Pink Triangle Legacies: Coming Out in the Shadow of the Holocaust 9781501765506

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PINK TRIANGLE LEGACIES

PINK TRIANGLE LEGACIES COMING O U T I N T H E S H A D OW O F T H E H O LO C AUST

W. Jake Newsome

CORNELL UNIVERSITY PRESS Ithaca and London

Copyright © 2022 by W. Jake Newsome Portions of Chapters 1, 2, 3, 4, and 6 have been previously published by Cengage Learning Inc. in the entry “Pink Triangle” in Global Encyclopedia of Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Transgender, and Queer (LGBTQ) History, edited by Howard Chiang (Farmington Hills, MI: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 2019). Reproduced by permission. www.cengage. com/permissions. All rights reserved. Except for brief quotations in a review, this book, or parts thereof, must not be reproduced in any form without permission in writing from the publisher. For information, address Cornell University Press, Sage House, 512 East State Street, Ithaca, New York 14850. Visit our website at cornellpress.cornell.edu. First published 2022 by Cornell University Press Printed in the United States of America Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Names: Newsome, W. Jake, 1987- author. Title: Pink triangle legacies : coming out in the shadow of the Holocaust / W. Jake Newsome. Description: Ithaca [New York] : Cornell University Press, 2022. | Includes bibliographical references and index. Identifiers: LCCN 2022006796 (print) | LCCN 2022006797 (ebook) | ISBN 9781501765155 (hardcover) | ISBN 9781501765490 (epub) | ISBN 9781501765506 (pdf ) Subjects: LCSH: Gays—Germany—Social conditions—20th century. | Homosexuality—Germany—History—20th century. | Homosexuality—Germany—Historiography. | Gays—Nazi persecution—Germany. | National socialism and homosexuality. | Gays—Germany (West)—Social conditions. | Gays—United States—Social conditions—20th century. | Homosexuality— Germany (West) | Homosexuality—United States—History—20th century. | Gay liberation movement—Germany (West) | Gay liberation movement—United States—History—20th century. | Sexual minority community—Germany (West) | Sexual minority community—United States—History—20th century. | Gays— Germany—Identity. | Gays—Germany (West)—Identity. | Gays— United States—Identity. Classification: LCC HQ76.3.G4 N49 2022 (print) | LCC HQ76.3.G4 (ebook) | DDC 306.76/609430904—dc23/eng/20220404 LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2022006796 LC ebook record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2022006797

For my grandfather, Richard “Dick” Moseley, who was a master storyteller

Contents

Acknowledgments Abbreviations

ix

xiii

Introduction: “Beaten to Death, Silenced to Death”

1

1. “They Are Enemies of the State!”: The Fate of LGBTQ+ People in Nazi Germany

20

2. “For Homosexuals, the Third Reich Hasn’t Ended Yet”: Paragraph 175 and the Nazi Past in West Germany

53

3. “The Only Acceptable Gay Liberation Logo”: The Reclamation of the Pink Triangle in West Germany

82

4. “It’s a Scar, but in Your Heart”: The Pink Triangle in American Gay Activism

106

5. “Remembrances of Things Once Hidden”: Piecing Together the Pink Triangle Past on Stage and on Page

136

6. “We Died There, Too”: Commemoration and the Construction of a Transatlantic Gay Identity

168

Epilogue: “Remembering Must Also Have Consequences”

204

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CO N T E N TS

Appendix A: Timeline of Key Events

217

Appendix B: Memorials to Gay Victims of the Nazi

Regime 221

Appendix C: Memorials with Pink Triangle for

LGBTQ Victims of Violence 226

Notes

227

Bibliography Index

275

261

Acknow l e dgme nts

I’ve heard it said that historical research is a lonely endeavor. It’s true that I spent a lot of time alone in front of the com­ puter, with my nose shoved in a book, or rummaging around in archives. But one of the most rewarding parts of researching and writing this book has been meeting so many wonderful and insightful people who passionately gave their time and knowledge. This work is truly a reflection of and tribute to a collaborative spirit, a culmination of voices that transcend decades, con­ tinents, and languages. It is my genuine honor to acknowledge my gratitude to the following people who made this book possible. Over the past ten years, I worked with some outstanding archivists and librarians who are committed to preserving America and Germany’s LGBTQ+ history. I owe a debt of gratitude to the following individuals: Rainer Hoffschildt (Schwullesbische Archiv, Hanover); Albert Knoll (Dachau Concentration Camp Memorial Site) and the rest of the team at the Fo­ rum Queeres Archiv München (Munich); Friedrich-H. Schregel (Centrum Schwule Geschichte, Cologne); Jens Dobler, who was at the Schwules Mu­ seum in Berlin at the time; Andrew Elder and Libby Bouvier (the History Project, Boston); Paul Fasana (Stonewall National Museum and Archives, Fort Lauderdale); Marjorie Bryer (GLBT Historical Society, San Francisco); and Morgan Gwenwald (the Lesbian Herstory Archives, New York). I’m es­ pecially grateful to my friend Jo-Ellen Decker (US Holocaust Memorial Mu­ seum, Washington, DC) for her assistance in navigating the Arolsen Archives to piece together the documentation necessary to tell the stories of men arrested under Paragraph 175 in Nazi Germany. I will always remain thankful to my doctoral advisory committee at the University at Buffalo (SUNY) for their guidance and keen insights: Andreas Daum, my adviser and friend; Susan Cahn, who patiently helped me appreci­ ate gender and sexuality as a way of approaching history and understanding the human experience; and Sasha Pack, who prompted me to think about what the pink triangle can teach us about European history more broadly.

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I’m also thankful to Geoffrey Giles, who provided invaluable feedback throughout my research and writing of the manuscript. I also want to thank the professors at Valdosta State University who so greatly influenced me as a student, a scholar, and a person. Charles Johnson was my undergraduate adviser and taught me the discipline it takes to write history. He also taught me to look up from the books and learn from the world around me. In many ways, I owe my outlook on life as a scholar and as a person to Matthew Richard. His cultural anthropology courses taught me to think critically and approach questions with an interdisciplinary mind-set. Most importantly, though, Matthew instilled in me a deep conviction that education should be a form of activism, a force for positive and meaningful social change in the world. Words can’t capture my appreciation for Ofé­ lia Nikolova, a larger-than-life character with a keen intellect and a heart as good as gold. I’ll always be thankful for Ofélia’s encouragement, which made this boy from rural southwest Georgia feel confident enough to stand before crowds of scholars and present his ideas. This book would not have been possible without the following people who agreed to give their time and share their memories with me during interviews: Patrick Carney, Jok Church, Eli Erlick, Avram Finkelstein, Jose Gutierrez, Peter Hedenström, Gerard Koskovich, Jörg Lenk, Corbyn Lyday, Crystal Mason, Klaus Mueller, Roland Müller, Nancy Nangeroni, Joan Nestle, Lesléa Newman, Ted Phillips, Mark Segal, and Martha Shelley. In addition to sitting for interviews, the following folks helped me above and beyond by connecting me with other sources and providing feedback over the course of months as I sifted through new information: Morgan Gwen­ wald, Jonathan Ned Katz, Jim Steakley, David Thorstad, Brian Howard, and the other members of the Silence = Death collective who reviewed passages of the manuscript. The following folks helped decipher material, recommended leads, and helped me think through ways of understanding and talking about expe­ riences that I’ve not been through: Robert Beachy, Tiffany Florvil, Raffi Freedman-Gurspan, Craig Griffiths, Dominique Grisard, Anna Hájková, Samuel Huneke, Jay Irwin, Sébastien Tremblay, Angelika von Wahl, Richard Wetzell, and Wiebke Haß (and the other members of the Initiative of Au­ tonomous Feminist Women and Lesbians from Germany and Austria who read and provided feedback on key passages of material). Thank you for your exchange of ideas. The members of my grad school writing group provided friendship, feedback, and support in this project’s earlier iteration: Averill Earls, Sarah Handley-Cousins, Elisabeth George, Maggie Magdalena, Kathryn Lawton,

ACkNOwlEdgmENTS

xi

and Colin Eager. In addition to colleagues, we were all friends, exploring Buf­ falo together, making our presence known on the local trivia circuit (Citation Station all the way!), and singing until we were hoarse on karaoke nights. Proud Mary, keep on burning. I am thankful for the keen eye and sound advice of the following scholars who read my manuscript (in part or in its entirety) or discussed it with me at length, providing invaluable feedback: Debórah Dwork, Dagmar Herzog, Annette Timm, Jennifer Evans, Laurie Marhoefer, Betsy Anthony, Sara Brin­ egar, Kierra Crago-Schneider, Alexandra Lohse, Dallas Michelbacher, and Katharine White. I would like to thank Mrs. Anne Tirone, whose endowed fellowship funded my research and writing. “Miz Anne” is a kind and philanthropic soul, and I am deeply grateful for her continued friendship over the years. Several organizations provided financial support at different stages of this project: The German Historical Institute (Washington, DC), the University at Buffalo (UB) College of Arts and Sciences, the UB Department of History, and the UB Graduate Student Association’s Mark Diamond Research Fund. I am thankful to Emily Andrew, who started out as my editor at Cornell University Press, for seeing the potential in this project before I did and for motivating me to submit a manuscript proposal. I am also grateful to Allegra Martschenko at Cornell for her observant eye and critical perspective as we navigated the process of image selection for the book. And to the wonderful team at Cornell —Jennifer Savran Kelly and Glenn Novak in production and copyediting, Rebeca Brutus, Mia Renaud, and Brock Schnoke in marketing, and Scott Levine in design—thank you for your belief in and dedication to this project. The insightful feedback from my manuscript’s anonymous read­ ers led to revisions that truly made this a better book. As any scholar knows, an index is an invaluable component of a book. I am thankful to Lisa DeBoer for her expertise in crafting this book’s index. And finally, to my editor at Cornell, Bethany Wasik, thank you for your skill and guidance in bringing this book to print. I also appreciate the support of my friends. Slaton Whatley has been my best friend since the second grade and has been enthusiastic about this proj­ ect from its infancy to publication. To the Guthrie Gang: thank you for sup­ porting me and Dennis and for always listening to my impromptu history lectures on our street happy hours. To Kim Blevins-Relleva, Becca Cook, and Kerry Phipps: You are my chosen family. It is no exaggeration to say this book would not have made it over the finish line without you. In addi­ tion to reading passages and providing feedback, brainstorming new ideas, and loving this project as much as I do, you selflessly hyped me up and gave

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love, laughs, and optimism, which were especially needed during the global pandemic. Thank you. Words cannot express how thankful I am to my family. My mother, Tammy, has taught me many things about life, but I am always humbled by her deep sense of compassion for humanity. And in my opinion, a good work of history is an act of compassion; it gives a voice to those who have been silenced and marginalized. My father, Clay, who comes from a long line of farmers, supported my decision to become a historian. He and my step­ mother Christy instilled in me perseverance and a strong work ethic. To my brothers, Luke and Cayden, thank you for always making me laugh. Studying the Holocaust is a dark endeavor, but you always give me something to smile about. My grandmother, Nanny Judy, nurtured my love of the past, and if I ever complained in high school that history was boring, she insisted that either the teacher wasn’t teaching it right, or I wasn’t really paying attention. As usual, she was right. This book is dedicated to my late grandfather, Papa Dick, who taught me to love hearing and telling stories. I can’t count how many times we would be piddling around in the barn only for something to cause him to stop, smile, and say, “That reminds me of a story.” And after all, one of the primary privileges of a historian is to be humanity’s storyteller. My great-aunt Dale and my late great-aunt Cheryl taught me what it’s like to have “groupies”! Any time I was in Florida for research or to give a lecture, they would drive to see me, no matter where in the state I was. They both modeled a selfless and fierce love. My son, Roman, came into this world just as I was sending this manu­ script off to the publisher. Thank you for making me a papa. And then there’s my husband, Dennis. We met during my first semester in the PhD program, and he has been with me (and this project) from the very beginning. He has participated in hours upon hours of impromptu lecturing and brainstorm­ ing, read countless drafts of chapters, expressed (feigned?) excitement over every new discovery in the archives, and attended more history conferences than he ever thought he would . . . all while being an IT specialist. I have no doubt he is as much an expert on this history as I am, whether he wants to be or not. Dennis, thank you for having confidence in me and for loving me, especially on the days when I felt I couldn’t escape the darkness of this his­ tory. But, above all, thank you for taking me on surprise adventures along the way, for dancing in the kitchen with me, for daydreaming about our future together, and for simply being you. I love you.

A bbrevi ati ons

ACT UP AHA AKG BEG BVH CDU CID FRG GAA GAU GDR HAW HSH HuK LHA LSVD SA SPD SS TSER

AIDS Coalition to Unleash Power Allgemeine Homosexuelle Arbeitsgemeinschaft (General Homosexual Committee) Allgemeine Kriegsfolgengesetz (General Consequences of War Law) Bundesentschädigungsgesetz (Federal Compensation Law) Bundesverband Homosexualität (Federal Association on Homosexuality) Christian Democratic Union Comité International de Dachau (International Dachau Committee) Federal Republic of Germany (official name of “West Germany,” 1949-90, and of unified Germany, 1990-present) Gay Activists Alliance Gay Academic Union German Democratic Republic (former “East Germany”) Homosexuelle Aktion Westberlin (Gay Action West Berlin) Aktionsgruppe Homosexualität Hannover (Homosexual Action Group of Hanover) Homosexuelle und Kirche (Homosexuals and the Church) Lesbian Herstory Archives Lesben- und Schwulenverband in Deutschland (Lesbian and Gay Union of Germany) Sturmabteilung (Storm Troopers) Social Democratic Party of Germany Schutzstaffel (Defense Squadron) Trans Student Educational Resources

xiii

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A B B R E V I AT I O N S

USHMM VSG VVN WhK

United States Holocaust Memorial Museum (Washington, DC) Verein für sexuelle Gleichberechtigung (Society for Sexual Equality) Vereinigung der Verfolgten des Naziregimes (Association of the Persecuted of the Nazi Regime) Wissenschaftlich-humanitäres Komitee (ScientificHumanitarian Committee)

PINK TRIANGLE LEGACIES

Introduction “Beaten to Death, Silenced to Death”

It was a brisk evening with a blanket of stars overhead as we walked across campus. It was mid-February, but the palm trees, fronds gently rustling, were a reminder that winter had no bite in south Georgia. Picturesque Valdosta State University had been my home for four years, and although it had only been two months since I graduated, I was excited to be back on familiar ground and point out to my family the history department, the best place to grab a burger on campus, and my favorite spot to sit and read on the front lawn. Checking my watch, I guided us to the sci­ ence center, which housed the largest auditorium on campus. As we entered the building, I could not have anticipated that the lecture I was about to hear would ultimately shape the trajectory of my life. The room was packed with faculty, students, and members of the local community. As we settled in seats near the top of the room, a projector beamed the title of the lecture onto the screen: “Suppressed, Silenced, and Shunned: The Story of the Pink Triangle Prisoners in Hitler’s Reich.” The speaker—Dr. Susan Eischeid, a professor on campus—provided a detailed history of the fate of gay men and lesbians during the Third Reich. When the Nazis came to power, they sought to crack down on all expressions of gender and sexuality that did not conform to their ideals. Of all LGBTQ+ people, gay men were viewed by the Nazis as the most dangerous threat to

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INTROduCTION

their plans for a new Germany, so they ruthlessly enforced a national law that they had inherited, which criminalized “unnatural indecency between men.” They quickly amended the existing statute, Paragraph 175, giving themselves unprecedented legal authority in their campaign against homo­ sexuality. Ultimately, the Nazi regime arrested one hundred thousand men for violating Paragraph 175. Between seven thousand and ten thousand men were sent to concentration camps, where their uniforms were marked with a pink triangle.1 Lesbians and others whose sexuality or gender existed beyond the norms of the time were not subject to arrest and prosecution under Para­ graph 175 but faced other forms of persecution as the Nazis destroyed the vibrant and dynamic societies that queer Germans had built for themselves during the Weimar Republic. While lesbians were not targeted as a group, their ability to live openly was shattered, as they were expected to conform to the Nazi expectations of German motherhood and womanhood. Apart from the occasional gasp or sniffle brought forth by the horrors of the history nar­ rated by Eischeid, the audience in the south Georgia auditorium remained silent, too stunned to shift in their seats or whisper among themselves. At the conclusion, my family and I exited the auditorium, but there was no light banter. I was lost in thought, mired in a state of confusion. As an undergraduate student, I had taken every course at Valdosta State on World War II, Nazi Germany, and the Holocaust. By my final year, I was quite confident—with a certainty that only comes with the self-assuredness of youth and inexperience—that I knew everything there was to know about the Third Reich and the Holocaust. As we walked to our car that February night in 2010, I wondered how I had studied this history for four years and never learned about what happened to people we would today call members of the LGBTQ+ community.2 Of course, “homosexuals” had been included on the obligatory list of “other victims” in the Holocaust history books I had read, but it became embarrassingly clear that I did not know anything be­ yond that. Why hadn’t I learned more? Why had I never thought to ask about the fate of this community, especially as a young, gay man in the process of figuring out my own identity and connection to the LGBTQ+ community? When I followed up on these inquiries, the answer I repeatedly found was deceptively simple: homosexuality had remained illegal and such a strict taboo after the Holocaust that no one, neither historians nor gay survivors themselves, spoke about the fate of queer communities in Hitler’s Germany for decades. It seemed that queer people were among the so-called forgot­ ten victims of the Nazi regime, and knowledge about their lives was lost to a deafening historical silence. As frustrating as this answer was, it made sense to me at the time. How could we know something that had never been

“ B E AT E N TO d E AT h , S I l E N C E d TO d E AT h ”

