Candidate no.

27579

Analyse the development of the historicization of the persecution of homosexuals during

the Holocaust in the United Sates 1960-1980.

"Before we can wear the triangle, or carry the banner that reads 'Never Again,'
we must first remember."
Sara Hart, "A Dark Past Brought to Light," 10 Percent

Historical study, both in the Federal Republic of Germany and within the United

States of America has undoubtedly achieved significant results in shedding a large quantity of

light on the events of the Holocaust. However it cannot be recognised that a consistent

representation of all who were persecuted under National Socialism has been achieved. The

persecution of Roma, for example, has not received sufficient scholarly attention, nor have

those who were persecuted under the T4 euthanasia programme. Out of the many groups

singled out and persecuted by the Nazi regime, the Jewish experience has so far dominated

scholarly research. The publication of The Pink Swastika encapsulates the perils of the

negligible research that has been afforded toward the persecution of homosexuals under

National Socialism.1 Lively and Abrahams have attempted to subvert the limited research on

the subject by adopting and manipulating the political, social and cultural fears toward

homosexuality within American society. The gay rights movements in the USA between the

1960’s and 1980’s instilled much weight toward both historicizing the persecution of

homosexuals in Nazi Germany, and the development of the cultural awareness of the subject.

By analysing the events which both hindered and developed scholarly analysis, I will explore

how the gay rights movement brought witness’s to initiate research on the subject, but

conversely distracted a sufficient historicization of the homosexual persecutions in the

Holocaust.

The historiography of the homosexual persecution in Nazi Germany failed to ignite in

the USA and in any other countries due to a reluctance to address the past on both the part of

1
Lively, S & Abrahams, G. The Pink Swastika. 1st ed. (New York 1996)

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 Candidate no. 27579

German society and those homosexuals who had survived. Vestal states that an ‘...almost

three decade long erasure of this history—either due to a mainstream/dominant culture of

homophobia or lack of interest or concern... caused a gap between the events and the

historical.”2 This analysis ignores the effect that those who had adopted the history of the

homosexual experience within the American society, namely the gay rights movement. This

espousal often championed the memory of survivors, and transferred the potency of its

historical merit to that of political and social awareness toward contemporary issues.

Primarily, the delay of scholarly research on the subject prior to the 1960’s owes much to the

illegality of homosexuality acts under paragraph 175 of the German penal code, which was

not revised until 1969, and not repealed until 1994.3 Parallel to pre 1933, and, indeed,

formulating part of the Nazi ‘justification’ toward persecuting Roma, discrimination was

carried out “...by official state institutions under the ideological pretext of dealing with an

anti- social, indeed criminal, layer of the population.”4 Paragraph 175, founded in 1871, far

outdated the Nazi regime, and although the severe nature of the legislation was undeniably

heightened in 1935, the formative law wasn’t divergent to those in use throughout Europe,

and parallel to that of the USA, founded in 1778.5 Putting testimony to their experiences in

concentration camps ultimately placed the survivor back into the same legal spotlight. With

no willing testimonies, historicizing the events was deterred because of a lack of ability to

seek reconciliation and to demand justice from its victims; an essential factor that had made

historicizing the Jewish persecution achievable. The Nuremburg trials heard no evidence

from Roma or homosexual witness, for example, and homosexual survivors, as well as Roma

and political criminals, were excluded from the 1956 Reparation Act.6 In essence, there was
2
Vestal, P. Remembering gay victims: An exploration into the history, testimony, and literature of the persecution of
homosexuals by the Third Reich and their effect on a queer collective consciousness. B.A., University of Mary Washington,
Fredericksburg, Virginia, 2006
3
Ibid
4
Stuart, M, Remembering without Commemoration: The Mnemonics and Politics of Holocaust Memories among European
Roma, in The Journal of the Royal Anthropological Institute, Vol. 10, No. 3 (Sep., 2004) p.571
5
Ibid p.571
6
Spurlin, W. J Lost Intimacies: Rethinking Homosexuality under National Socialism. 1st ed (NY 2009) p.86

2
 Candidate no. 27579

no legal, fiscal or public incentive for these groups to explore their past. An indication of the

public hostility and level of social acceptance of homosexuality can be seen within the

comments made by the Mayor of Dachau in 1960. When asked about commemorating the

holocaust, he told an interviewer that "...you must remember that many criminals and

homosexuals were in Dachau. Do you want a memorial for such people?"7 Heinz Heger (the

name that Josef Kohout wrote under) recalls in his book The Men with the Pink Triangle “...I

had been condemned for a criminal offence... the contempt of our fellow humans, and social

discrimination, is the same as it was thirty or fifty years ago. The progress of humanity has

passed us by.”8 With no public demand from survivors for recognition, and no legal offers of

such, the impetus for survivors to record their experiences did not manifest until the late

1060’s and early 1970’s, when gay rights movements challenged the medical and political

fears surrounding homosexuality.

