them perished. According to a recent study, at least 500,000 gays died in the Holocaust. As Stefan Lorant observed in 1935, the homosexuals "lived in a dream", hoping that the heyday of gays in Germany of the 1920's would last forever. Their awakening was terrible. Yet, the few survivors among them did not qualify for postwar restitution as the Jews or the politicians, because as homosexuals they were outside the law. By German law, homosexuality was a crime. After the prison sentences most homosexuals were automatically shipped to concentration camps. In 1935, a new law legalized the 'compulsory sterilization (often in fact castration) of homosexuals.' A special section of the Gestapo dealt with them. Along with epileptics, schizophrenics, and other "degenerates", they were being eliminated. Yet homosexuality was still so widespread that in 1942 the death penalty was imposed for it in the army and the SS (Kogon, Eugen 38).

While men with pink triangles were given the hardest jobs and were constantly being abused for their admitted sexual preference, considerable numbers of "normal" men engaged in homosexual acts with impunity - that was an emergency outlet. This double standard was an additional psychological burden for the pin

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