3

documented? How could historians write a history with evidence that simply was not there? With the same level of self-assuredness and naïveté, I began my doctoral program driven by the conviction that I would be the one to break the si­ lence and force society to remember what it had either forgotten or never acknowledged. In preparation for my research, I discovered that a handful of scholars (mostly gay and lesbian themselves) had been researching and publishing on this topic since the late 1970s. As my German language skills improved, a whole body of research became available to me. I realized that generations of scholars before me had made great strides in documenting what happened to queer people in the Third Reich. But what about the three decades between the end of World War II and the publication of the first scholarship on the topic? I traveled to German archives to explore what led to the supposed postwar silence. When I arrived, I did not expect to find any material from the decades after Nazi Germany’s defeat. To my surprise, I found mountains of material: court records, compensa­ tion applications, police files, military reports, and even a handful of first­ hand accounts from queer survivors themselves. It quickly became apparent that no one had forgotten the Nazis’ gay victims—not the Allies governing Germany during the occupation period, not West German government of­ ficials who rejected gay concentration camp survivors’ petitions for recogni­ tion, not the public who repeated rumors and stories they had heard, not the generations of mainstream scholars who wrote exclusionary histories, not the archivists who destroyed files on gay victims to make room for more “ar­ chive worthy” material,3 and not the denazification commissions that wrote letters to gay survivors explaining that “only” seven months in a concentra­ tion camp did not constitute sufficient suffering to qualify for compensation.4 The wave of West German gay activists, journalists, and researchers who, beginning in the 1970s, forced their society to acknowledge this part of their nation’s past had clearly not forgotten either. Where I had expected to find silence, I found a cacophony of voices, a full orchestra of memories. But it was an orchestra without echo in the mainstream historical narratives. This revelation led me to an entirely new set of questions. Why had the work of queer scholars about queer people not been integrated into main­ stream education about the Holocaust, even by the time I was studying it in the first years of the new millennium? What were the implications of this selective telling of the past? What does it mean to forget the suffering of an entire community? These questions were the impetus for the project that became this book, and the answers led me in surprising directions. What began as an interest in what happened to queer people in Nazi Germany

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evolved into an investigation of memory making, social activism, and the in­ ner workings of historical scholarship that spanned decades and continents. As much as my research revealed about a set of certain historical events, it also illuminated the morals, values, and priorities of societies that chose to forget those events. This book, however, is not just about the individuals and institutions that used their authority to decide who should be considered a victim of Nazi injustice. At the heart of the book are the queer people whose voices the mainstream had silenced and ignored. This is a history of people who tapped into their own courage and chose to risk their reputations and their lives by coming out, building communities, acting in solidarity, and writing themselves into history. The following pages trace their resilience as they found ways to navigate the tools of silence—social taboos, legal oppres­ sion, governmental bureaucracy, and moral condemnation—to articulate their voices, share their stories, and preserve the memory of Hitler’s gay vic­ tims. If my work is about the destructive force of silencing, it also illustrates the inspiring and creative power of remembering. This book is a comparative study of how governments and citizens in West Germany and the United States simultaneously mediated the mean­ ing of the Nazi past and the understanding of the present through public debates, museum exhibits, governmental policies, and the construction of memorials. It chronicles a history of agency, action, and meaning making. During the second half of the twentieth century, the history of the Nazi per­ secution of queer people became a site of negotiation about the definition of sexual identity, victimhood, and justice in relation to the rights and privileges of citizenship. This is the first book to use a transnational approach to trace how personal and collective memories about the fate of queer communities in the Holocaust helped establish historical roots that nourished the forma­ tion of a modern, transatlantic gay identity. The pink triangle holds unique significance in the LGBTQ+ community. Yet this book delineates phenomena that resonate beyond a particular group. Tracing the financial, legal, and social repercussions of the initial denial and eventual acknowledgment of Hitler’s gay victims lays bare how conceptions of the Holocaust era and the Nazis’ victims changed over time in Germany and the United States. This book traces stories that traverse oceans and span nearly ninety years. To tell this long and complex history, I chart the transformation of a symbol at the heart of it all: the pink triangle. Originating as a concentration camp badge, the pink triangle was used by the Nazi SS (Schutzstaffel) to identify men imprisoned in concentration camps for being gay. For those men, the pink triangle meant torture, degradation, humiliation, and in all too many

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5

cases, death. Decades later, gay activists—first in West Germany and then in the United States—imbued the symbol with new meaning as they fought for legal and social equality. Embodied in the pink triangle, history became a tool to combat discrimination in the present as gay activists used it to press the governments of West Germany and the United States to distance them­ selves from the violent and murderous antihomosexual policies of the Third Reich. In the context of gay activism, queer communities transformed the pink triangle from a badge of damnation, shame, and imprisonment into a visual marker of resistance, pride, and liberation. The specter of the Nazi past empowered a transnational social movement for the rights of queer citizens on both sides of the Atlantic. As the use of the pink triangle spread across western Europe and North America, so too did a sense of shared his­ torical roots, which helped lay the foundations for a modern gay identity that transcended national boundaries.

Sources To write this book, I stand on the shoulders of scholars who have dedicated their careers to researching the experiences of LGBTQ+ people during the Holocaust in a time when one could still face discrimination and hostility for doing so: Rüdiger Lautmann, Hans-Georg Stümke, Günter Grau, Clau­ dia Schoppmann, Burkhard Jellonnek, Elizabeth Heineman, Geoffrey Giles, Laurie Marhoefer, Rainer Hoffschildt, Anna Hájková, and so many others whose work made my own possible.5 My work contributes to the foundation of new scholarship on the post­ war legacies of the Nazis’ violent campaign against homosexuality. Recently, researchers have explored specific manifestations of “pink triangle memo­ ries,” a shorthand I use throughout to refer to collective remembrances of the Nazi persecution of queer people. These studies focus, for example, on the role of the pink triangle in social activism, the development of fictional accounts of queer people in the Holocaust, and the construction in Berlin of the national memorial to the Nazis’ gay victims. Each of these studies pro­ vides invaluable insight into the creation of these acts of remembrance. This book deploys a broader lens, however, and builds on the pioneering work of Jennifer Evans, Dagmar Herzog, Erik Jensen, Dorthe Seifert, and Angelika von Wahl, as well as the recent innovative work by a new generation of scholars, like Craig Griffiths, Samuel Huneke, Sébastien Tremblay, Christo­ pher Vials, and Christiane Wilke, among others.6 I analyze the politics of pink triangle memories in a comprehensive temporal and spatial context. Only by examining these memory practices together over time and space

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is it possible to discern the deeper and most significant transformations of memory, citizenship, and identity formation, and the transatlantic nature of these transformations, none of which is reflected in the current literature. I draw upon a wide range of source materials to construct and analyze the legacies of the pink triangle: autobiographical accounts, the gay and main­ stream presses, novels and stage plays, parliamentary debates, political mani­ festos, and social activist posters and flyers. I also conducted interviews with over twenty-five individuals in Germany and the United States to learn how the pink triangle resonated with people from diverse backgrounds and expe­ riences as men, women, gay, bi, lesbian, nonbinary, cisgender, transgender, white, and persons of color.7 This range of sources allows me to showcase queer voices from the archives and in their own words. In each of the chapters, I unpack the unique conditions that led to specific expressions of pink triangle memories. In examining these cultural artifacts collectively, it becomes apparent that the particular pink triangle memories, whether in the form of Broadway plays or historical scholarship, are part of broader legal and cultural debates about homosexuality, victimhood, na­ tional belonging, and identity among queer communities and the wider pub­ lic in the former West Germany and the United States. Although this originates as a West German history, members of the gay liberation movement in the United States also began to discuss and politi­ cize the Nazi past in the 1970s. As these activists wrote letters to their West German counterparts and traveled to meet in person, they shared stories, gossiped, swapped political strategies, and pieced together a “gay history” that queer people could claim as their own, no matter one’s nationality. The establishment of this history was vital to the formation of a collective queer identity. Mark Segal was only eighteen at the time of the famous Stonewall riots in New York City. He immediately joined the Gay Liberation Front in 1969. “Our whole purpose was to create our own identity and to begin to create our own community.” For Segal, gay liberation in the present went hand in hand with exploring the gay past. “Part of community building was beginning to look at our history. How do you have pride in yourself unless you know your history and what you’ve contributed to civilization? And part of that is knowing: What has civilization done to you?”8 All the while, activists on both sides of the Atlantic created and distrib­ uted buttons, T-shirts, stickers, banners, and posters emblazoned with the pink triangle. Thus, the pink triangle—as a political symbol and collection of memories—became a visible marker of personal identity, gay history, and social activism that fostered a sense of solidarity and shared roots among queer communities across national contexts.

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grafted memories The transfer of ideas, memories, and historical information is not static. Un­ derstandings of a topic change as they are introduced in a new setting and to new audiences. As we seek to make sense of ourselves and our place in the world, we collect bits and pieces of memories, narratives, and histories, bringing them together into a constant state of reassessment and transfor­ mation as we mold the boundaries of our identities. Our understandings of the past help root who we are in time and place. As historian Robbert-Jan Adriaansen writes, “Identity has to be actively constructed by recalling past events, through which individuals or collectives can ‘fixate’ themselves in time by emphasizing historical continuities or discontinuities.”9 In our pro­ cess of fixating our identities in history, we pull from a myriad of sources: personal experiences, books, movies, anecdotes from friends or family, na­ tional myths, and even “common knowledge” that we may not even know where we learned in the first place. Scholar Marianne Hirsch offers the concept of postmemory to help explain how individuals and communities seek to establish a relationship with the past by embracing the memories of previous generations, even though they themselves did not experience those memories firsthand. Hirsch writes, “Postmemory’s connection to the past is thus actually mediated not by [personal] recall, but by imaginative investment, projection, and creation.”10 Recent scholarship by Sébastien Tremblay illustrates how this process is re­ flexive. As history and memories of previous generations help shape identities in the present, the process of identity formation can also influence under­ standings of the past. As West German gay activists established a collective political identity, they also sought to “articulate a newly-discovered, collective gay past.”11 Beginning in the 1970s, the gay movement integrated pink trian­ gle memories into gay activism, history, and identity in West Germany, even though none of the activists themselves had lived through the Nazi regime. Hirsch’s postmemory is useful in explaining how a generation of West Ger­ man gay activists in the 1970s sought to relate to previous generations of queer Germans who lived and suffered during the Nazi regime. To under­ stand the complex, transatlantic processes that allowed gay communities in the US to adopt German memories as their own, I offer the concept of grafted memories. The metaphor implies that although memories may originate ex­ ternally, they ultimately become enmeshed in one’s own subjective memory and sense of place in history.12 As memories of Nazi persecution were grafted to fit an American context, they were enriched with meanings that were both common to and distinct from their German origins. But, like medical grafts,

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grafted memories only function successfully if they are a good fit. These memories of a gay German history “fit” American activists because they, too, were gay. Historian Michael Rothberg writes that the complex nature of memory is a “source of powerful creativity,” offering “the ability to build new worlds out of the materials of older ones.”13 As West German and US gay activists grafted pink triangle memories into new contexts, they not only connected two separate national communities. They used this “powerful cre­ ativity” to build something new. The formation and grafting of transnational pink triangle memories helped form the basis of a shared gay history, indeed a shared gay identity, that transcended borders. These gay activists claimed to represent the demands of all gays and les­ bians as an international political minority. In reality, they represented just one, specific idea of what it meant to be gay. Rooted in local understandings of selfhood, sexual identity, community, and social activism, theirs was a definition that not all people with same-sex desires, orientations, or identi­ ties accepted. There were people who were attracted to the same sex—and who may have lived openly as such—but who felt that this facet of their lives did not define them as a person; therefore, they did not identify with the gay rights movement. However, the coming out of individuals, the for­ mation of gay organizations, and the adoption of a gay liberation logo all created an awareness among gay and lesbian people that there were others like themselves throughout the nation, indeed the world, who shared not only similar sexual desires or orientations and a long history of persecution, but an aspiration to engage in political activism as well. For countless queer West Germans and US Americans, the pink triangle came to represent the process of coming out and publicly claiming a gay identity. Thus, tracing the dispersal of the pink triangle—worn by individuals in gay rights marches and appearing on flyers plastered on park benches, train station walls, and throughout university campuses—also tracks the spread of a certain, politi­ cally active gay identity. In the process of formulating this political gay identity and its correspond­ ing pink triangle past, the politics of memory within the queer community itself resulted in the marginalization of specific voices. In focusing so heavily on the role of Paragraph 175—which applied only to men—and the experi­ ence of gay men in concentration camps, gay activists and scholars explic­ itly or implicitly excluded the stories of lesbian, bisexual, transgender, and other queer people from the pink triangle memories that began to proliferate in the 1970s. Later, gay male historians and activists concretized this trend through scholarship and commemoration ceremonies that focused only on “the men with the pink triangle.” Amid the discussions over memorials to

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the Nazis’ gay victims—especially the national memorial in Berlin—many gay men asserted that only gay men should be memorialized since the Nazis did not use a specific law to target lesbian, bisexual, and transgender people. Just as queer voices had been erased from the history of the Holocaust, gay male scholars and activists marginalized the history of lesbian, bi, and trans people from pink triangle memories. Despite the tireless efforts of lesbian activist-scholars beginning in the 1980s, the narrow focus on the fate of gay men shaped the common understanding of “gay history” during the Holo­ caust and the other pink triangle legacies for decades. Although the pink triangle originally represented a specific expression of what it meant to be gay, the wonderfully polyvalent nature of symbols meant that other individuals could claim and use the pink triangle as a marker for queerness, and then imbue the symbol with a meaning of their own choos­ ing. Ultimately, the pink triangle resonated with LGBTQ+ people from diverse experiences and backgrounds. This book captures some of those sto­ ries that demonstrate the pink triangle was never simply a political tool. It had a much more profound meaning for people like gay Latino activist Jose Gutierrez. The symbol’s history made it powerful and compelled him to wear it beginning in the 1980s. “The triángulo rosa is a burning memory. It’s a scar, but in your heart. It may be healed, but it’s a reminder of the pain that the LGBTQ community has gone through in history.”14 Others felt that the pink triangle did not represent their queerness or their sense of self at all. This book charts the creation and evolution of this now iconic symbol through time, even as it acknowledges its limits. A confluence of historical factors converged in such a way that queer people in the German Democratic Republic (GDR, former “East Germany”) engaged to a lesser extent with the transnational history and identity em­ bodied by the pink triangle. Some East German gay activists used the pink triangle during demonstrations, but this occurred far less frequently than in West Germany or the US. The specific context of the socialist GDR meant that gay East Germans navigated another set of political and cultural reali­ ties in addition to different expectations and understandings of the relation­ ship between sexuality, selfhood, society, and the state.15 Gay activists using the pink triangle in West Germany and the United States could relate to the new transatlantic gay identity in a way that those in the GDR did not. As historians Josie McLellan, Scott Harrison, Samuel Huneke, and Teresa Tammer have demonstrated, gay groups in the GDR, such as the Homosexual Interest Group Berlin, interacted with their West German peers. But, living in a socialist society on the other side of the Iron Curtain meant that they were building a uniquely East German gay rights movement defined on

10

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their own terms.16 Because of these factors, I do not include the GDR in this book.

Citizenship and the Politics of memory At its core, this is a study about how individuals, communities, and entire so­ cieties relate to their pasts. After World War II, the Nazi persecution of queer people became a topic in which history, social activism, and the politics of memory converged during intense negotiations over the rights of citizenship for queer people in West Germany and the United States. This book, there­ fore, speaks to the dynamic relationship between identity politics, history, and the development of civil rights in the twentieth century. The definition of citizenship used here goes beyond the legal status or political designation that a national government issues to individuals living within its borders. Rather, citizenship is a practice that is enacted through a reciprocal relationship between citizens and the state. Governments provide protections and ensure certain rights to their citizens. In turn, citizens are expected to uphold specific duties and responsibilities. At the same time, citizenship is also a relationship among individual members of the nation. Therefore, citizenship can also refer to the sense of national belonging among a population, even those who may not hold the legal designation of “citizen.”17 The nature of citizenship and national belonging are historically contin­ gent and change over time. The rights, privileges, and duties of citizenship in a fascist state are certainly different from those in a liberal democracy. Understanding and seeking to define sexuality played a significant role in both contexts. The architects of the Third Reich, for example, implemented a series of laws, policies, and practices that defined citizenship along racial lines. The goal was to create an ethnically homogeneous Volksgemeinschaft, or racially defined “people’s community.” Queer people from communities whom the Nazis regarded as “un-German,” such as Jews, Roma and Sinti, and foreign-born people, were already excluded from the national commu­ nity because they were not considered part of the “Aryan” race. Gay and bi men in Germany who were “Aryan” occupied a legal and ideological gray zone. On the one hand, they were considered part of the so-called master race, and their German ethnicity granted them all the benefits of citizenship in the Third Reich. On the other hand, Nazi leadership asserted that men who engaged in homosexual behavior were forsaking their national duty as citizens to provide offspring for the Fatherland. These men placed their desires above the well-being of the national community. In doing so, they

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surrendered the rights and protections of full citizenship, which were re­ served for heterosexual “Aryans.” Lesbian, trans, and nonbinary people also did not conform to Nazi ideals, and as a result there was no room for them as full citizens in the national community either. In the Federal Republic of Germany (FRG, former “West Germany”), a lib­ eral democracy with a constitution that prioritized individual freedoms and civil liberties, there was more room for negotiation over the boundaries of cit­ izenship and national belonging. Gay activists used the Nazi past to advocate for legal changes that would allow queer people to fully enjoy the benefits and protections of citizenship, since they had fulfilled their responsibilities as citizens. Gay liberation also sought to broaden the boundaries of national belonging beyond married, procreative heterosexuality that was upheld as the ideal model of citizenship. Ultimately, these activists were forging a new and broader definition of personhood in which the expression of sexuality and gender was just one aspect of an individual’s constitutionally guaranteed freedom and rights. While this activism was aimed at ending second-class citizenship for queer people, it was also part of a larger movement to bring all minorities more completely into the experience of full citizenship. My work contributes to our understanding of the radical social move­ ments of the “long sixties.” There is a curious omission of gay activism within the broader literature on the peace and student movements of the 1960s.18 Yet these gay activists never thought of themselves as solely gay activists. They understood themselves as part of the larger, global protest movement that challenged the status quo of the Cold War world. The activ­ ists I interviewed marched in gay rights demonstrations, but also protested the Vietnam War and campaigned against the use of atomic energy. Many considered themselves a “child of the New Left” or a “sixties baby,” because they also advocated for workers’ rights and joined the cause for the rights of social, racial, and political minorities. Power is central to any society’s conceptualization of citizenship. In granting the legal status of citizenship, nations exercise power over individu­ als. But citizens themselves also exercise power as they collectively decide whom they wish to allow into the national community. In other words, just as national governments have the authority to define which legal rights and duties citizenship entails, certain members of society utilize their sociopo­ litical privilege and power to dictate the terms of the social contract that defines what morals, beliefs, behaviors, and lifestyles are acceptable in the national community. My work illustrates how history can become a means through which to exercise the power to define the parameters of citizen­ ship. Imbalances in power mean that not everyone experiences citizenship