The Kinsey report on male sexuality, printed in 1948, should recognised both as a

landmark in understanding, but also a defining publication which irritated and heighted

societal fears toward, homosexuality within the USA. Kinsey stated that “...at least 37% of

the male population has some homosexual experience between the beginning of adolescence

and old age.... This is more than one male in three of the persons that one may meet as he

passes along a city street.”9 The growing threat of the ‘unidentifiable’ homosexual is

encapsulated within the June 1964 edition of Life magazine, which dedicated 14 pages to

“Homosexuality in America.”10 It asserts that ’85 percent looked and acted like other men,

and could not be spotted for certain even by experts.”11 Further potency to the latter point is
7
Zauner, H, interview by Llew Gardner, Sunday Express, 1960, quoted in Jensen, E.N. The Pink Triangle and Political
Consciousness: Gays, Lesbians, and the Memory of Nazi Persecution (University of Texas Press 2002) p.321
8
Heger, H. The Men with the Pink Triangle. (Boston, 1994).p.117
9
Kinsey, A.C. Sexual Behaviour in the Human Male, 3rd ed. (Indiana University Press, 1998) p.656
10
Life, 26th June 1964 p.66-80 http://books.google.co.uk/books?id=qEEEAAAAMBAJ&lpg=PA66&dq=life%20magazine
%201964%20homosexuality&pg=PA1#v=onepage&q&f=false
11
Ibid. p.77

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 Candidate no. 27579

can be analysed in on the front page of The New York Times with the explicit title: “Do the

homosexuals, like the Communists, intend to bury us?”12 Acting upon the New York

Academy of Medicine’s report on homosexuality of 1964, they argue that “American

homosexuals want far more than to be merely tolerated...their true goal... is to convince the

world that homosexuality is a desirable, noble, preferable way of life.”13 Social fears of

homosexuality had been heightened with the public announcement of Burgess and Maclean’s

defection from Britain to the Soviet Union in 1956, which had been accompanied with

explicit references made in the US media to their ‘perverted’ homosexuality.14 This concept

of homosexuality as an enemy within during the cold war era is comparable to the Nazi

ideology of homosexuality being a ‘betrayal of, and as a threat to, nationalist ideals and

goals,”15 which was being recognised by a state funded medical panel within the USA. The

gay right movements, both within German society and within the USA would adopt the

persecution of homosexuals as a homogenising focal point in which to express and defend

their human rights. In doing so, they evoked the necessary primary fabric, testimony, with

which to initiate the historicization of the homosexual experience. In doing so, they also

complicated and at times compromised scholarly fluidity.

The revision of Paragraph 175 in 1969 in Germany had a profound effect on

establishing witness and testimony to evoke the historicization of the homosexual

persecutions under the Nazi’s. Prior to the amendment to the 1933 act, gay rights activists

such as ‘Homosexuelle Aktion Westberlin’, used the pink triangle, which had been used by

the Nazi’s to identify homosexual prisoners in camps, as a political statement for justice.16 In

the same token, the newly established journal Gay Sunshine advocated in 1973 the use of the

12
The New York Times, 19th May 1964 p.1
13
Ibid. p.75, column 3
14
Penrose, B & Freman, S, Conspiracy of Silence: The Secret Life of Anthony Blunt, 2nd ed. (Grafton, 1987). p.279
15
Spurlin, W. J, Lost Intimacies: Rethinking Homosexuality under National Socialism. 1st ed. (NY, 2009) p.89
16
Spurlin, W. J Lost Intimacies: Rethinking Homosexuality under National Socialism. 1st ed (NY 2009) p.85

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 Candidate no. 27579

pink triangle as a mark of respect to those homosexuals who had suffered under National

Socialism.17 The American gay rights movements had rapidly established an identity in the

light of the Stonewall riots of 1969, which brought a visual representation of oppression to

the fore; however the image of the pink triangle with regards memory of its origins became a

secondary factor in its potency. The publication of Heinz Heger’s The Men with the Pink