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equally. In both West Germany and the United States, queer people were legally citizens. Yet laws and policies regulated their sexual lives, while social mores marginalized them, creating what historian Margot Canaday calls a “stratified citizenry.”19 So, while queer Germans and Americans had the legal status of citizenship, in practice they were second-class citizens. Chapter 1 illustrates how understandings of sexuality influenced the exer­ cise of state power in the Third Reich and drove the Nazis’ efforts to remove various groups from the German national community. I situate Germany’s campaign against people whose gender and sexuality did not align with Nazi ideals in the context of a broader redefinition of citizenship along racial and sexual lines. Doing so provides a fuller and more nuanced understanding of Nazi ideology and the regime’s genocidal campaign to forge a homoge­ neous, “racially pure” and superior German society. Chapter 1 also sketches the historical, lived experiences of queer people that later became the foun­ dation for the postwar memories that are the focus of this book. Underlying this book is a study of the politics of memory. In using this phrase, I refer to two related processes. First, the phrase refers to the politici­ zation of memories. Memories of the past often become a currency of sorts, a means to achieve certain political ends. Second, the politics of memory ref­ erences the “politics” involved in crafting memories. Memories are historical events in and of themselves, subject to transformations, contingent upon ever-changing social circumstances, articulated with changing intensity and goals by individual and collective actors. In other words, politics of the pres­ ent always shape memories of the past. An essential component of the politics of memory is the act of forget­ ting. As individuals, communities, or societies collectively shape the narra­ tive of their history, they decide what should be included in those memories and what ought to be forgotten. This process is often fraught, as various stakeholders assert their own understanding of the past. This competition of memories is not an equal playing field. Those with more social capital or greater legal and political authority assert their influence over the under­ standing of history by marginalizing any dissenting memories that may chal­ lenge their current status, ideals, or identity. The politics of memory, then, are also the politics of power. Charting the formation and expression of pink triangle memories, this book explores the nature of silence. In one sense of the word, silence is a noun, an absence. But this work reveals the consequences of silence as a verb: to gag, to censure, to suppress. Chapter 2 elucidates how destruc­ tive historical silencing can be. Beginning immediately after the end of the Holocaust, various individuals and institutions—the Allied administrators

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13

of the occupation zones, denazification officials, subsequent West Ger­ man politicians, journalists, social commentators, and Holocaust survivor organizations—consistently silenced the voices of gay survivors. The result was the omission of queer people from the broader, collective understand­ ings of who constituted victims of Nazi injustice. The fact that West Ger­ man society did not consider gay people victims cleared the way for policy makers and law enforcement in the Federal Republic to feel justified in their continued use of the Nazi version of Paragraph 175. Ultimately, West Ger­ man law enforcement agencies arrested over one hundred thousand men— and sentenced nearly fifty-six thousand of them—on the basis of this law between 1949 and 1969, when it was finally amended, but not fully repealed. Then, too, because gay survivors were considered criminals rather than vic­ tims, they were denied the financial reparations and judicial exoneration that came with official victim status. The relationship between law and memory in this case was reflexive. Re­ membering the past a certain way allowed officials to feel justified in their continued use of a Nazi law in the new Federal Republic. Conversely because West German officials continued to use the Nazi version of Paragraph 175, they had to promote a version of history in which the Nazis’ treatment of queer people was not unjust. To admit otherwise would challenge why the government of a new democratic state that had supposedly exorcised its National Socialist demons actively chose to perpetuate that injustice on its own citizens through the continued use of Paragraph 175. Ultimately, after surviving the horrors of the Third Reich, gay survivors were victimized yet again through widespread silencing and continued persecution. The inscrip­ tions on the initial memorials that gay activists in West Germany planned, funded, and dedicated to the Nazis’ gay victims reflected this double victim­ ization: “Beaten to Death, Silenced to Death” (Totgeschlagen, Totgeschwiegen). If forgetting can be destructive, remembering can be generative and cre­ ate visions of justice. In the immediate postwar period, discourses surround­ ing the fate of queer people in the Third Reich originally took place largely among compensation boards and in niche homophile magazines. Beginning in the early 1970s, however, activists increasingly integrated the Nazi past into gay liberation politics. Chapter 3 explores how “coming out” became an explicitly political act during this period and why activists in West Berlin chose the pink triangle as the logo that would signify the coming out of individuals, a social movement for gay rights, and ultimately a chapter of history that society had ignored for decades. In selecting the pink triangle, activists sought to transform it from a symbol of oppression into one of liberation. “The pink triangle, just like the word gay, should brand us and

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INTROduCTION

expose us,” wrote activists in the Homosexuelle Aktion Westberlin, one of the earliest gay groups to use the symbol. “But we find that the aspects of ourselves that are to be ‘exposed’ by this symbol and these words are in no way shameful. We therefore affirm that of which we are accused. . . . In this sense the pink triangle is a symbol of a new consciousness.”20 The symbol quickly spread across the nation as gay West Germans adopted the logo and claimed the identity that it represented. The Nazi past was thus foundational to a new “out” and politicized gay identity as well as inspiring visions for a more equitable society. Within months of the pink triangle’s adoption as a gay rights logo in West Berlin, gay activists in North America donned the symbol. In adopting the pink triangle as a political icon, they grafted memories that came to fit their American context and linked their political efforts with a chapter of Ger­ man history. In the United States, too, activists understood the use of the pink triangle as transformation of an emblem of destruction into one of restoration. “It’s like how, at some point, the LGBTQ community embraced the word queer,” transgender activist Nancy Nangeroni told me. “Using the pink triangle was a taking back of a symbol that had once been used to de­ stroy lives and then claiming it to create new communities.”21 Martha Shel­ ley, who was a pioneer in the feminist lesbian movement and cofounder of the Gay Liberation Front, articulated a similar sentiment with her charac­ teristic grit. “I liked the pink triangle. It was reclaiming this thing as a badge of pride rather than shame. And it was a way of giving the middle finger to the Nazis.”22 Chapter 4 charts the process of how the pink triangle became the most widespread and recognizable symbol of gay rights during the 1970s and 1980s. As in West Germany, the pink triangle in the United States pointed to a more just future in which queer people enjoyed equal rights and civil liberties in their own national context. Amid the AIDS epidemic in the 1980s, a group of artist-activists formed a collective and designed the iconic “Si­ lence = Death” poster, which featured an upturned fuchsia triangle. When the organization AIDS Coalition to Unleash Power (ACT UP) adopted the poster in 1987, it catapulted the pink triangle into mainstream conscious­ ness around the globe and repositioned the history of the Holocaust and homophobia into contemporary discourses on health, disease, sexuality, and the relationship between governments and their citizens. “ACT UP was my introduction to the pink triangle,” recalled Crystal Mason, a black queer art­ ist and activist living in Washington, DC, in the 1980s. Mason later moved to San Francisco and joined the local chapter of the organization. “I’m a little ambivalent about the pink triangle, at least with its connection to ACT UP,”

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Mason shared with me. “ACT UP did a lot of good. There’s no doubt about that for me. But what I’ve seen with histories or common understandings of organizations like ACT UP is that, very often, black people, trans people, people of color, and other marginalized folks get left out and left behind. ACT UP didn’t work as hard for everybody equally.”23 Mason’s comments highlight the racial and gender dynamics of the pink triangle that were at play during activism and collective memory making. The intersectionality of race, gender, sexuality, and memory represented and obscured by the pink triangle is a theme I explore throughout this book. Scholar of African American studies Hazel V. Carby once wrote that “si­ lences can be made to speak . . . to confront inequalities of power in the production of sources, archives, and narratives.”24 Queer activists and grass­ roots researchers in West Germany and then the United States made silences speak. The social activism of the 1970s led to a sudden and dramatic increase in discussions about the fate of queer communities under Hitler. These in­ creasingly dynamic pink triangle memories stand at the core of chapter 5. Members of the gay community made use of various modes of storytell­ ing, including journalism, novels, and stage plays, to piece together an un­ derstanding of their past, thereby establishing historical legitimacy for the nascent gay identity forged in the previous decade. Artists and authors used their craft to help imagine the history of queer people in the Third Reich, but these works of art and fiction were never meant to be documentary in nature or pieces of historical scholarship. “I strive for emotional truth,” says fiction writer Lesléa Newman. As both lesbian and Jewish herself, Newman views writing fiction as a way to explore the overlapping heritages of queer­ ness and Jewishness. “My writing is not the truth, per se. But it’s a truth. It’s my truth. It’s the writer’s truth.”25 As the mainstream ivory tower continued to ignore the history of people whose sexuality or gender existed beyond the predominant standards of the time, queer activist-researchers collected and documented evidence of their communities’ past. Egmont Fassbinder, a gay activist in West Germany, did not wait for mainstream archives or research institutions to gather informa­ tion about the experiences of gay men during the Third Reich. In 1975, he placed an advertisement in a leading West German gay magazine. Under the headline “Urgently Seeking Old Gays,” the text of Fassbinder’s ad stated, “We know from books what happened to gays under fascism. . . . We read that thousands were mutilated, tortured and murdered. We read it, but we barely comprehend it. We want to learn more about it from you.”26 Across the Atlantic, in the United States, LGBTQ+ activists were also collecting artifacts from the queer past as part of their activism. “The question of

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invisibility is the reason why there are lesbian specific archives and groups,” recalled Morgan Gwenwald, a coordinator and “archivette” at the Lesbian Herstory Archives, founded in New York City in 1975. “We had to make our own space.”27 By the end of the 1980s, queer scholars began producing academic histo­ ries grounded in archival research. These scholarly accounts added nuance to the popular narratives of the 1970s and 1980s, and in some cases directly refuted long-held assumptions, such as the notion that the Nazis had imple­ mented a “Homocaust” similar to the genocide of the Jews. Chapter 5 ex­ poses that while the mainstream press and historical profession continued to ignore the plight of the Nazis’ gay victims, queer communities on both sides of the Atlantic set out to write their own histories. Acts of public commemoration in the 1980s produced a movement by local gay groups to construct physical memorials to the Nazis’ gay victims. Chapter 6 explores how this movement produced dynamic discussions about the pink triangle past in the public sphere. The construction of memorials is where historians, activists, philanthropists, artists, politicians, and the public most explicitly discuss how the past should be remembered and represented in physical form for future generations. The public discussions surrounding pink triangle memorials reignited debates about official government recogni­ tion of and compensation for the one hundred thousand men arrested on the grounds of homosexuality. While the movement to memorialize the Na­ zis’ gay victims was particularly important in Germany, Germans were not the only ones who sought to commemorate the Nazis’ queer victims with a monument. The construction of pink triangle memorials in nine countries across the world undergirded the notion of an international gay history. Trac­ ing the development of these memorials also reveals the gendered nature of memory politics. The hard-won successes of the push for memorialization were not equally enjoyed by all in the LGBTQ+ community. The emphasis on Paragraph 175 and the experiences of “pink triangle prisoners” led to a focus on remembering gay men and the continued marginalization of lesbian, bisexual, transgender, and other queer people in the historical memory. As always, there is still work to be done in achieving a more inclusive and histori­ cally accurate acknowledgment of this history.

Terminology Words are important. I therefore offer a few notes on terminology. Writing a history of people whom we would today call members of the LGBTQ+ community poses particular challenges of terminology. As a historian, the

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issue of terminology is a professional one for me; as a gay man, it is personal. “LGBTQ+” as an individual or communal identity, and most of the aggre­ gate words of the abbreviation are modern terms with which individuals in the past typically would not have identified. People have long used a variety of terms to describe their gender expression and sexual desires, activities, and identities. For some authors, it is preferable to use present-day terminol­ ogy when speaking about the past because it reflects our own contemporary values and renders the past more legible to readers today. Using present ter­ minology also makes it possible to avoid words that are considered outdated or offensive today. But using modern concepts to describe the past also risks the erasure of a myriad of culturally and historically specific terms that are rich in meaning. Throughout this book, I have chosen to use modern, inclusive terminol­ ogy when speaking about groups or communities as a whole. When talking about particular individuals, I attempt to employ the terms that the indi­ viduals themselves used. In instances where I do not know how individuals identified, I do my best to describe their actions rather than assigning an identity that they may not have embraced themselves. The choice of terms is not just about political correctness or linguistic trends. As the following pages demonstrate, the ways in which we articulate our understandings of human sexuality and its relationship to individual and collective identities directly affects everything from laws and policies to cultural norms and social respectability. In short, terminology can—and does—regulate how people live their daily lives. Throughout the book, I use the term queer to refer to people whose sexual or gender identity did not fit contemporary conventions. I recognize that some people today find the term offensive because of its use as a pejorative in the past, and they may never identify as queer. In line with the transfor­ mation of the pink triangle from a badge of imprisonment into a symbol of liberation, I join those in the LGBTQ+ community who have reclaimed the term queer in an attempt to destigmatize it, to rob the term of its power from those who use it as an insult, and instead imbue it with respect, affir­ mation, and self-empowerment. I employ it as an inclusive term to describe individuals and communities whose gender expression, sexual practices— their identities and ways of loving and living—defied the heteronormative status quo. I use queer to include gay, lesbian, bi, asexual, pansexual, transgender, nonbinary, and other forms of sexuality and gender nonconformity. But I also use it to describe people who may never identify with one of those particular labels, who may claim different identities over time, or who reject categorization altogether.

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Writing this book has taught me about the nature of history and how societ­ ies understand and relate to their pasts. At the completion of this project, I also see that I cannot separate my writing about specific people in the past from my own coming out, exploration of my identity, and longing to see where I—and people like me—fit into history. So, this project also prompted me to think about my own roles and responsibilities both as a member of the LGBTQ+ community and as a public historian and museum educator. How do those in the historical profession interact with the individuals and com­ munities they write about? Does our work perpetuate systems of marginal­ ization or help to dismantle them? In the case of West Germany, the silence of mainstream academic historians contributed to the continued use of Para­ graph 175 by not challenging (and thus tacitly endorsing) the predominant understanding of queer people in the Third Reich as criminals, not victims. Working on this book has taught me that professional, academic histori­ ans do not have a monopoly on the past. Ours is just one voice among many in a dynamic, ever evolving, and often fraught discourse about the past and its legacies for today. In the case of the pink triangle past, most of the main­ stream historical profession—including universities, museums, publications, and academic organizations—came decades late to the discussion of the Nazis’ queer victims. It was queer activists and grassroots researchers who forced a public reckoning with the history of queer people during the Holo­ caust. That raises the question: How do we as historians listen to and learn from other ways of understanding the past beyond what we were taught in university history departments? When the ivory tower remained silent on the topic, queer artists and authors utilized their crafts to create connections to the past on the page, stage, and everything in between. At the same time, many of the activists who demonstrated in the streets and lobbied for social change were the same folks who were scouring archives on their nights and weekends and conducting interviews with eyewitnesses to record and pre­ serve their history. They constructed the queer past when those in academia with profes­ sional degrees, resources, and institutional support were silent. In doing so, these grassroots activist-scholars transformed the way we today conceive the Nazi era and broadened our understanding of the Holocaust itself. Per­ haps more importantly, these individuals and communities challenged what the process of writing history can—and should—look like. Ultimately, the resolute efforts of community-based queer researchers, authors, and art­ ists across the world have gradually impacted academia and the mainstream historical profession. This has led to a recent flourishing of books, articles,

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exhibits, artwork, memorials, landmarks, documentaries, and works of fic­ tion on the queer past in general, and specifically on the fate of queer people during and after the Holocaust. Perhaps the greatest of the pink triangle’s legacies, then, is the lesson that if members of a marginalized community want a history that tells their story and liberates them from the confines of silence, they must write it themselves.

Ch a p ter 1

“They Are Enemies of the State!” The Fate of LGBTQ+ People in Nazi Germany

It was a cool day in mid-September 1938 when the forty-three-year-old Ernst Pack boarded a train in Düsseldorf, Germany. He was on his way to the office of his family’s construction firm in Essen, twenty-two miles away. Pack had worked in the family business his whole life, beginning as a manual laborer after graduating high school. It was de­ manding work, but it kept him outdoors and in good physical shape. When the Great War broke out in 1914, he had volunteered for the Uhlan 5th Regi­ ment in Düsseldorf. He eventually rose to the rank of staff sergeant and earned an Iron Cross Second Class for his service. Upon his return home at the war’s end, he became a partner in the family firm, and in 1925 he moved the business from his hometown of Iserlohn to Essen. Since that time, he had enjoyed the comfortable life of a single man with the steady income of an upper management position. On the short train ride, Pack struck up a conversation with another man who had caught his attention. Truth be told, Pack found the other man attrac­ tive. Perhaps it was because it was evident that he—like Pack in his younger days—worked with his hands. The two chatted, and Pack learned that his new travel companion, Kasimir Cieslack, was a Polish gardener. Pack could not help but wonder if Cieslack found him attractive, too. Something told him this was the case, but it was dangerous to assume. The consequences for

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acting on one’s assumptions could be catastrophic. The German government had recently implemented a harsh series of measures to combat what it saw as the moral vice of homosexuality. It had shut down gay bars across the nation and amended Paragraph 175, the national law prohibiting “unnatural indecency” among men. Now, anything that law enforcement deemed inde­ cent could be punishable with up to ten years in prison. Yet Pack could not shake the feeling that Cieslack felt the attraction, too, and so he made a couple of passes. At one point, he reached across his travel companion, presumably to point out something from the window, but let his hand graze Cieslack’s upper thigh. The gardener did not protest, and after ex­ changing a quick, knowing glance, Pack invited Cieslack to follow him. The two walked until they found an empty car near the end of the train. Once the door was closed, they embraced each other and embarked on a hurried moment of passion, or perhaps simply lust. They kissed and masturbated, careful to keep their clothes on in case someone knocked on the door. The whole affair was over soon, and the two went their separate ways. Pack got off at Essen and carried on with his day. Unfortunately, when Cieslack disembarked, he went to the nearest police station and reported Pack for being gay. The archival records do not shed light on Cieslack’s motivations for reporting Pack. Had someone seen the two in the train car, and this was Cieslack’s attempt to save himself ? Had something happened between the two during their brief rendezvous? All we know is that when asked about his own participation in the illegal acts, Cieslack replied that he had suspected Pack was a “warm brother” (the slang phrase for a gay man), and that he himself had only engaged in the sexual acts to prove his suspicions. Regardless of Cieslack’s motivations, his actions had devastating consequences. Records do not indicate what happened to Cieslack, but Pack was ultimately convicted in January 1939 for violating Paragraph 175 and sentenced to two months in prison. It was his first of­ fense, so the penalty was relatively lenient. This would not be Pack’s last conviction under Paragraph 175.1 Ernst Pack was one of over one hundred thousand men who were ar­ rested as part of Germany’s violent campaign against homosexuality dur­ ing the Third Reich, the period of Nazi rule from 1933 to 1945. His story raises important questions, with answers that have implications for how we understand the era of the Holocaust. Why did leading Nazis view gay men as enemies of the state? How and why did the Third Reich target different manifestations of queer practices and identities? How did LGBTQ+ people react to Nazi Germany’s increasingly violent web of laws and policies?

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The brutal measures aimed at enforcing gender and sexual conformity within the Volksgemeinschaft (the racially defined “people’s community”) brought to the fore debates about the nature of sexuality, national identity, and citizenship in Germany. Similar to the way in which Nazi ideologues racialized antisemitism, they also construed same-sex behavior as a racial issue. Indeed, understanding and then controlling sexuality and gender were understood by key Nazi leaders as vital components in forging a so-called master race. Understanding the campaign against queer communities ( Jew­ ish and non-Jewish alike) in the Third Reich is integral to understanding Nazi ideology. The regime’s violent efforts to eradicate nonnormative expressions of gender and sexuality were enabled by the indifference of, tacit approval from, and even active participation by much of the German public. This chapter therefore also sheds light on the level of complicity and collaboration of ordinary Germans and challenges our understanding of the nature of perse­ cution in the Third Reich. Rather than exclusively the result of laws, policies, and state authority, persecution was also perpetuated by everyday citizens who sought to turn Nazi ideals into reality and who spied on, denounced, and marginalized those who were deemed social deviants, including queer people. Examining the fate of lesbian, bi, trans, and other queer Germans who were not targeted with a specific law comparable to the application of Paragraph 175 against men—but who nonetheless had to suppress their identities amid a state-sponsored campaign to destroy queer culture and communities—offers a glimpse into the challenges and dangers of everyday life in the Third Reich.

Queer life in Pre-Nazi germany When the numerous German kingdoms and principalities were unified into the German Empire (Kaiserreich) in 1871, the new national criminal code included a section prohibiting “Crimes and Offenses against Morality.” This sought to regulate Germans’ behaviors based on a particular notion of mo­ rality and respectability. The criminal code included statutes against bigamy, sexual assault, pandering, acts of exhibitionism, pornography, and abortion, among other things. One of those original statutes was Paragraph 175, the anti-sodomy law that German officials used to charge men who had sex with each other. The text of law read “Unnatural indecency [widernatürliche Un­ zucht, sometimes translated as ‘unnatural fornication’] between men or be­ tween humans and beasts is punishable with imprisonment; a loss of civil rights may also be sentenced.”2 The law applied only to men. Paragraph

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175 criminalized gay acts; it never explicitly prohibited being gay. This detail reflected contemporary understandings of sexuality and shaped the way the German judicial system enforced the law. Within a decade of the nationwide implementation of Paragraph 175, the German courts developed a precedent of convicting men only if “inter­ course-like” (beischlafsähnlich) acts had taken place. That meant that while judges may have found acts like oral sex or masturbation morally reprehen­ sible, they did not convict the men who took part in them. As a practice, the lower courts only issued convictions when penetrative, anal sex could be proven, which often meant that police had to catch men in the act. Since most cases brought before the court involved two consenting adults, one or both defendants could deny that any such act had taken place, and the case would be dismissed.3 Despite this, German courts had issued nearly ten thousand Paragraph 175 convictions by the time the German Empire was defeated in the First World War.4 The German Empire was succeeded in 1918 by the Weimar Republic, a democratic government that Germans found simultaneously exciting, mod­ ern, decadent, and frightening. The fifteen years constituting the Weimar era were filled with a mix of political ideologies, artistic movements, tech­ nological advances, and socially progressive attitudes, at least in the largest German cities, such as Berlin. Attitudes toward sex changed, too, and gen­ erally became characterized by a greater degree of openness to the discus­ sion of sex itself and of the diverse expressions of human sexuality. While many Christian conservatives criticized this new openness to sexuality, many Germans felt that personal liberties, including sexual freedom, were integral characteristics of being democratic and modern. The Weimar government abolished official censorship, which allowed for the proliferation of the scientific study of the various manifestations of hu­ man sexuality, which had already begun in Germany during the Kaiserreich. The term “homosexual” (homosexuell) itself was first coined in 1869 by the Austro-Hungarian author Karl-Maria Kertbeny as he campaigned against unfair anti-sodomy laws in German territories. Some thirty years later, the physician and sexologist Magnus Hirschfeld founded the Scientific-Humani­ tarian Committee (Wissenschaftlich-humanitäres Komitee, or WhK) in Ber­ lin, in 1898. One of the chief goals of the committee became the campaign to repeal Paragraph 175. Hirschfeld and the WhK argued that because samesex desire was inborn, queer people could not change their sexual orien­ tation and therefore should not be criminalized. By the late 1920s, it even appeared that there was a real chance Paragraph 175 would be repealed or drastically amended. In October 1929, thanks to grassroots efforts on the

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part of the WhK, as well as support from the Social Democratic and Com­ munist Parties, the German Criminal Code Committee accepted a draft of a revised Paragraph 175 that would have legalized sex between consenting adult men. Ultimately, economic turmoil in the wake of the global depres­ sion and increasing political instability pushed the vote on Paragraph 175 down on the list of priorities. The law remained in effect throughout the remainder of the republic.5 A transition to more tolerant and progressive policing tactics in Berlin in conjunction with scientific, cultural, and political advocacy contributed to a bourgeoning queer landscape in the Weimar era. Berlin, as historian Robert Beachy argues, became the birthplace of a modern gay identity.6 Individu­ als of various sexual orientations and gender identities carved out visible spaces for themselves in public. This included bars, cafés, cultural associa­ tions, publications, and political organizations. Berlin was also home to the world-renowned Institute for Sexual Science, founded by Magnus Hirschfeld in 1919. It employed dozens of researchers, physicians, and community organizers who conducted research and provided counseling services and health care for LGBTQ+ people. Hirschfeld and the others at the institute were forerunners in seeking to understand trans identities. He coined the term “transvestite” (Transvestit) in 1910; although it has a specific meaning today, the term initially referred to anyone who dressed in clothes tradition­ ally worn by people of the opposite gender. This included individuals who cross-dressed for any number of reasons, as well as people who today might identify as transgender. One of the services that the institute provided was partnering with the Berlin Police Department to issue “transvestite certifi­ cates,” which served as an ID that aligned with the certificate holder’s gender identity. These documents protected trans people from arrest under Para­ graph 183, Germany’s law against causing a public nuisance, which was often used to arrest trans people. The institute issued dozens of trans certificates between 1910 and 1933. While it is true that queer people in Weimar Berlin enjoyed a hitherto unmatched level of relative freedom, Gertrude Sandmann, who was a young Jewish lesbian in 1920s Berlin, later warned of a “misplaced nostalgia” about the level of acceptance in the Weimar Republic.7 Indeed, terror against queer people persisted, especially outside of Germany’s urban centers, and the broad-mindedness for which the Weimar era has become famous was not enjoyed equally by all in queer communities. A series of legal and social com­ promises meant that increased toleration for some came at the cost of the further marginalization of others. In what historian Laurie Marhoefer refers to as the Weimar Settlement, policy makers and law enforcement became

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Figure 1.1. The Eldorado club, a pillar of queer nightlife in Berlin, ca. 1932. Courtesy of the Bundesarchiv.

more lenient toward some aspects of gay communities but shifted their at­ tention to stricter policing of individuals whose identities or lifestyles did not conform to the prevailing standards of public respectability, such as men who cruised for sex in public locations like parks.8 Although changes in policing policies in Berlin led to a proliferation of queer spaces in the capital city, these developments were less pronounced in other urban centers and were not felt in rural Germany. As a result, the average number of annual Paragraph 175 convictions nationally more than doubled during the Weimar era. In all, 7,957 men were convicted of “unnatu­ ral indecency” between 1918 and 1933.9 Even in a democracy, the liberties and sexual freedoms granted to citizens have boundaries. It was Berlin’s unprecedented level of tolerance, if not full acceptance, that drew artist Richard Grune to move to the capital city. Grune had known from an early age that he was gay, but it was hard to live openly as such in his hometown of Flensburg. He was twenty-nine years old when he decided to move to Berlin in search of a community in which he could be himself. Unfortunately, Grune arrived in February 1933, only a few weeks after Adolf Hitler became chancellor of Germany. While Grune had hoped his move to Berlin would change his life, he could not possibly fathom what awaited.

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Sex, Race, and Nazi Ideology By 1932, the National Socialist German Workers Party (NSDAP, or Nazi Party) had become the largest party in the Reichstag, Germany’s national par­ liament. On January 30, 1933, the party’s leader, Adolf Hitler, was appointed chancellor of the nation. From the onset, the Nazi movement propagated the idea of a uniform, “racially pure” national community, the Volksgemein­ schaft. Now that Nazis were in key positions of power, they began working toward turning that goal into reality. As the National Socialists gained more authority, they enforced greater levels of conformity in culture, education, politics, and behavior. This campaign of forced conformity extended beyond the public sphere into the private lives of Germans across the country. The Nazis violently policed expressions of sexual and gender identity that did not align with their ideals. Homophobia was integral to the National Socialist worldview, even if it was never as central to Nazi ideology and propaganda as antisemitism was. Party leadership had made its position on homosexuality clear on multiple occasions. In a June 1927 parliamentary debate about the proposed amend­ ment of Paragraph 175, Reichstag deputy Wilhelm Frick declared that “un­ natural fornication between men must be prosecuted with all severity, as this vice will lead to the downfall of the German people.”10 Immediately upon assuming power, Hitler and the Nazi Party began rolling back the progress made during the Weimar years that had benefited women, queer people, and political minorities. Most Nazi leaders associated same-sex desire with decadence, emasculation, racial decline, and Jewishness—everything that was allegedly allowed to run rampant in the Weimar era. Ultimately, the National Socialists positioned themselves as the party that would clean up the alleged degeneracy left by Germany’s failed attempt at democracy, and in doing so, forge a master race that would return the nation to its rightful place in the world. Nazi propaganda made it clear that queer people had no place in the na­ tional community. Leaders of the Third Reich perpetuated stereotypes that being gay made men weak and cowardly. The alleged feminine demeanor of gay men denoted an inversion of the supposed natural, masculine gender. This meant that gay men supposedly contained a propensity to renounce their rightful position as leaders of their families, the economy, and most importantly, the nation, since leadership was envisioned as a masculine role. Similarly, Nazis lambasted lesbians as contributing to the masculinization of women and the degeneracy of the German people.11 Trans, nonbinary, and other gender nonconforming people were often seen as having a mental

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illness that should be “cured.” The Nazi regime sought to reestablish and enforce conservative gender roles in its fight against the developments of the Weimar era in which queer communities had gained visibility. The Nazis’ racial and political ambitions required not only reorganizing German structures of power and rewriting Germany’s laws. They also meant initiating a far-reaching project of demographic engineering aimed at re­ forging the German people on a more fundamental, racial level. To this end, certain bodies were singled out as not belonging to the Volksgemeinschaft. Excluded were the alleged lesser races like the Jews, who were the Nazis’ pri­ mary targets, but also the Roma, as well as Germans with disabilities, since Nazi ideology posited they did not contribute to the “healthy” reproduction of the race. The forced sterilization and eventual murder of these individuals became justified in the name of protecting the racial whole.12 Because sex was the means through which race was reproduced, the ar­ chitects of the Nazi state were obsessed with comprehending and controlling human sexuality. Heinrich Himmler, the leader of the Schutzstaffel (SS) and perhaps the second-most-powerful man in the Third Reich, understood that sex was never just sex. In a 1937 speech to his SS lieutenants, he ridiculed those who claimed that what happened in their bedrooms was a personal matter, stating pointedly, “All things which take place in the sexual sphere are not the private affair of the individual, but signify the life and death of the nation.”13 Nazis used sexuality to protect and reproduce the master race. To this end, they outlawed the sale of all contraceptives in 1941 (though the army received an exemption for condoms to help prevent the spread of sexually transmitted diseases), and in 1943 introduced the death penalty as a possible punishment for those providing abortion services.14 The Nazis radicalized their commitment to eugenics and forcibly steril­ ized hundreds of thousands of those deemed racially inferior, robbing them of their ability to reproduce. The Nazi regime went beyond strictly prohibit­ ing sex for the vast swath of its population that it considered racially unfit by asserting control of individual bodies through coerced sterilization and eventually murder. The Nazis simultaneously encouraged its Aryan citizens to have heterosexual, reproductive sex. “The legitimation of terror and the invitation to pleasure,” historian Dagmar Herzog reminds us, “operated in tandem.”15 This invitation was not extended to queer people. Same-sex desire clearly existed well outside the bounds of acceptable sexuality in National Social­ ist ideology. First and foremost, the Nazis believed that gay people robbed the Fatherland of offspring by not producing children. This was conceived as especially heinous after the population losses of World War I. Same-sex

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behaviors and identities were not understood simply as moral transgres­ sions; they were a much more egregious threat to the future of the Ger­ manic race itself. Although there was disagreement over what constituted, caused, encour­ aged, or dispelled same-sex desire, most Nazi leaders believed that homo­ sexuality was a set of actions, a vice, not an inborn identity. According to Nazi understandings—as with most contemporaries in the Western world— attraction to a member of the same sex was a temptation that had the po­ tential to seduce anyone. In fact, Nazi leaders asserted, it was the belief that homosexuality could corrupt anyone (and potentially everyone) that made it so dangerous. If left unchecked, homosexuality might continue to spread, especially among the all-male Nazi organizations like the SS or Hitler Youth. The leaders of the Third Reich positioned queerness as fundamentally in­ compatible with the “master race” they sought to create. They targeted and ruthlessly persecuted LGBTQ+ communities, although their understanding of gender and sexuality led them to develop different practices to police gay men, lesbians, trans, and other queer people. Nazi (mis)understandings of sexuality and gender also meant that the pol­ icies and tools of persecution against LGBTQ+ people were different from those leveled against other groups. The Nazis—and much of the German population—understood some groups, such as Jews, Roma and Sinti, and people with disabilities, as a racial threat for which there was no cure. That is why the policies against these groups were to remove them from German society, German land, and ultimately from life itself. Other groups, such as political opponents and Jehovah’s Witnesses, were persecuted, imprisoned in concentration camps, and even killed because of their beliefs or actions. But the Nazis did not target them for genocide because they believed these groups could be reeducated and integrated back into German society. Be­ cause Nazi leadership did not conceive people were born gay, but were in­ stead seduced into a gay “lifestyle,” they believed they could force people to give up same-sex behaviors through strict and violent measures. This helps explain why the Nazis ultimately did not develop a policy of genocide or wholesale murder of queer people. The Nazi policy of what amounted to “conversion therapy” was not an option for Jews, Roma, and people with disabilities. Scholars in the past have highlighted this as an important difference in policy that also helps ex­ plain the different outcomes for the Nazis’ victimized groups. However, we should be careful not to overemphasize this ideological difference. In center­ ing the Nazis’ intentions, we risk detracting from the impact on the victims

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themselves. As the Nazis violently eradicated queer spaces and culture in an attempt to curtail queer behavior, it was queer people who bore the violence.

Intersecting Identities Tracing the fate of queer communities in Germany during the era of the Holocaust is made more difficult by the fact that individuals never have a sin­ gle, uniform identity. Our sense of self exists at the intersection of multiple identities that we construct and inhabit simultaneously. The complexities of this lived reality have often been flattened out and glossed over by historical scholarship of the previous decades that has focused on telling the histories of the Nazis’ different victim groups. By telling these histories as if the la­ bels of Roma, disabled, gay, and political opponent are separate, discrete categories, we miss the stories of people whose identities do not fit neatly into one of those categories. What can we learn from the experiences of gay Jews or Roma with disabilities during the Holocaust, for example? Historian Anna Hájková advocates that an intersectional approach is the only way we can truly understand the lived experiences of the people whom the Nazis victimized. It also allows us to avoid understanding people’s lives through the categories that the Nazis themselves used to reduce complex individuals to a single label.16 Intersectionality can also help explain what may at first glance seem to be inconsistencies in the enforcement of Nazi policies. For example: why weren’t all men accused of violating Paragraph 175 arrested or convicted? Why were some lesbians arrested while others were not? As Hájková ar­ ticulates, “Overall, for women as for men, persecution often took place intersectionally—that is, same-sex sexuality was rarely the only factor.”17 For non-Jewish German men whom the Nazis considered “Aryan,” there was more leniency, especially if it was the defendant’s first offense. Queer men and women were more likely to be arrested and convicted if they were also a Communist, Jewish, in the resistance, or foreign-born. Victims are often portrayed as groups of passive individuals that simply react to things that are done to them. The history of queer communities in the Third Reich challenges this stereotype. In the face of unprecedented terror from civilian denunciations and state violence, queer individuals and communities adapted, navigating their new realities to not only survive, but thrive and even fight back. It was not uncommon for gay men and lesbians to enter into marriages of convenience—either with each other, or with a heterosexual person—in an attempt to blend in and escape scrutiny from