Triangle in 1972 has been accredited by Jensen for being a ‘pivotal moment’ for the gay

community, by taking into account the perspectives of the a preceding generation, and

embracing the pink triangle as a symbol of gay identity.18 The politicization of the pink

triangle is evident in the New York Times in September of 1975. Pleading the case for the

rights of homosexuals in employment, Ira Glasser stated: “Many know about the yellow star,

but the pink triangle still lies buried as a virtual historical secret. As a result, there is tolerance

among good people of discrimination against homosexuals.”19 Glasser does not, however,

make explicit the events to which she recognises are ‘buried’; why they occurred, and how

relevant they are in comparison to the cause she is fighting. The potency of the survivor

accounts of persecution in Nazi Germany, and the image of the pink triangle were used, not

to inspire recognition and incite analysis, but primarily as a political measure to bring

awareness to a cause in need of a ‘similar’ historical precedent. The adoption of the pink

triangle became representative of an event that encapsulated the need to reform, however this

did not incite a focus on exploring the events to which the triangle originally represented. A

far greater impetus initiated toward the popularisation of the memories of survivors through

popular culture than scholarly research.

‘Queer’ popular culture depicting the National Socialist persecutions of homosexuals

has ultimately relied upon survivor memory in their narratives, and has tended to ignore other
17
Gay Sunshine, “Gays and Nazi Oppression,” ed. 18 (July 1973) p.11 cited in Jensen, E.N. The Pink Triangle and Political
Consciousness: Gays, Lesbians, and the Memory of Nazi Persecution (University of Texas Press 2002) p.328
18
Jensen, E.N. The Pink Triangle and Political Consciousness: Gays, Lesbians, and the Memory of Nazi Persecution
(University of Texas Press 2002)
19
New York Times, 10th September, 1975, p.45

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 Candidate no. 27579

primary research upon the subject. It can also often be placed as a catalyst for misinterpreting

key facts, which have ultimately distorted and distracted scholarly research. Jean Baudrillard

stated in 1997 that “...history is our lost referential, that is to say our myth,” and must be

“...effaced by an artificial memory.”20 The flaw in the popularisation of the homosexual

experience in the 1970’s and 1980’s is in the very fact that dedicated historical analysis upon

the primary material had yet to emerge, and that the reliance upon memory alone provided a

highly subjective understanding of the events as a whole. Tending to present popular culture

from an individual viewpoint, relative culture in turn became a narrative in which to

champion contemporary issues. Martin Sherman’s Bent is arguably the most identifiable

example of a cultural representation of the homosexual experiences under National

Socialism. It is also an evocative example of the implications of transposing a survivor’s

account into popular culture, the lasting effect that it has made on gay communities, and also

on historicization. Published in 1979 it borrows idea’s formulated from survivor testimonies;

mainly those made by Heinz Heger. During their journey to Dachau, Sherman’s character

Horst advises Max the significance of each of the symbols used within the camp, and advises

that “...pink’s the lowest.”21 Max, a homosexual Jew, is made to rape a young dead female

Jew to obtain the ‘higher’ Star of David from the Gestapo.22 The statement was a powerful

and controversial one, in effect prioritising the persecution of homosexuals above that of the

Final Solution. Golstein criticized Sherman’s decision for its inaccuracy in his Village Voice

article, commented on the ‘inevitability’ of the homosexual ‘needs’ of the holocaust’ in light

of liberation events of the 1970’s.23 The Spectator also rebuked Sherman’s decision for

becoming “...dangerously close to enlisting the unspeakable horrors of Dachau in the

propaganda services of Gay Liberation.”24 Sherman’s inspiration for the play is made clear in
20
Baudrillard, Jean. Simulacra and Simulation. The University of Michigan Press, 1997.p.43
21
Sherman, M. Bent: The Play. (New York,1998) p.33
22
Ibid
23
Goldstein, R. Whose Holocaust? review of Bent by Martin Sherman, Village Voice, 10th December, 1979, p. 46
24
Jenkins, P, "Profane Propaganda," review of Bent by Martin Sherman, Spectator, 12th May, 1979, p.25.

6
 Candidate no. 27579

his interview in the New York Times, attributing his London friends’ belief that ‘...250,000,

perhaps 500,000’ homosexuals had died in the camps.25 It was a belief unfounded in

historical research, and its effect can be seen in the first major scholarly analysis of the

homosexual experience: Frank Rector’s The Nazi Extermination of Homosexuals. His

analyses lead him to believe that it seemed “...reasonable to conclude that at least 500,000

gays in the Holocaust died because of prejudice against homosexuals ... In reality, the

500,000 figure may seem too conservative.”26 He also insisted that homosexuals had been

part of a Final Solution, with thousands killed in the refuted ‘gas chamber’ of Dachau.27

Seifert believes that “...fictional and autobiographical works have in part engendered

historical research and vice versa.” 28 The adoption of the homosexual experience within

popular culture both encourage a vague awareness of the fact that persecution took place, but

as Seifert acknowledges “...without...specific or differentiated knowledge of dates, events,

and figures.29 With gay rights movement at the fore of enlightening the historicization of the

persecution of homosexuals under National Socialism, the value of its message had often

been placed higher than establishing fact.