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the state. Facing pressure from her cousin, who was an active member of the Nazi Party, Elizabeth Zimmerman decided to marry a local man in her hometown of Paderborn and even got a job as an office worker for the Ger­ man military. She later recalled that being a lesbian in the Third Reich meant silently dealing with the “long period of secrecy, the repression, [and] not letting anyone notice your true nature.”18 Margarete Knittel, a lesbian in Berlin, later recalled that many gay people resisted the Nazis’ attempts to destroy their networks and lives by defying the obvious dangers to meet up and hold on to their sense of community, friendship, and safety. Since their bars, cafés, and clubs were closed, Knittel and her lesbian friends established a fake organization—the Charlottenburg Rowing Club—to provide a safe alibi for their regular meetings.19 Queer people resisted the Nazi regime in a number of ways. Frieda Belinfante was a self-identified half-Jewish lesbian born in Amsterdam. She joined a resis­ tance group when the Nazis invaded the Netherlands and forged identity documents and helped establish hiding places for people targeted by the Na­ zis. After helping arrange the bombing of the Amsterdam registry office in March 1943 to prevent the Nazis from identifying Dutch Jews, Belinfante hid from authorities by living disguised as a man for three months.20 One of the men who carried out the bombing was Willem Arondeus, an openly gay artist and author. Unfortunately, Arondeus was caught by the Nazis after the bombing and was sentenced to death in a show trial. In his final words to his lawyer before his execution, Arondeus pleaded, “Tell people that homosexu­ als are not cowards.”21 Victimized individuals are often portrayed as pure and innocent. Doing so reduces their human complexity and erases the myriad of motivations and desires that shaped their actions. Gad Beck was gay, Jewish, and a member of an active underground resistance who also survived the entire Third Reich in Berlin. This amazing feat can be partially attributed to his own bravery and ability to navigate the dangers of life in the capital, to the courage and support of his fellow resistance fighters, and in no small part to the fact that Beck was considered only half Jewish. But, in his postwar testimonies, Beck also made no attempt to hide the fact that, in addition to enjoying sex throughout the war, he used sex at least once to ensure that his group con­ tinued to receive supplies and aid necessary in their rescue efforts.22 Some have criticized Beck’s use of sexual barter, especially because he states it quite matter-of-factly in his memoirs.23 The criticism stems from the fact that such actions fall into ambiguous gray areas fraught with moral judgments. Critics feel that the use of one’s sexuality as a tool—especially if one gained physi­ cal pleasure from it—somehow taints the innocence of the survivor. Beck’s

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actions are just one example among many from the era of the Holocaust that demonstrate that during systems of violence and targeted oppression, humans are forced to make choices and decisions that they might not other­ wise in order to survive. It is also problematic to assume that everyone fit neatly into the category of either victim, perpetrator, or perhaps bystander. The history of the Ho­ locaust in general, and the history of queer Germans in the Third Reich in particular, reveal that these categories are not always static or mutually ex­ clusive. Sometimes, one’s overlapping identities might be at odds with each other. Non-Jewish gay men in Germany, for example, occupied a legal and ideological gray zone. On the one hand, they were targeted and victimized for allegedly forsaking their duty to provide offspring for the Fatherland. Nazi lawmakers asserted that these men placed their desires above the well­ being of the national community, and therefore they surrendered the rights and protections of full citizenship, which were reserved for heterosexual Aryans. Yet these men were still considered Aryan, and their German ethnic­ ity granted them citizenship in the Third Reich. Their national and ethnic identities privileged them with a level of belonging that was not afforded to other targeted groups, such as Jews and Roma, who were labeled as nonGerman and therefore “irredeemable.” It must also be acknowledged that there were queer Germans who ad­ hered to Nazi ideology and actively supported the regime. There were gay men in Nazi organizations, like the Storm Troopers (Sturmabteilung, SA), although only those who conformed to prevailing gender roles had a chance of remaining in the institution. This challenges the adequacy of the neatly separate categories of “victim” and “perpetrator” for fully understanding the history of homosexuality in the Third Reich. The most famous case is that of Ernst Julius Röhm, a loyal Nazi who had been a member of the movement since the beginning and was the leader of the SA. For several years, political rivals wishing to damage the reputation of the Nazi Party had publicized the fact that Röhm was gay, but Hitler sought to protect Röhm by issuing a directive to party leaders declaring that the sexual lives of SA leadership were private matters.24 Despite Röhm’s loyalty to the party, in the spring of 1934 Hitler ordered the execution of SA leaders. In the competition for power in Hitler’s Ger­ many, the SS, the Gestapo, and the German army viewed Röhm’s SA as a challenge to their own influence. And with a membership of nearly three million rabble-rousing men, the SA was a formidable force that dwarfed the one-hundred-thousand-man German army. By the spring of 1934, leading Nazi officials had convinced Hitler that Röhm was planning to use the SA

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to launch a coup and overthrow Hitler. Beginning on June 30, 1934, over one thousand individuals labeled by the Nazi state as political threats were arrested throughout Germany. Many of them, including Röhm and nearly fifty other SA members, were summarily executed without trials. When the operation finally ended on July 2, eighty-five people were confirmed dead.25 While the murder of Röhm was not driven by homophobia, it did high­ light a fear that queer men could don Nazi uniforms and hide among those whom the party had deemed the best of Aryan men. Heinrich Himmler was especially concerned with how the Nazi state could cultivate strong and often passionate bonds of camaraderie in the homosocial atmosphere of the all-male Nazi organizations without those relationships becoming homo­ sexual in nature.26 After the Röhm purge, the SA was essentially neutralized as a threat, and Himmler turned his attention to eliminating the so-called vice within the SS and Gestapo.27 In a February 1937 speech to his senior SS officers, Himmler announced that any SS man caught engaging in “inde­ cency” with another man would be publicly ridiculed, found guilty during a trial, serve a prison sentence, and then be thrown into a concentration camp where he would be shot while “attempting to escape.”28

The mechanisms of Persecution Within a month of Hitler’s appointment as chancellor in January 1933, the Gestapo (Geheime Staatspolizei, secret state police) and the German local police forces began their crackdown on queer spaces. Because homosexual­ ity was understood as a vice that could seduce anyone, the first phase of the Nazis’ homophobic policies focused on removing the “temptation” from the public by destroying the lively queer subcultures that existed across Ger­ many’s urban centers. As the queer center of Germany and the capital of the new Nazi state, Berlin was the Nazis’ first target. The most prominent of the same-sex cafés, bars, and nightclubs that existed throughout the city were shut down within months, but many continued to exist with varying de­ grees of secrecy into the mid-to-late 1930s.29 The Nazi state wasted no time in destroying the network of the most active queer organizations and ban­ ning all queer publications. The Institute of Sexual Science, founded by the gay Jewish socialist Magnus Hirschfeld, was a primary target of this purge. Hirschfeld himself was abroad on a lecture tour as a group of one hundred Nazi students, including a marching band, stormed and looted the Institute of Sexual Science, destroying nearly two decades of research. Days later, during the infamous book burnings in Berlin, the contents of the institute’s archives and library were burned in front of a cheering crowd.

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Figure 1.2. German police officers stand in front of the former Eldorado club, which has been closed and plastered with Hitler campaign posters. Photo March 5, 1933. Courtesy of Landesarchiv Berlin, F Rep. 290 Nr. II6938 / Fotograf: k. A.

The Nazis were slower to suppress queer spaces beyond Berlin. They did not initiate large-scale, concerted raids and arrests in Munich until the fol­ lowing summer.30 Pubs that were frequented by gay men and lesbians in Hamburg, Germany’s second-largest city, with a reputation as a “homosex­ ual stronghold,” stayed in business until mid-1936.31 It is possible that law enforcement allowed these locations to remain open to make it easier to spy on gay men and collect more names of people to arrest in the future. The practice of entrapment to capture gay men became relatively com­ mon by the end of the 1930s.32 It was not uncommon for police officers to dress in plainclothes and patrol areas known to be frequented by gay men. After the government shut down queer bars and clubs across the country, law enforcement recognized they could also catch gay men at other locales believed to ferment “degeneracy.” This is how Frankfurt police officers, in June 1942, arrested Wolfgang Lauinger, a twenty-four-year-old mechanic who confessed to being gay after he was apprehended because of his associa­ tion with the Harlem Club, a nightclub known for playing jazz and swing music, which Hitler considered foreign and debauched.33 Nazi raids against queer spaces occurred in mostly urban areas, but pro­ paganda against homosexuality was prominent across the nation. These

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homophobic messages became the earliest and most widespread form of persecution that most queer people, especially gay men, faced during Nazi rule. It was not only Nazi Party mouthpieces that decried homosexuality as a threat; local newspapers also played a part in fanning the flames of homopho­ bia throughout Germany. In 1936, the Hamburg Fremdenblatt lamented that a weakening of moral standards during the Weimar years had forced the Nazi Party to begin its “vigorous crackdown” in Berlin so that homosexual­ ity would not spread to the rural countryside. Propaganda portrayed gay men simultaneously and contradictorily as weak perverts and hardened criminals.34 The Hamburger Anzeiger characterized homosexuality as such: “At best it turns men into effeminate, furtive seekers of pleasure. It erodes their moral fiber and character, it destroys their righteous male honor, and in many cases, unfortunately, it leads to crime. The most hardened crimi­ nals often are recruited from homosexual circles. The new Germany has no use for criminals and weaklings, perverts and inverts, but requires instead straightforward and sincere manly souls, and so we must combat homosexu­ ality with the means available to us—education, observation, the law, the police, and the courts.”35 The fact that such propaganda was able to spread so widely and was so generally tolerated points to the pervasive homophobia that existed well be­ fore the Nazis came to power. As Friedrich-Paul von Groszheim, an openly gay man from Lübeck who was sentenced to prison for violating Paragraph 175, later recalled, “I must say that, [when it came to that], the people were on the Nazis’ side.”36 The German public’s compliance with or even active support of the Nazis’ measures was not limited to those targeted at gay men. The majority of Germans supported the Nazis’ heavy-handed war against those who were officially categorized and ostracized as “outsiders,” “aso­ cials,” “criminals,” or “useless eaters.” Even if Germans did not agree with or support the stories of excessive violence associated with the concentration camps, most did not protest because the terrorization was leveled against groups who were already on the margins of society and garnered little sympathy.37 Denunciations of queer people by neighbors, coworkers, landlords, strangers, and acquaintances played a significant role in the Nazi state’s abil­ ity to locate and arrest those whose gender identity or sexuality challenged the restrictive ideals of the national community. In the fall of 1934, for ex­ ample, Richard Grune hosted two parties in his apartment after the Nazis had shut down queer clubs, bars, and associations across the city. The artist had developed a large circle of gay friends since moving to the capital from his small hometown of Flensburg in February 1933. Tragically, one of the

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people Grune invited, Princess Inge Ellen zu Bentheim, was a Nazi infor­ mant. She spent the party noting names, addresses, and professions of the attendees, later feeding the information to the SS. Her denunciations led to the arrests of over seventy gay men. Grune was arrested on December 1, 1934, and spent the next decade in various German prisons and concentra­ tion camps.38 Gay men sometimes turned in each other for a variety of reasons, in­ cluding jealousy, or perhaps to gain leniency for themselves in the face of impending arrest. Hermann, a gay man who lived in Hamburg during the Nazi years, later recalled that it was an open secret how the Gestapo worked to gain information on gay men: “First they’d arrest one of us and place him under a lot of pressure. Then, they’d torture a confession out of him, as well as names of other gays.”39 Lesbians and gender nonconforming women were also the target of de­ nunciations. Historian Laurie Marhoefer’s research on Ilse Totzke illustrates how intersectionality helps us better understand denunciations and persecu­ tion in the Third Reich. Born in August 1913 in Strasbourg (then Germany, now France), Totzke was twenty-five years old when Lüdwig Gründel, a physical education instructor at the University of Würzburg, told the local Gestapo office that he believed Totzke was a spy. His only evidence was that Totzke hung out with Jews and did not receive her mail at home. During its investigation, the Gestapo called on Totzke’s landlord, who told them that she was a social outsider and a man hater who “does not conform to the Peo­ ple’s Community and cannot get along with anybody.” The landlord made sure to mention that “she does not receive gentlemen visitors.”40 Indeed, as other witnesses later noted, Totzke’s gender expression challenged con­ temporary gender roles. Records do not indicate how Totzke herself identi­ fied, but she wore suits and ties and kept a short-crop haircut that was com­ mon among lesbian communities in Germany at the time. At first, the two accusations—that Totzke was a spy and that she was a cross-dressing man hater—might seem unrelated. But a widespread transphobic stereotype of the time asserted that people who “cross dressed” were accustomed to living and navigating life “in disguise.” This supposedly meant that gender-noncon­ forming people, especially trans people, were more likely to be deceitful and adept at avoiding detection, which were perfect qualities for a spy. In May 1941, someone living in Totzke’s neighborhood sent an anony­ mous letter to the Gestapo informing them that Totzke was having an “in­ timate friendship” with a fifteen-year-old girl. More appalling to the letter’s author was that the younger girl was Jewish. “Every German knows and must know the laws,” wrote the anonymous author, referring to a range

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of laws and policies policing interactions among Jews and non-Jews. “But for Miss T[otzke], they seem not to exist.”41 This piqued the Gestapo’s at­ tention, since other sources in their investigation also mentioned Totzke’s association with Jews. While it was Totzke’s gender nonconformity and “aso­ cial” behavior that motivated the first denunciation, which in turn produced more statements about her gender and sexuality, once she was on the Nazis’ radar, they zeroed in on her connections to Jews, which they found much more troubling. They called Totzke in for questioning in September 1941 and then again the following month. It seems that the Gestapo did not have enough evidence to detain her, and they let her go with a “severe warning.” She said she understood that “if there is another complaint against me for having contact with Jews . . . I will face immediate arrest and transport to a concentration camp.”42 Nevertheless, she persisted.43 This was not Totzke’s last run-in with the Gestapo. The number of denunciations of queer people in Nazi Germany rose so dramatically that some newspapers urged their readers not to overbur­ den their police departments. Of all the Paragraph 175 cases in the lower courts for the duration of the Nazi regime, approximately 30 percent were the result of civilian denunciations.44 Germans understood that their voice could activate the power and violence of the Nazi state against people they denounced. Denunciations almost always triggered investigations, and especially after the 1935 amendment of Paragraph 175, essentially no evidence was required for an arrest and conviction. Consequently it is unclear how many of the men accused in these denunciations were ac­ tually gay or bisexual and how many were simply accused by neighbors, coworkers, or rivals as a way to settle personal disputes. What is clear is that while a majority of the German citizenry did nothing to question or resist the Nazis’ campaign against homosexuality, a significant portion of the population went further and actively participated in the persecution of this community.

The Amendment of Paragraph 175 and the Radicalization of Persecution Since its beginnings, the Nazi movement had embraced violence as a politi­ cal means, and Nazis even used state authority to sanction violence, includ­ ing street brawls and seizure of property. But the murder of SA leader Ernst Röhm in June 1934 revealed that Nazi leaders were even willing to murder one of their own to achieve their political goals. On July 13, 1934, Hitler

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justified Röhm’s murder in a speech that was broadcast on radios across the Reich: In this hour I was responsible for the fate of the German people, and thereby I became the supreme judge of the German people. I gave the order to shoot the ringleaders in this treason, and I further gave the order to cauterize down to the raw flesh the ulcers of the poi­ soning of the wells in our domestic life. Let the nation know that its existence—which depends on its internal order and security—cannot be threatened with impunity by anyone! And let it be known for all time to come that if anyone raises his hand to strike the State, then certain death is his lot.45 These murders helped consolidate Hitler’s position as absolute ruler by re­ moving potential rivals and by demonstrating to the German people that he acted as judge, jury, and executioner. The public discourse that emerged after Röhm’s murder signaled a shift in the Nazi war on homosexuality. Within days of Röhm’s execution, Nazi officials were spinning the operation as evidence of the state’s efforts to counteract Germany’s degraded moral values. Hitler’s decision to present the execution of Röhm as an example of the party’s campaign against homo­ sexuality was an attempt to build a consensus among the various groups and segments of the population who did not yet support the Nazi government. By framing Nazi antihomosexual policies in terms of cleaning up a morally corrupt Germany, Hitler was able to gain support from conservatives and the moral right.46 After the Röhm purge, gay men were no longer presented as just a ra­ cial threat to the procreation of the German Volk, but instead as political enemies of the state. Two weeks after Röhm’s murder, Hitler told politi­ cians gathered in the Reichstag that a group of men whom Röhm had promoted through the ranks “simply because they belonged to the circle of those afflicted with this particular predisposition” had engaged in trea­ son and sought to overthrow him.47 Nazi press outlets also promulgated homosexuality as a political danger. In March 1937, Das Schwarze Korps, the official paper of the SS, ran a front-page article about gay men, titled “They Are Enemies of the State!” The issue of homosexuality had become explicitly politicized, and as Hitler’s speech before the Reichstag asserted, the Nazi state reserved the right to physically eliminate enemies of the state. The Röhm purge, therefore, was a chilling foreshadowing of what was to come.