The AIDS epidemic, identified in the late early 1980’s became a focal point for a

greater exploration of the homosexual persecution during National Socialism, in light of a

more identifiable parallel that AIDS had established with the gay rights movements. Spurlin

traces many similarities between the oppression faced by the gay community in the early

stages of AIDS awareness to that experienced under National Socialism, particularly in

analysing the inaction of the US government when the virus was associated within a
25
Buckley, T. 'Bent' to Dramatize Little-Told Nazi Horror; A Youngster During the War. New York Times, 15th November
1979. p.17
26
Rector, F, Nazi Extermination of Homosexuals, 2nd ed. (New York, 1981). p.52
27
Ibid
28
Seifert, D. Between Silence and License: The Representation of the National Socialist Persecution of Homosexuality in
Anglo-American Fiction and Film. In History & Memory 15.2 (Fall/Winter 2003). p.104
29
Seifert, D. Between Silence and License: The Representation of the National Socialist Persecution of Homosexuality in
Anglo-American Fiction and Film. In History & Memory 15.2 (Fall/Winter 2003). p.105

7
 Candidate no. 27579

‘disposable’ section of the community.30 GRID (gay-related immune deficiency) became a

term coined by the US press for the then unnamed virus, and the social implications of this

un-curable disease were heightened by the US media. The Holocaust thus became not only a

parallel to social inequality, but a metaphor to the rapidly increasing numbers of AIDS

victims who were receiving little governmental response. ACT-UP, an early US AIDS

organisation, adopted the now commonplace pink triangle, but turned it on its head to

demonstrate a willingness to survive. Their slogan ‘Silence = Death’, as Marshall has

observed, being the converse ethos for homosexuals in Nazi Germany, when silence would

equal survival.31 It is the ‘reversal’ of the pink triangle which denotes a shift in the

historicization of the homosexual experience of the Holocaust. With a rapid death toll, and

distinction from the ‘gay only’ virus from 1982, the publication in 1989 of Reports from the

holocaust: The making of an AIDS activist demonstrates the extent to which the AIDS

connection to an altogether new definition of ‘holocaust’ had emerged. Although comparable

in the many areas that Spurlin has suggested, they are two separate events in time and place,

and the potency of ‘memory’ in the precedential event does not instil a drive to historicize it,

rather to simply highlight comparisons to bring meaning to a contemporary cause. Stein

summarises that ...the spectra of a Holocaust has been utilized by lesbians and gay men to

dramatize their plight as an oppressed group in American society...reflect(ing) the historical

oppression of homosexuals during the Nazi reign of terror, (homosexuals) use the frame as

metaphor, drawing parallels between contemporary homosexuals and the victims of Nazism

fifty years earlier.32

30
Spurlin, W. J, Lost Intimacies: Rethinking Homosexuality under National Socialism. 1st ed. (NY, 2009) p.94
31
Marshall, S, The Contemporary Political Use of Gay History: The Third Reich, in How Do I Look? Queer Film and Video,
(Seattle, 1991) p 69-70.
32
Stein, Arlene. Whose Memories? Whose Victimhood? Contests for the Holocaust frame in Recent Social Movement
Discourse. In Sociological Perspectives 41.3 (1998). p.527

8
 Candidate no. 27579

Although it is undeniable that without the persistence of the gay rights movements to

establish solidarity through examining their past, the experience of homosexuals during

National Socialism would not have been brought to fore to the extent that it had by the

1980’s, it is important to question to what extent the facts were examined for their historical

merit. Memory has been prioritised over analysis. The establishment of the United States

Holocaust Memorial has set a foundation in which to build a comprehensible historicization

of the homosexual persecutions within Nazi Germany. Writing in 1992, Müiller questioned

the reasons for the persistence in aligning contemporary homosexual issues to those in Nazi

Germany. He warned against the use of false analogy, and asks the question at hand: “Who

do we remember?”33 He notes the extremity of exaggeration used by both gay groups and

academics: “...up to 1 million dead gays and lesbians? Although big numbers create big

emotions, here they only document a disturbing attitude in our community. Is there

something within us we need to satisfy by inventing an even harsher history than history

itself has been for us?”34 The same need to attach historical precedent toward a cause does not

only occur within oppressed and marginalised fractions of society who fight against injustice,

they inevitably espouse to those who wish to subvert truths. Could Abraham’s and Lively’s

Pink Swastika have been received as a ‘thoroughly researched, eminently readable,

demolition of the 'gay' myth’35, had more emphasis been made toward historicization in place

of comparison? Are their ‘facts’ of a homosexual-lead Holocaust any easier to refute that the

‘millions of murdered homosexuals’ claimed by historians? The failure to establish a firm

historical discourse on the persecution of homosexuals during National Socialism not only

leaves room for manipulation, but also repetition. It is no co-incidence that The Pink

Swastika was born in a climate fraught with opposition to same-sex adoption and marriage.