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A perceived threat of this magnitude required expanded policies and mea­ sures to confront. Key leaders in the Third Reich found the original framing of Paragraph 175 too restrictive in that it required a burden of proof so high that it limited the state’s ability to combat this racial and political challenge to the nation. And so, they set about to bring the law more closely into line with Nazi ideals. When members of the subcommittee overseeing the changes to Paragraph 175 reviewed the first proposed revisions in September 1934, they agreed that proving “intercourse-like acts” was “devilishly difficult for prosecutors in the courtroom.”48 Dr. Gerhard Lorenz, who was the chief judge of the Leipzig district court, insisted that the new version of the law contain less specific language so that “every indecency between men” could be considered a crime.49 The committee, it seems, agreed with Lorenz, and the finalized version of the amended Paragraph 175 read, “A man who commits indecency with another man, or allows himself to be misused indecently, will be punished with prison.” The language was purposely vague, allowing prosecutors and judges to define “indecency” as they wanted and to convict as many men as possible. Moreover, the new version of the law also criminalized both men involved, whereas previously, the “passive” participant had almost always been understood as a victim and was therefore not in danger of conviction. Beginning in the summer of 1935, anything from sex or mutual masturba­ tion to a quick kiss or a touch that lingered too long could land a man in prison. A 1944 legal commentary stated that it was “not necessary that a physical contact has taken place”; it sufficed if homosexual behavior was “even just intended.”50 During its reworking of the law, the subcommittee included a clause to protect youths from conviction, which explicitly stated that courts could re­ frain from punishment if those arrested were under the age of twenty-one. This clause again reifies the predominant contemporary understanding that sexual desire was fluid and that same-sex experiences might even be a part of growing up; a single homosexual encounter did not make one “a homo­ sexual.” While the new version of the law was lenient on youth, it did include severely sharpened punishments for adult men who used their positions of authority or cash incentives to coerce others into sexual encounters. Violat­ ing this new sub-clause (Paragraph 175a) carried a penitentiary sentence of up to ten years with hard labor. Because the law criminalized all “indecency” between men, the Nazis used it to arrest gay and bisexual men. The amendment of Paragraph 175 also presented the opportunity to re­ visit a topic that had been debated for decades by German jurists: whether to criminalize “indecency” among women. Some leading Nazis argued that “the

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criminal law should provide protection against sexual degeneracy regardless of gender.”51 Himmler blamed the Nazi movement’s overzealous empha­ sis on militarization, uniforms, and masculine bravado as inadvertently— and perhaps inescapably—making women too masculine, thus eroding the “natural” divide of the genders.52 The Criminal Law Commission discussed at length whether Paragraph 175 should be extended to lesbians. A number of factors ultimately contributed to the decision not to criminalize lesbian sex. The greatest factor was the historical gender hierarchy that existed in Germany. As a rule, women were excluded from leadership roles in national politics, the economy, and the military. Thus, lesbians would not pose as direct a threat to the German state as gay men did, since men were in posi­ tions of authority. Moreover, the Nazis acted under the assumption that women’s sexual de­ sire was ultimately dependent on men for stimulation and for physical and emotional satisfaction. Josef Meisinger, an SS lieutenant later known as “the Butcher of Warsaw,” was one of the leading crusaders against gay men. He doubted if lesbian desire existed at all, suggesting that when two women had sexual encounters together, they were both fantasizing about sex with a man. As evidence, Meisinger pointed out that lesbians used phallic-shaped objects, like the “ever popular candle,” to bring themselves to orgasm.53 Sexual desire among women, then, posed no serious, lasting threat to the German Volk since it was assumed that lesbian women would be naturally drawn back toward heterosexual sex when a man came calling. When faced with arguments about the danger lesbians potentially posed to the German birthrate, jurists asserted that unlike gay men, who might find it difficult or impossible to become adequately aroused for reproduc­ tive intercourse, lesbians could still be impregnated, by force if necessary. In 1934, Otto Georg Thierack, who would become justice minister in 1942, asserted that the purpose of Germany’s laws against sex offenses was never to enforce morality, but instead was to “protect fertility.” “Unlike men,” he stated, “women are always prepared for sex.”54 In the end, jurists decided that criminalizing female homosexuality was unnecessary. Just because the Nazis chose not to extend this particular law to criminal­ ize lesbians does not mean that lesbians escaped persecution. The Gestapo had the authority to take men and women into “protective custody,” an in­ definite period of imprisonment in a concentration camp that did not require a trial. There are multiple cases of the Gestapo placing women in protective custody after it was discovered they were having relationships with other women. As research by Claudia Schoppmann, Jens Dobler, Camille Fau­ roux, and Anna Hájková has shown, the Nazis often used other paragraphs

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to persecute queer women, such as §74 (sex with dependents), §176 (child abuse), or §183 (public nuisances).55 Law enforcement in the Third Reich had multiple tools at its disposal and ultimately did not need Paragraph 175 to convict queer women. Similarly, there was not a specific law that targeted trans people, but there was a web of other statutes that affected trans communities. Many trans women were arrested under Paragraph 175 since law enforcement often treated them as gay men who were “cross dressing.” Nazis also used Germa­ ny’s Paragraph 183 to prosecute some trans people, since dressing in clothing traditionally worn by the opposite gender could be seen as “causing a public nuisance.” Social marginalization and ostracization also forced many queer people into homelessness and financial hardships. Many queer people, there­ fore, were arrested under laws against vagrancy and panhandling. The experiences of queer women and trans people during the era of the Holocaust also highlight the other mechanisms of persecution in the Third Reich beyond the implementation of specific laws and policies. Nazi leader­ ship in the various party and governmental institutions enabled and perpetu­ ated an atmosphere that made it impossible for queer people to live their lives openly without putting themselves in danger. “In the history of Nazism, the word persecution evokes an explicit state program,” writes historian Laurie Marhoefer. Instead of systematic, top-down state persecution, as Marhoefer convincingly demonstrates, the persecution of lesbian and trans women consisted of “a complicated interaction between the prejudice of neighbors and acquaintances and the Gestapo’s methods” that put queer women in extreme danger.56 The German populace’s willingness to denounce queer people had a dra­ matic impact in enabling the Nazi regime’s ability to identify and persecute them. Recent research suggests that gender-nonconforming people were more likely to be denounced by the public, whether they were queer or not. Such was the case with Fritz Kitzing, who was assigned male upon birth in December 1905. Records do not indicate how Kitzing identified, but they lived openly as a woman and a man at different points in time.57 They faced discrimination because of their gender nonconformity and were ultimately forced into prostitution for survival. The Berlin police arrested Kitzing in late 1933 and charged them with vagrancy and solicitation under Paragraph 361. On March 16, 1934, Kitzing escaped prison with the help of their family and fled to London. Soon thereafter, London police arrested them for public indecency and extradited Kitzing to Germany in November 1934. Upon their involuntary return to Berlin, Kitzing began dressing in men’s clothing, perhaps to avoid further run-ins with the law. Unfortunately, Kitzing

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was brought in for questioning several months later after flirting with an un­ dercover SA man. During their interrogation, Kitzing admitted they were “homosexually inclined,” perhaps because they knew that flirting was not criminalized under the existing Paragraph 175, though that would change when the amended version went into effect later that year. Kitzing was let go with a warning.58 In July 1935, one of Kitzing’s neighbors denounced them to the Gestapo for being trans. The Gestapo apprehended Kitzing in March 1936 and labeled them a “transvestite of the worst kind.”59 The Gestapo report noted that there were “complaints about how the shameless goings-on of transvestites were a danger to the public. It would be a great service to the public—and even to these morally depraved people themselves—if we sent Kitzing to a concentration camp.”60 Two months later, they sent Kitzing to Lichtenburg, and after five months transferred them to Sachsenhausen. Kitzing was re­ leased on April 8, 1937, after twelve months in “protective custody.” They had never received a trial. In March 1938, the Gestapo discovered that Kitz­ ing had written letters to acquaintances in London describing their horrible experiences in the concentration camps. The Gestapo accused Kitzing of dis­ tributing “atrocity propaganda” abroad and took them into custody. Records do not reveal what happened to Fritz Kitzing after that.61 As these examples demonstrate, although there was not a systematic op­ eration against lesbians and trans people that mirrored that against gay men, they were still subjected to terror, hostility, and violence from Nazi officials, local law enforcement, and the public. As Marhoefer concludes, the risks that queer women and trans people faced “did not stem from a single law or from a dedicated police division. They were nevertheless quite real.”62 The Nazi version of Paragraph 175 was published on June 28, 1935, co­ incidentally almost one year to the day after the murder of Ernst Röhm; it then went into effect on the first of September. It granted the German state unprecedented legal authority to terrorize and punish men who were even accused of having sex with other men. The Nazis also extended their legal persecution of other minorities during the summer and fall of 1935 by amending the Law for the Prevention of Progeny with Hereditary Diseases, which legalized the forced sterilization of individuals with alleged heredi­ tary defects. They also passed the infamous Nuremberg race laws during this time. The 1935 changes to Paragraph 175 therefore cannot be understood as simply a manifestation of institutional homophobia. After two years of rule that were characterized by demagoguery and street violence, the Nazi Party was attempting to legitimate its ideologies and codify them into German law. It is telling that lawmakers in the Third Reich simultaneously wrote new laws

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and amended existing ones to legislate the boundaries of citizenship along racial and sexual lines at the same time. Race and sex became intertwined in the law in the summer and fall months of 1935. The amendment of Para­ graph 175 was an integral part of the National Socialists’ overall efforts to legally define their racial Volksgemeinschaft. In 1936, Himmler established the Reich Central Office for Combating Ho­ mosexuality and Abortion. Housed in the Gestapo headquarters in Berlin, the Central Office had at its disposal the resources of Himmler’s SS and vari­ ous policing agencies. Josef Meisinger was named the Central Office’s first leader, and he answered only to Himmler; in effect, the Central Office largely functioned outside the law. As can be discerned from its name, the Central Office was primarily concerned with implementing National Socialist popu­ lation policies and combating two specific threats to the German birthrate: homosexuality and abortion. The staff of the Central Office collected data on men who were even suspected of being gay or bisexual. Members of the Gestapo and SS worked with the Central Office to compile and consolidate hundreds of “pink lists” (rosa Listen) that could then be used to make arrests. They did not have to start from scratch; such lists had existed since the imperial period, and in many cases the Central Office had to simply request that local police forces turn them over.63 Armed with pink lists, together with denunciations, en­ trapment, and forced confessions, Himmler’s officers were able to infiltrate queer circles and arrest men on individual bases or in large-scale raids. In a radio address to the German nation on January 15, 1937, Himmler stressed the importance of the Central Office’s work, warning that if left unchecked, homosexuals would lead the nation into an abyss. He declared that his duty would be to pursue homosexuals in a “merciless and pitiless” manner.64 Eight days later, an estimated 230 men were arrested on a single night when Ham­ burg officials launched a series of concerted raids throughout the city.65 After the 1935 revision of Paragraph 175 and the establishment of the Central Office, the number of convictions for “indecency” among men skyrocketed. The number of Paragraph 175 convictions handed down by German courts rose by an astounding 740 percent when compared to the average number of annual convictions in the Weimar period. In all, around 100,000 men were arrested in Germany between 1933 and 1945 under the anti-sodomy law. Of those men arrested, 53,480 were ultimately convicted; 95 percent of those convictions came after the 1935 amendment of the law.66 Because he felt that the issue was of such importance, Himmler did not leave it up to the German courts to adequately police homosexuality. It was not uncommon for the Gestapo to apprehend a man suspected of being

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gay and keep him imprisoned for indefinite periods without trial. After the expansion of Himmler’s powers in 1936, it also became common for the Gestapo to pick up a man after the completion of his prison sentence— especially if he had been arrested more than once—and place him in “pro­ tective custody” (Schutzhaft) in a concentration camp. Protective custody in a camp was not stipulated as a legal punishment under Paragraph 175. This put the Gestapo and SS at odds with the German judicial and legal systems, but Himmler felt that the mission of the Nazi Party superseded any legal confines of the German state. Himmler focused on punishing men who had been arrested multiple times under Paragraph 175. These “repeat offenders” were perceived as es­ pecially dangerous because their time in prison had not broken them of their vice. Tougher tactics, it seems, were needed to cure these Germans of their ways and prevent them from tempting others in society to engage in their lifestyle. That is why Himmler’s SS and Gestapo sent between seven thousand and ten thousand queer men to concentration camps.

The men with the Pink Triangle: life inside the Concentration Camps Richard Grune, who had been arrested after an attendee of his parties outed him and seventy other men to the Gestapo in 1934, spent five months in pro­ tective custody before ever receiving a trial. In September 1936, a court found him guilty of violating Paragraph 175, for which he served a one-year prison sentence. When he was released, the Gestapo immediately apprehended him, asserting that the sentence had been too lenient for someone who had posed a danger to the public by hosting gatherings for so many queer people. In October 1937, the Gestapo sent Richard Grune to the Sachsenhausen con­ centration camp, where he became prisoner number 1296.67 Upon arrival at concentration camps, inmates were stripped of their pos­ sessions, clothes, and their names, and then assigned a badge that represented the reason for their incarceration. Josef Kohout, a gay concentration camp survivor, recalled that when he arrived at Sachsenhausen in January 1940 af­ ter a deadly transport in a boxcar, he and the other new prisoners were given colored triangles that were to be sewn on their striped shirt uniform. Kohout describes the cloth triangles as being two inches wide, with the peak facing down, and then explained what each color signified: “yellow for Jews, black for anti-socials, red for politicals, purple for Jehovah’s Witnesses, green for criminals, blue for emigrants, pink for homosexuals, brown for Gypsies.” Kohout also noted that the pink triangles were roughly one inch larger than

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the others, which, he supposed, was so that they could be identified from farther away.68 It is not clear why the SS chose the color pink to label gay prisoners in the camps. Using our current understandings of gendered colors, it may seem that the Nazis sought to humiliate gay men by labeling them with an ef­ feminate color. However, art historians have demonstrated that for much of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, pink was considered a color for boys, since it was seen as a softer shade of red, which was portrayed as a masculine and aggressive color. In the early decades of the 1900s, boys and girls alike were dressed in pastel pinks, blues, greens, and yellows. It was only in the 1940s that pink became more exclusively associated with femininity, and this transformation occurred first in the United States. In Europe, it was common to see pink birth announcements for boys into the early 1960s.69 To complicate matters further, the color most closely associated with German gay and queer cultures in the 1920s and 1930s was lavender, not pink. It is possible that the Nazis’ choice of pink to mark gay prisoners came from a slang word for male prostitutes who had sex with men: Rosarote (“pinks” or “rosies”).70 Despite the orderly schema of the badging system, implementation was not always as straightforward. Some men imprisoned for violating Para­ graph 175 were labeled as criminals or as “asocials,” an umbrella term the Nazis forced upon men and women deemed socially deviant, including drug users, alcoholics, prostitutes, and vagrants. While interned in Neuengamme on charges of “habitual homosexuality,” Hans G. from Berlin was prisoner number 997 and wore a black triangle, the mark of “asocials.”71 In Sachsen­ hausen, some Paragraph 175 prisoners were given green triangles, the badge for criminals.72 The Frenchmen Pierre Seel wore a small blue bar during his time in the Schirmeck camp, noting in his autobiography that it was the same symbol for Catholic inmates and “asocials.” He never saw a pink tri­ angle during his imprisonment in the camp.73 A 1936 report of the prisoners in Dachau states that all prisoners interned because of their homosexuality were labeled with “175” in large letters on their shirt.74 At least one survivor reported that he was forced to wear a large A on his uniform, which stood for Arschficker (ass fucker).75 By the end of 1938, the badging system had become more standardized across the camps, and the pink triangle was listed as the primary badge for men imprisoned for violating Paragraph 175. The actual badging of prison­ ers did not always reflect the official chart, even after standardization. Bene­ dict Kautsky, who was incarcerated as a political prisoner, later recalled that “some prisoners ultimately wore two, three, even four different triangles

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over the course of their imprisonment—sometimes red, green, [or] black.”76 It was not uncommon for a prisoner to wear one badge in one concentration camp but then be assigned a different one when he was transferred to a new camp. The Gestapo took musician Karl Kipp into protective custody after his third arrest under Paragraph 175. When he was processed at Dachau on Feb­ ruary 21, 1942, he was assigned a green triangle, marking him as a criminal. He was transferred to Auschwitz in October and was assigned a red triangle. After he was moved to Monowitz (Auschwitz III) in the summer of 1943, eyewitnesses reported seeing a pink triangle on Kipp’s uniform.77 Unlike the prisoner uniforms, which were mass produced, the cotton or mixed-fabric triangles were often finished on-site at individual camps, so the variations in prisoner badges might be affected by what dye and supplies were on hand at any given camp.78 While all inmates forced to wear the pink triangle may have been imprisoned because of homosexuality, not all inmates imprisoned for homosexuality wore the pink triangle. Lesbians were sent to concentration camps, too, though it is difficult to ascertain accurate statistics, since the SS did not label lesbians as a distinct prisoner group. Elli Smula and Margarete Rosenberg were sent to Ravens­ brück, the Nazi concentration camp for women, on November 30, 1940. The records list “lesbian” as the reason for arrest. Nothing more is known about them except that they were both assigned a red triangle and therefore catego­ rized as political prisoners.79 Most lesbians were sent to Ravensbrück, where they were often labeled as “asocials” and assigned a black triangle since they did not conform to the prevailing gender norms of Aryan motherhood or womanhood. That lesbians were labeled as asocials rather than under a separate cat­ egory does not change the fact that lesbians were imprisoned and persecuted in concentration camps. Intersectionality is key to understanding why and when queer women were sent to the camps, as well as their experiences within the barbed wire. Ilse Totzke, whose neighbors had denounced her for associating with Jews, ultimately ended up in a camp. In the middle of the night on February 26, 1943, Totzke sought to smuggle a Jewish friend, Ruth Basinski, over the border into Switzerland. Swiss guards caught the two women and turned them over to the Nazi authorities. Basinski was sent to Auschwitz, and Totzke, as a non-Jewish German, was sent to Ravensbrück. Both Totzke and Basinski survived and were liberated in the spring of 1945. Elsa Conrad was a lesbian who owned and operated multiple lesbian bars in Berlin. She was arrested in 1935 and sent to the Moringen women’s camp. The fact that Conrad was both lesbian and Jewish played a role in the Nazis’ decision to imprison her.80

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Eve Adams (born Chawa Zloczewer) was a Jewish lesbian who moved to the United States from Poland in 1912 and then became a leftist activist and an integral part of counterculture communities in New York City and Chicago. In December 1927, the United States deported Adams to Poland for publishing a lesbian novel and for allegedly making sexual advances toward the policewoman who had been sent to entrap her. New York’s Daily News reported on Adams’s deportation, stating, “The morals of this 35-year-old woman . . . were not what this country demands from a would-be citizen.”81 In the mid-1930s, Adams moved to Paris and fell in love with Hella Olstein, a Jewish woman from Switzerland. After the outbreak of war, the two tried to find a way out of France, but the money and paperwork required proved to be insurmountable. They went into hiding, but authorities arrested them on December 7, 1943, as foreign Jews. Ten days later, they were put on a transport to Auschwitz with 850 other Jews. At liberation in January 1945, there were only thirty-one survivors of that transport. That did not include Eve Adams or Hella Olstein.82 Gay men made up only a very small percentage of the total prisoners in a camp at any given time. At the Dachau camp, for example, 585 pris­ oners were admitted on the basis of homosexuality. That means that gay inmates made up only 0.25 percent of the total number of prisoners housed in Dachau during its twelve-year existence.83 Gay prisoners constituted simi­ larly small groups in other concentration camps. They often came from different social, economic, or educational backgrounds, so there was not nec­ essarily a sense of camaraderie among them. This already small group often did not belong to the community that sometimes developed among other concentration camp prisoners, which meant that they could not benefit from the black-market trading of valuable scraps of food, pieces of clothing, or perhaps extra shoes that often meant the difference between life and death. The exclusion from these alternative methods of securing food and other essentials was especially damning for gay men, given that the camp officials often provided “175ers” with less food and harder work details. Overall, the horrors that pink triangle prisoners faced were comparable to those faced by their fellow inmates. But the autobiographical accounts from gay men who survived their imprisonment, as well as the very few accounts from other survivors that mention gay prisoners, consistently sug­ gest that the men with the pink triangle were treated with special disdain. Indeed, homophobia did not stop at the camp gates. Gay inmates had to face discrimination and harassment from the SS guards and their fellow inmates alike. After the Holocaust, one survivor reflected on fellow inmate Karl Kipp,