Sara Hart said “...Before we can wear the triangle, or carry the banner that reads 'Never
33
Muller, K. The Holocaust & AIDS. The Advocate, 4th May 1993, p.5
34
Muller, K. The Holocaust & AIDS. The Advocate, 4th May 1993, p.5
35
http://www.amazon.com/Pink-Swastika-Homosexuality-Nazi-Party/dp/0964760908

9
 Candidate no. 27579

Again,' we must first remember.”36 With homosexuals who were persecuted under National

Socialism acknowledged and recorded within the United States Holocaust Memorial, it is

now time transform popular memory into the well established Holocaust forum of scholarly

debate.

Bibliography

Baudrillard, Jean. Simulacra and Simulation. The University of Michigan Press, 1997

Berenbaum, M. Witnesses to the Holocaust. 1st ed. (New York, 1997)

Burleigh, M, and Wolfgang, W. The Racial State Germany.1933-1945 (Cambridge, 1991).

36
Sara Hart, "A Dark Past Brought to Light," 10 Percent (winter 1993):p74.

10
 Candidate no. 27579

Buckley, T. 'Bent' to Dramatize Little-Told Nazi Horror; A Youngster During the War. New
York Times, 15th November 1979.

Gay Sunshine, “Gays and Nazi Oppression,” ed. 18 (July 1973)

Goldstein, R. Whose Holocaust? review of Bent by Martin Sherman, Village Voice, 10th
December, 1979

Heger, H. The Men with the Pink Triangle. (Boston, 1994).

Hackett, D.A. The Buchenwald Report. 1st ed. (Oxford, 1995)

Jensen, E.N. The Pink Triangle and Political Consciousness: Gays, Lesbians, and the
Memory of Nazi Persecution (University of Texas Press 2002)

Jenkins, P, "Profane Propaganda," review of Bent by Martin Sherman, Spectator, 12th May,
1979

Kinsey, A.C. Sexual Behaviour in the Human Male, 3rd ed. (Indiana University Press, 1998)

Life, 26th June 1964

Lively, S. The Pink Swastika. 1sr ed. 2nd ed. (New York 1996)

Marshall, S, The Contemporary Political Use of Gay History: The Third Reich, in How Do I
Look? Queer Film and Video, (Seattle, 1991)

Michael B, A Mosaic of Victims: Non-Jews Persecuted and Murdered by the Nazis,  (New
York, 1990)

Miller, N. Out of the past: Gay and Lesbian History from 1869 to the present. 2nd ed. (New
York, 1995)

Muller, K. The Holocaust & AIDS. The Advocate, 4th May 1993

New York Times, 19th May 1964

Penrose, B & Freman, S, Conspiracy of Silence: The Secret Life of Anthony Blunt, 2nd ed.
(Grafton, 1987

Plant, R. The Pink Triangle: The Nazi War against Homosexuals (New York, 1986).

Rector, F, Nazi Extermination of Homosexuals 2nd ed. (New York 1981)

Sherman, M. Bent: The Play. (New York,1998)

Seifert, D. Between Silence and License: The Representation of the National Socialist
Persecution of Homosexuality in Anglo-American Fiction and Film. In History & Memory
15.2 (Fall/Winter 2003). p.104

11
 Candidate no. 27579

Stuart, M, Remembering without Commemoration: The Mnemonics and Politics of Holocaust

Memories among European Roma, in The Journal of the Royal Anthropological Institute,
Vol. 10, No. 3 (Sep., 2004)

Spurlin, W.J. Lost Intimacies: Rethinking Homosexuality under National Socialism. 1st ed.
(New York, 2009)

Vestal, P. Remembering gay victims: An exploration into the history, testimony, and
literature of the persecution of homosexuals by the Third Reich and their effect on a queer
collective consciousness. B.A., University of Mary Washington, Fredericksburg, Virginia,
2006

Zauner, H, interview by Llew Gardner, Sunday Express, 1960

12