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a singer who performed in the camp orchestra at Monowitz: “He had a pow­ erful and melodious baritone and was a good person. But the pink triangle on his chest told everyone he was homosexual. Because of that, he was the loneliest of the lonely in the orchestra.”84 A prisoner at Dachau named Burkhard recalled that the SS officers tar­ geted incoming gay prisoners, ridiculed them, and physically abused them at every given opportunity.85 Kurt von Ruffin, a gay prisoner in the Lich­ tenburg concentration camp, later recounted that the camp officials often treated trans people with particular contempt. “The poor transvestites,” he remembered, “were stripped out of their women’s clothes and then humili­ ated, insulted, and beaten.” He recalled hearing about one occasion in which the guards brought a trans woman into the camp, forced her to undress, and then shoved her head into a latrine until she drowned in human excrement.86 In his memoirs, Kohout mentions that the men with the pink triangle were kept in separate barracks, segregated from the rest of the prisoners at night since the SS guards thought the “175ers” might try to seduce the other men. Upon arrival of pink triangle prisoners in Sachsenhausen, the barrack kapo informed them that the lights would be kept on all night to make sure the men did not have sex with each other. Moreover, each man was required to sleep with his hands outside the blankets. “You queer assholes aren’t going to start jerking off in here!” the kapo yelled at them.87 Speaking of his obser­ vations during six years as a political prisoner in Buchenwald, Eugen Kogon said that isolating gay prisoners into their own barracks gave the SS—whom he called “unconscionable creatures”—the chance to exercise their lust for power and carry out “shameless extortion, abuse, and rape” without fear of consequences.88 Kohout recalls witnessing a group of intoxicated SS officers torturing one of the pink triangle prisoners by dipping his testicles into boiling water, rap­ ing him with a broomstick, and then beating him to death.89 In his memoirs, Pierre Seel describes the event that “contributed more than anything else to making [him] a silent, obedient shadow among the others.” On the orders of the SS, over three hundred prisoners were gathered and forced to watch as a newly incarcerated gay prisoner was executed. Seel concealed a gasp as he realized that the prisoner was his former lover, who had managed to escape capture until then. The SS guards let loose several German shepherds on the prisoner, and as Seel recounts, “they devoured him right in front of us.”90 The combination of forced isolation, harder work details, lack of food, and overall deplorable living conditions orchestrated by the Nazis caused the death of the majority of gay men sent to concentration camps. Johann

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Thomas was forty years old when he was incarcerated in Natzweiler in Janu­ ary 1942 for violating Paragraph 175. Two months later he was admitted into the camp infirmary for displaying symptoms of infection and for extreme swelling in both legs. The camp doctor allowed him to stay for only three days before releasing him with a clean bill of health. Two weeks later, on April 15, 1942, Thomas was admitted back to the infirmary with a high fever and shortness of breath. The infection had returned and ravaged his lungs. He died within a matter of hours. The camp doctor noted “general physical weakness” on the death certificate. In a letter to Thomas’s widow, camp of­ ficials stated, “During the autopsy, we concluded that your husband died of severe lung inflammation. Unfortunately, he presented no prior symptoms to warn us. You may rest assured that all medical measures were taken to save your husband.”91 The conditions were deadlier for older prisoners. Heinrich Lamm, an artist from Goslar, had already survived three years in prison for violat­ ing Paragraph 175 when the Gestapo sent him to Buchenwald as prisoner number 1972. Lamm was fifty years old and died of heart failure before his next birthday.92 Auschwitz records reveal that a fifty-year-old and a fifty-one­ year-old pink triangle prisoner both died within a few days of their arrival.93 While younger prisoners tended to live longer, there are countless records of young pink triangle prisoners whose bodies succumbed to the environ­ ment of death established by the SS or who were simply murdered by one of the guards. The death certificate for the shipbuilder Albert Latendorf, who was born in Hamburg and died in Dachau, listed “heart failure” as the cause of death.94 He was twenty-seven. Johann Schöllhammer was just twenty-six when he was shot trying to escape Flossenbürg on October 31, 1944.95 “Shot while attempting to escape” was often used as a euphemism by camp guards to hide the true cause of death, such as torture or murder. After serving over a year in prison, Richard Grune, the gay artist who had moved to his nation’s capital looking to find a place to be himself, was sent to Sachsenhausen in October 1937. Two and a half years later, the SS transferred him to Flossenbürg, where he became prisoner number 2553. As American troops approached the camp in April 1945, the SS initiated the evacuation of Flossenbürg. Grune was one of the approximately ninetythree hundred inmates forced to march south toward Dachau. He managed to escape during the death march and eventually made his way back home, reuniting with his sister. In this regard, Grune was lucky. Sixty-five percent of all men imprisoned as gay died in the camps. Three-quarters of those deaths occurred within one year of walking through the camp gates.96

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Intention and Impact The unusually high death rate for gay male prisoners illustrates important discrepancies between Nazi policies toward gay men—and queer people more broadly—and the devastating reality that these policies wrought. Offi­ cially, Nazi policies were principally meant to reeducate or “cure” queer peo­ ple of their alleged degeneracy. Queer people as a group were never targeted for genocide in the killing centers located in the east. Instead, the SS used the concentration camps to submit gay prisoners to a litany of violent and dehu­ manizing forms of conversion therapy. In the early 1940s, Himmler ordered that brothels be set up in the camps (supplied with forced sex workers from a women’s camp, like Ravensbrück) so that gay prisoners could “learn the joys of the other sex.”97 The combination of harder work details, constant harassment, and smaller food rations were said to make gay men tougher, and thus more masculine, to reorient them back to heterosexuality. In one instance, Himmler hired the Danish physician Carl Vaernet to perform medi­ cal experiments that implanted an “artificial sex gland” into gay men that released testosterone and a cocktail of other drugs in an attempt to “nor­ malize the sexual orientation of homosexual persons.”98 If all else failed, gay prisoners were often coerced into submitting to “voluntary” sterilization or even castration. The use of these invasive medical procedures suggests a shift in attitudes toward the understanding of homosexuality itself. If men could not be “rehabilitated” through hard labor or other draconian practices, then perhaps there was a biological root to same-sex desire after all. One can only wonder what the fate of queer people would have been if Nazi leadership had begun to understand their “affliction” as biological and thus unalterable. Ultimately, it is problematic to view the history of LGBTQ+ people dur­ ing the era of the Holocaust solely through the lens of the Nazis’ intentions. Top Nazi policy makers might not have planned to murder every queer in­ dividual, but they did seek to completely eradicate queer spaces, cultures, networks, and communities. Nazi leadership promoted propaganda that depicted queer people—especially gay men—as enemies of the state, pedo­ philes and lecherous predators, and a threat to the Aryan birthrate, which was to be the key to new Germany’s “thousand year empire.” The fascist system created opportunities for committed individuals to enact violence against or coordinate the killing of queer people. Heinz F., a gay survivor who spent over eight years in different concentration camps, attested that nearly all the gay prisoners in the jail where he was being held were trans­ ported to Mauthausen concentration camp and subsequently killed. He was

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spared only because his trial was still under way. After convicting Heinz F. under Paragraph 175, the Nazis sent him to Buchenwald.99 In Sachsenhausen, which one survivor called “the Auschwitz for gays,”100 nearly six hundred of the camp’s roughly eleven hundred pink triangle pris­ oners were intentionally killed between 1936 and 1945 through work de­ tails and other euphemistically termed “unnatural fatalities.”101 During July and August 1942, only pink triangle prisoners were assigned to work in the camp’s brick factory, which had notoriously lethal working conditions. Dur­ ing a six-week period, eighty-nine gay men were killed in the brick factory, leading historian Joachim Müller to designate the deadly summer as an “ex­ tensive murder campaign.”102 The Nazis continued to enforce Paragraph 175 until the very end. Even weeks before the unconditional surrender of Germany and the end of the war, gay men were sentenced to prison. On April 24, 1945, a group of men who had been charged with desertion and subversion of the war effort were released from prison, pardoned, and sent to fight in the Volkssturm, the na­ tional militia established in the final months of the war to aid the efforts of the army. On the same day, four police officers charged with Paragraph 175 were lined up in front of a prison wall and shot.103 It seems that the threat posed by homosexuality was more pressing than the need for manpower in the war effort. The German government under Nazi rule implemented a web of oppres­ sive laws and policies to enforce its gender and sexual ideals, and it levied vio­ lence against those who did not conform. At the same time, German citizens contributed to the atmosphere of suppression and danger as they policed their neighbors’ sexual and gender expressions by denouncing queer people in staggering numbers. But queer people were resilient. Some took up arms or found other ways to actively resist the regime. It was impossible to live openly, but countless queer people persevered by maintaining relationships and remaining true to themselves, even if they had to do so in hiding. Some accounts describe the Nazi persecution of queer people as based on behavior, not identity.104 But overemphasizing the targeting of certain behav­ iors detracts from the fact that the policies implemented by the state and em­ braced by the majority of the populace resulted in the persecution of entire ways of being. The architects of the Third Reich envisioned a “master race” that was free of queer people. Nazi leadership might have argued over the nature of same-sex desire and the best methods of imposing gender confor­ mity. But from the onset, officials in the party and the various governmental institutions used the multitude of tools at their disposal—in unison, indepen­ dently, or sometimes in contradictory ways—to purposefully dismantle the most vibrant and progressive queer movement in modern history.

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In March 1939, Ernst Pack was released from prison after serving his twomonth sentence for engaging in “indecency” with Kasimir Cieslack on the train a half year earlier. Pack continued to live his life, which included clan­ destine encounters with other men from time to time, and he managed to es­ cape detection from the Nazi authorities for several years. On November 13, 1942, Pack met up with Karl Dietrich, a man he had been seeing for weeks. They met at the public restroom in Essen’s Kopstadtplatz Park because it gave them a level of privacy not afforded elsewhere. Unfortunately for them, the local authorities had the restroom under surveillance because they dis­ covered it had become a meeting place for queer men. When Ernst and Karl exited the building, the police arrested them both.105 At a trial in January 1943, Pack was sentenced to ten months in prison. Before Pack’s sentence was completed, the Essen police department sub­ mitted a communication to the local Gestapo office requesting that Pack be transferred to a concentration camp upon his release from prison. “Pack is an outspoken homosexual,” the order read, “who seeks out and seduces partners into the acts of unnatural fornication. . . . I have ordered his transfer to police preventative detention to work at a correctional camp.” The order continues by framing Pack as a danger to public safety and concludes with, “In order for Pack to agree to a better way of life and divert him from his vices, I consider a longer and stricter incarceration in a camp absolutely nec­ essary. Only through the implementation of this measure is there hope for an improvement and his return to the German community.”106 Pack was released from prison on September 12, 1943, and sent to Natz­ weiler concentration camp a few months later on December 22 under “pre­ ventative detention.” Less than a month later, the SS transferred Pack south to Flossenbürg. After some time, it appears that camp officials concluded that Pack could not be “rehabilitated” by behavioral modification. He was a “repeat offender” with two Paragraph 175 convictions on his record. The letter from the Essen police office underscored the threat that Pack allegedly “seduced” otherwise normal German men into his vice. And while he was incarcerated, Pack also admitted to other sexual encounters with men for which he had not been charged. And so, the SS camp administration gave Pack a choice: he could leave Flossenbürg and return to his life in Essen if he submitted to castration. Of course, it was an impossible choice and gave Pack only the illusion of free will. How was one expected to make such a decision? Living conditions in the camps had grown increasingly fatal as Ger­ many lurched into its fifth year of war. Supplies were running low, tensions were high, and daily life was harsh and volatile. Should Pack, who was two months shy of his fiftieth birthday, choose to stay behind the barbed wire and attempt to cope in a situation in which the only certainty was suffering?

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Or should he choose to allow the Nazis to mutilate his body so that he could return to life outside? On February 17, 1944, the officials at Flossenbürg presented Ernst Pack with a form that read, “I hereby request my castration and submit this appeal voluntarily so that I may be freed of my pathological sexual desires.” A final sentence must have filled Pack with dread: “I have been explicitly informed that this voluntary castration does not grant me the right to release from police preventative detention.” He signed the form, and eleven days later the Flossenbürg camp physician Dr. Schnabel performed the castration.107 Ernst Pack was released from the concentration camp on September 25, 1944, but only after being forced to sign what amounted to a nondisclosure agreement declaring that he would never turn against the National Socialist state, nor speak about the facilities inside the concentration camp.108 The Allied victory and unconditional surrender of Germany came eight months later. Thou­ sands of gay men like Pack, however, would quickly realize that unlike the war, their persecution was not over.

Ch a p ter 2

“For Homosexuals, the Third Reich Hasn’t Ended Yet” Paragraph 175 and the Nazi Past in West Germany

Bruno Bouchard was forty-nine years old when the Second World War came to an end. The German businessman had sur­ vived four years in prison after the Nazis had convicted him of violating Paragraph 175. At the completion of his sentence in 1943, Bouchard made his way back home to Memel, a region of contested territory that had been detached from Germany in 1918 by the Treaty of Versailles at the end of World War I. It had been run as a League of Nations mandate by a French military administration until a revolt by ethnic Lithuanians led the League of Nations to hand over the territory to Lithuania in February 1923. Memel remained under Lithuanian jurisdiction until Germany regained control in 1939. This history of contested authority ultimately played an important role in shaping the path of Bouchard’s life. After the war, Bouchard applied for membership in “Victims of Fascism” (Opfer des Faschismus, OdF), an organization established in the summer of 1945 at the order of the Allies to commemorate the suffering of the Nazis’ victims, as well as to help administer aid to survivors and eventually to lobby on their behalf for compensation. Bouchard’s first application was denied, but he persisted, applying again and again. The sticking point was the fact that he listed both “political grounds” and “Paragraph 175” as reasons for im­ prisonment on his application. Admittance into the OdF would be important

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because it granted members the potential for financial reparations as well as a sense of community with fellow survivors of the Nazi regime.1 In 1922, while Memel was still governed as a League of Nations mandate, Bouchard had been arrested and charged with an infraction of Paragraph 175. The judge acquitted him, since the offenses for which Bouchard was arrested—masturbating with another man—did not meet the threshold of “intercourse-like acts” required for conviction under the existing legal prec­ edent. Bouchard was released, and he continued his career as a relatively successful businessman running three taverns in Memel. After the city came under Lithuanian control in 1923, he continued to closely follow the politi­ cal developments under way in Germany. As the Nazi Party gained followers and then political power in the early 1930s, he did not keep his opposition to the movement a secret. He soon received threats from members of the Memel Nazi Party, urging him to fire the Jews and foreigners he employed in his taverns. He consistently refused to do so and gained such a reputation as a “race defiler” that in 1938, the local Nazi Party forbid its members to patron­ ize Bouchard’s businesses and even went as far as posting guards outside the taverns to enforce the boycott among its members.2 On March 22, 1939, Lithuania gave Memel back to Germany after grow­ ing pressure from Nazi leadership. The local Nazis wasted no time in mak­ ing their move against Bouchard. They had him arrested on April 12, but the plaintiffs could offer no legal evidence sufficient to warrant a convic­ tion as a political opponent or “race defiler.” Unfortunately for Bouchard, when Memel had been reincorporated back into Germany, it also meant the German criminal code applied to the territory. Consequently, the broader and harsher 1935 version of Paragraph 175 was in effect at the time of his arrest. To make matters worse, Nazi lawmakers issued an order that the new version of Paragraph 175 would apply retrospectively to previous cases. Therefore, in April 1939, officials reopened Bouchard’s 1922 case, and under the amended Paragraph 175, which had a purposefully vague definition of which acts constituted “indecency,” he was convicted and sentenced to four years in prison.3 Bouchard had explained all of this to the OdF committee when he ap­ plied for membership. “My political leanings and support of Jews and for­ eigners were well known.” He never denied having a sexual encounter with another man in 1922. But, he asserted, “If the Nazis had never marched into Memel, I would have never been sentenced. To this day, I feel that I was a political prisoner and that this whole thing with Paragraph 175 [in 1939] was just a pretense.”4 In other words, it was his political opposition to the Nazis that landed him in prison; Paragraph 175 was just the tool to get him there.

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It was important, indeed fundamental, that the OdF believe Bouchard was persecuted because of political reasons and not because he was gay. The OdF explicitly only admitted individuals who were persecuted for religious, political, or racial reasons. They did not consider anyone who suffered for other reasons as a victim of fascism. Ultimately, owing in no small part to Bouchard’s tenacity, his application was accepted in the summer of 1946. His membership was short-lived, however, because aspects of Bouchard’s past continued to haunt him. Immediately upon his imprisonment in April 1939, Bouchard’s wife, Anna, had filed for divorce. According to Bouchard, it was because she had been in a long-term affair with a high-ranking Gestapo officer. Now that Bouchard was out of the way, she could finally be with her lover. Unknown to Bouchard, while he sat in prison, Anna petitioned the city to transfer own­ ership of her soon-to-be ex-husband’s business and property into her name. Helped along by her Nazi connections, her petitions were approved by the city. Upon the completion of his sentence, Bouchard returned home to dis­ cover that he no longer owned any of his businesses. To add insult to injury, the local authorities banned him from the city.5 Bouchard soon became locked in a nasty lawsuit with his ex-wife over his property. Anna learned that he was in the process of applying to the OdF and sought to interfere. Bouchard later stated that her interference could only be seen as an “act of revenge,” because he had earlier informed the local denazification commission of her Nazi sympathies during the Third Reich, including her relationship with the Gestapo officer.6 Anna submit­ ted an official disclosure to the local district court, testifying that Bouchard had never been targeted for political reasons and had only been arrested because of his “unnatural indecency.”7 Surely she knew that if she empha­ sized Bouchard’s sexual encounter with another man, it would not only do harm to his reputation, but also undermine his efforts to be acknowledged as a victim. The German civilian court handling denazification cases (the Spruchkammer) passed on information about Bouchard’s case to the OdF. In addition, the ex-wife also secured an affidavit from the man who had been president of the district court during Bouchard’s 1939 trial, which was deliv­ ered to the governing committee of the OdF and asserted that Bouchard’s sentencing had absolutely nothing to do with politics or allegations of race defilement; it was “all about Paragraph 175.”8 To make matters worse, the local office of the Socialist Unity Party of Germany informed the OdF that they had recently thrown Bouchard out of their party when they learned he had been arrested for Paragraph 175. The letter ended by insisting that the OdF do the same.9

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The OdF chose not only to revoke Bouchard’s membership, but to involve the authorities as well. In February 1947, local criminal investigators arrived at Bouchard’s residence, took away his OdF membership card, and continued to interrogate him about the reason for his imprisonment during the Third Reich.10 The following day, Bouchard wrote a thorough letter to the OdF governing committee, meticulously explaining, yet again, the details of his case, including an intricate legal history of the amendment of Paragraph 175 and his long-standing reputation as an antifascist, which put him at odds with the Nazis. “And if none of my actions seem ‘political’ enough to you,” Bouchard wrote, “I would like to bring my castration to your attention.” At the end of his four years in prison, the Gestapo informed him they were transferring him to a concentration camp unless he submitted to “volun­ tary” castration. Having heard of the horrors of life in the camps, Bouchard submitted himself to the procedure. “Such a brutal intrusion on a healthy human body was only possible in Nazi Germany. That in itself should be enough to convince you that I am a victim of fascism.”11 The OdF was not convinced. Instead, the organization chose to press charges of criminal fraud against Bouchard, but the police dismissed the case because they could not prove fraudulent intent.12 Even the mere chance that the “true” reason for Bouchard’s incarceration was his same-sex actions proved to be enough for not just one, but multiple organizations to deny him the identity of victim. The OdF officially closed the case in May 1947.13 In continuously advocating for his membership in the OdF, Bruno Bouchard left a rare paper trail that offers a glimpse into the post-Holocaust lives of men whom the Nazis arrested under Paragraph 175. First, Bouchard’s case demonstrably dispels the myth that emerged in subsequent generations that characterized queer people as one of the Nazis’ so-called “forgotten victim” groups. It was this alleged silence—on the part of gay survivors and the wider public—that supposedly prevented society from understanding queer people as victims. Bruno Bouchard was anything but silent, and the onslaught of voices from victims’ organizations, district courts, civilians, law enforcement, and political parties was certainly not silent when it collectively declared to Bouchard in no uncertain terms: You are not a victim. To characterize the treatment of gay survivors in the postwar period as silence grossly distorts the reality. The archives clearly demonstrate that dur­ ing the postwar period, various individuals and institutions, including con­ centration camp survivors and justices of the West German High Court, discussed at length the National Socialist campaign against homosexual­ ity. The way West Germans spoke about the Nazi past continued to brand gay men as criminals or fascist perpetrators, which removed them from the

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discourses of victimhood altogether. When gay survivors asserted dissent­ ing memories to argue for victimhood, the state used its authority to silence these voices and memories. The various, competing memories about the situation of queer people under Hitler both reflected and contributed to the larger attempts at defin­ ing notions of guilt, victimhood, and injustice in West Germany. Coming to terms with the Nazi past was an integral component of West Germany’s attempts to establish greater legitimacy as a thoroughly democratized re­ public. For the most part, this meant distancing the politics and ideals of the Federal Republic from those of the Third Reich. This was not the case when it came to treatment of queer Germans. This process of selective remembering wrought devastating conse­ quences upon gay survivors and upon generations of gay West Germans born after the fall of the Third Reich. In the first two decades after Ger­ many’s defeat, the focus of most discussions about the treatment of queer people in both Nazi and West Germany centered on Paragraph 175. The emphasis on this particular law shaped the discourse in a way that centered the experiences of men and marginalized those of other queer people. Be­ ginning in the immediate postwar period, the politics of memory already laid the foundation for a narrative shaped around gay men, which would impact the way the fate of queer people in the Third Reich was understood for generations. The Nazi past and concerns over contemporary gay rights converged to force lawmakers, jurists, and citizens alike to debate whether Paragraph 175 was fundamentally a German law, or if the Nazis’ amendment and use of it rendered it an expression of “typical Nazi injustice.” Legislation and mem­ ory were deeply interconnected and represented a larger public discussion about what it meant to be queer and what it meant to be a citizen in the new Federal Republic of Germany. These discourses foregrounded a central ques­ tion: could one truly be both?

“liberation was Only for Others”: Occupation and the Seeds of Silence Josef Kohout was in the Flossenbürg concentration camp when World War II came to an end. He had spent six years in different camps after being charged under Paragraph 175. He survived years of hunger, torture, and the various methods of dehumanization. Kohout managed to keep a journal through­ out, and his entry for April 23, 1945, contains only two words: “Americans came.”14 At long last, he was free.

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Two weeks later, the European theater of World War II officially ended on May 8, 1945, with the unconditional surrender of Germany to the Allied forces. The Allies subsequently divided Germany into occupation zones that were run by military administrations. Much of Germany’s easternmost ter­ ritories were ceded to Poland and the Soviet Union, and the eastern half of what remained of Germany was relegated to the Soviet zone. The western territories were divided into the British, French, and American zones. An immediate issue facing the Allies was how to deal with the thousands of con­ centration camp prisoners throughout Germany and its former territories. The survivors were malnourished, and there was next to no infrastructure to deliver food and medical supplies. Most of those inmates who survived their experiences desperately wanted to return to a home that most likely no longer existed. In this regard, Josef Kohout was lucky. In the months after liberation, he was able to slowly make his way back to his hometown of Vienna, where he lived until he died in 1994 at the age of seventy-seven.15 In the final weeks of the war, General Dwight Eisenhower sent a commu­ nication to the United States Congress, asking the legislative body to send a delegation to Germany to witness firsthand the atrocities of the Nazi regime. “I can state unequivocally,” Eisenhower wrote, “that all written statements up to now do not paint the full horror.”16 During the last week of April 1945, six US senators and six US congressmen toured the liberated camps of Bu­ chenwald, Dachau, and Dora. After visiting Buchenwald, Senator Kenneth Wherry (Republican, Nebraska) noted four types of prisoners. Those with red triangles were political prisoners. Green triangles denoted habitual criminals. Prisoners wearing black triangles were labeled as “work dodgers” (Arbeitsscheuer). And the men wearing “rose triangles,” Wherry noted, were “conscientious objectors.” It is unclear whether Wherry himself misunder­ stood the true meaning of the pink triangles, or if he was deliberately mis­ informed by his German guides. Either way, the result was the same. This moment represents one of the first of what would be many erasures of gay prisoners from the official documentation of the Nazis’ victims.17 Although the United States Congress might have been misinformed about the Nazi labels, Allied officials who took over the camps were well aware of what the pink triangles meant. After American forces liberated Dachau on April 29, 1945, there were celebrations throughout the camps and subcamps that night. Hermann R., a prisoner at Landsberg Fortress, a sub-camp located southwest of Dachau, later recalled that “it was an indescribable ex­ perience.” Two weeks passed before the American military commission’s meticulous examination of the prisoners brought an inspector to Hermann’s cell. “Standing before this commissioner, I experienced yet another surprise.

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There was only one piece of paper in my file. I can still hear the echoes of what the interrogating officer then said to me: ‘Homosexual—that’s a crime. You’re staying here!’ I was dumbfounded.” A sympathetic administra­ tor promised to approach the commissioner again on Hermann’s behalf, but two days later, the appeal for his release was rejected. Hermann R. remained a prisoner at Landsberg for an entire year before the American military com­ mission approved his release. In 1944, Hermann had been sentenced to three years of hard labor in a penitentiary for “attempted indecency” (versuchte Unzucht) with a member of the Hitler Youth. So, at the time of liberation, he still had two years left on his sentence.18 Most gay men in defeated Germany expected that the arrival of the Allies also signaled the end of the intensified campaign against homosexuality that the Nazis had so violently waged for the previous twelve years. However, these expectations were abruptly shattered as it became apparent that the Allied powers had little sympathy for the men with the pink triangle. The American policy toward gay inmates in the US-controlled zone of occupa­ tion was based on the Handbook for Military Government in Germany Prior to Defeat or Surrender, which was compiled by the Combined Chiefs of Staff of the US Military in 1944.19 Part of the Handbook was dedicated specifically to directing American troops how to classify and handle the large number of concentration camp survivors. The policy for those interned based on crimi­ nal actions stated, “Ordinary criminals with a prison sentence still to serve will be transferred to civil prisons.”20 Since many pink triangle prisoners had been convicted of violating Paragraph 175, a law of the German Criminal Code that predated the Nazi regime, the Americans also classified them as criminals. Therefore, those who had not finished serving their sentence were often transferred to prisons. Those who had never been formally sentenced, or those who had already served their full term yet remained in the camps under “protective custody,” were released. It is difficult to ascertain how many gay prisoners were transferred to local prisons upon the Allied liberation of the concentration camps. The number would almost certainly have been small, because the majority of pink triangle prisoners were being detained in camps under an order of “protective cus­ tody,” which was not part of their legal sentence for violating Paragraph 175. Therefore, under the guidelines set forth by the American military Handbook, the majority of pink triangle prisoners would have been released. The gay prisoners who still had prison time left on their records at the moment of liberation would likely have been convicted under the sub-clause Paragraph 175a, which punished same-sex acts with men under the age of twenty-one, sexual relations with a subordinate employee, male prostitution, or sexual

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assault. A conviction under Paragraph 175a, which was enacted as part of the 1935 amendment of the law, carried a sentence of up to ten years. That meant that many of those sentences would have extended beyond the Third Reich’s defeat in May 1945. The fate of Paragraph 175 was still unclear at the beginning of the occu­ pation period. Immediately upon the war’s end, the victors began a process of denazification that included an attempt to eliminate unjust and discrimi­ natory laws passed by the Nazi judicial system. Law Number 11, Article 2 of the Control Council concerning Nazi Law, enacted by the Allied Control Authority, stated, “No German law, however or whenever enacted or enu­ merated, shall be applied judicially or administratively within the occupied territory in any instance where such application would cause injustice or inequality . . . by discriminating against any person by reason of his race, nationality, religious beliefs or opposition to the National Socialist Party or its doctrines.”21 Even though the Nazis had amended Paragraph 175 because they viewed homosexuality as a racial and political threat, when the United States released the list of laws that would be abolished in the new German penal code, Paragraph 175 was not included.22 It would be up to Germans to decide what to do with the anti-sodomy law. In a recollection of his youth, Johannes Werres, a German journalist who became a homophile rights activ­ ist in the 1950s, wrote that “many gays hoped that the Allies would denazify Paragraph 175 since it had been intensified by the Nazis. . . . But, that was decidedly too optimistic.”23 The Allies’ decision to allow Paragraph 175 to remain in the German criminal code should come as no surprise given that each of the Allied na­ tions had laws and policies that criminalized homosexual behavior in their own countries. In short, the US Military Council’s decision not to strike down Paragraph 175 is best understood as an extension of the antihomosex­ ual policies in place in the United States.24 Even Werres, who lived through the Third Reich and occupation period, was attuned to the international di­ mensions of the institutionalized homophobia that allowed Paragraph 175 to escape denazification: “All of the Allies had anti-homosexual laws in their own countries, so they had no inkling to change anything here.”25 Karl Gorath, who spent six years in various concentration camps for alleg­ edly having sex with another man, was among those freed upon the libera­ tion of Auschwitz on January 27, 1945. Two years later, Gorath was arrested under Paragraph 175. When he arrived in the courtroom for his case, he realized with horror that the judge behind the bench was the same man who had sentenced him in 1939. The judge recognized him and exclaimed, “You’re here again?!” Gorath’s defense lawyer motioned to have his sentence

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shortened by the amount of time he had spent in concentration camps. The judge denied the motion and instead issued the maximum sentence. Gorath spent the next five years in prison.26 This was not uncommon, as jurisdic­ tion was quickly handed back to German courts, except in the case of war crime trials. Many of the same law enforcement and judicial officials who had targeted gay men as part of their duties in the Nazi period retained their positions after 1945. Gorath’s story is just one among an astounding number of arrests for “indecency.” There were approximately 6,950 Paragraph 175 convictions issued in the zones of occupation between 1945 and 1949.27 The fate of lesbians in the occupation period was also fraught. Paragraph 175 continued to apply only to men, but being outed as a lesbian could be dangerous and lead to devastating social and economic consequences. Take, for example, the case of Hilde Radusch. She was in her mid-thirties when the Nazis came to power. By that time, she was a fixture in Berlin’s lesbian community and was active in the German Communist Party. The Nazis ar­ rested her as a Communist in April 1933, and she spent five months in prison. After her release, she remained active in the resistance and spent the final months of the war in hiding. After Germany’s defeat, Radusch worked for the Department for Victims of Fascism, helping to administer aid to the Na­ zis’ victims. By the end of 1945, she decided to quit the Communist Party, since she believed its politics no longer aligned with the ideals that drew her to the party over a decade earlier. Upset by her intention to leave, the party leadership expelled Radusch before she had the chance to resign. The party cited her relationship with a woman as the reason for dismissal. To ensure that she could not find work in any of the district offices, the party headquar­ ters denounced her throughout its networks as a lesbian. Radusch approached her supervisor to explain the situation. He had al­ ready received a file containing statements attesting she was a lesbian. Her supervisor told Radusch that because she was a lesbian, she would not be allowed to work for a city agency again. Additionally, she received countless threats in the mail. “It was really the end of all my illusions,” Radusch later recalled. Although it was not the fact that Radusch was a lesbian that origi­ nally drew the ire of the Communist Party, her relationship with a woman quickly became a tool to slander Radusch, obstruct her chances of earning a livelihood, and dismantle her networks of support among comrades. All of this despite her commitment to the party and antifascist resistance during the Third Reich. The impact was devastating, Radusch told historian Claudia Schoppmann decades later. “A piece of my life’s dream was destroyed.”28 The Allied decision to tacitly endorse Paragraph 175 by not striking it from the German penal code had lasting effects on how the treatment of gay

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men under Hitler would later be remembered, presented, and understood. On numerous occasions after the founding of the Federal Republic in 1949, West German officials pointed to the Allied decision as justification for the continued use of the law.29 While other victims of the Nazi regime told their stories and lobbied for official recognition, fear of further persecution under Paragraph 175 relegated gay survivors to a prison of silence. When Pierre Seel reflected on his experience as a gay camp prisoner in Nazi-occupied France, he stated poignantly at the end of the war, “Liberation was only for others.”30

Vergangenheitsbewältigung and “family Politics” In May 1949, the Western Allies merged the three western occupation zones into a single state, the Federal Republic of Germany (FRG, “West Germany”). The German Democratic Republic (GDR, “East Germany”) was established under Soviet supervision a few months later. In August, West Germans voted in their first federal elections, and the newly founded Christian Democratic Union gained the majority in the Bundestag, the federal parliament seated in the new capital of Bonn. As the head of the conservative, largely Catho­ lic party, Konrad Adenauer became the Federal Republic’s first chancellor. The mission of the sixty-nine-year-old was to stabilize the young democracy while also gaining more autonomy for the West German state, which was still under the supervision of the Western Allies. Part of that undertaking was coming to terms with Germany’s Nazi past (a process known in German as Vergangenheitsbewältigung). West Germans in these early years addressed the history of the Third Reich, albeit in very selective ways. The destruction of Germany’s economy, its military, its physical infrastructure, and the complete loss of the country’s autonomy led many Germans to believe that they themselves had been the primary victims of World War II. The flood of ethnic Germans who were expelled from their homes in the eastern territories, coupled with the grad­ ual return of German prisoners of war from Soviet territory, reinforced the “Germans as victims” narrative. The war crimes trials against former Nazis also had a drastic impact on how West Germans understood victimhood. After it had become appar­ ent that the actions of the National Socialist state exceeded the boundaries of normal warfare, Allied prosecutors charged many of the accused with crimes against humanity, a new criminal category defined as the “murder, ex­ termination, enslavement, deportation, and other inhumane acts” commit­ ted against civilian populations as well as “persecutions on political, racial,

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or religious grounds.”31 This definition was also the basis for the United Na­ tion’s definition of genocide adopted in 1948. Ultimately, the series of war trials held in the occupation zones and, subsequently, in the Federal Republic gradually brought the magnitude of the Nazis’ genocide of the Jews (and its centrality in the overall efforts of Nazi leaders to forge a new Germany) to the fore in the mind of West Germans. At the same time, the fates of other groups such as queer people, so-called asocials, people with disabilities, Jeho­ vah’s Witnesses, and the Roma and Sinti went largely unmentioned during the trials and were therefore marginalized in the public’s recollection of the past. There were many voices in the dialogue over the past in West Germany during the 1950s and 1960s, from governmental agencies and the media to survivor organizations. But, in many ways, the West German judicial system took the lead by using the law to interpret who was officially considered a victim of the Nazi regime. This was also true with regard to the suffering of queer communities under the swastika, as the law came to represent the dominant authority on how to interpret and understand the Nazi persecu­ tion of gay men and whether to acknowledge it as persecution at all. When the Federal Republic of Germany was founded in the spring of 1949, there was little question among the new West German politicians that the statute against “indecency among men” would remain in the new pe­ nal code. The Adenauer administration was dedicated to “family politics” (Familienpolitik), a series of policies aimed at protecting Germany’s youth from alleged immoral temptations such as pornography, while also shoring up the traditional German family and firmly establishing heterosexuality as the legal and moral norm in West Germany. In 1953, the West German gov­ ernment formed the Federal Ministry for Family Affairs, a conservative and pronatalist ministry meant to address what were perceived as a wide range of problems facing German families. Konrad Adenauer, whom many regarded as the father figure of the new German state, was convinced that rebuilding traditional German families would be a key element in bringing West Germany out of the shadows of the Third Reich. As the name of Adenauer’s party suggests, the family en­ visioned by the Christian Democratic Union was built on Christian morals, including the strict enforcement of conservative gender roles. Heterosexual men and women were to remain chaste until marriage and then raise chil­ dren, thus creating a strong nuclear family. Not surprisingly, Christian ac­ tivists and moral reform groups gained influence during the Adenauer era. Lobbying by these organizations ensured that abortions and the advertis­ ing of birth control remained illegal. Groups like the League of People’s

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Guardians (the Volkswartbund), an organization with close Catholic ties that had been founded in 1898, campaigned against “ethical decline,” which in­ cluded all forms of “immorality,” including “trash and pornography.”32 Such measures were supported by both the ruling party in the Bundestag and the majority of the West German population, thus ushering in an era of politi­ cal, social, and moral conservatism that would last nearly two decades. Expressions of nonnormative sexuality and gender stood in direct contra­ diction to the aims of Adenauer’s family politics. For one, queer people al­ legedly renounced their duty to marry, procreate, and form nuclear families. Gay men did not fit the new, demilitarized notion of masculinity that politi­ cal and cultural leaders in the Adenauer era promoted. After the devastation of two world wars, the ideal of manhood that emerged in 1950s West Ger­ many was embodied by a devoted husband and father instead of a rugged soldier.33 A man’s role as father and citizen became paramount because he created a stable home through marriage and instilled democratic ideals into his children.34 Full citizenship, then, was predicated on a man fulfilling a very specific ideal of heterosexual masculinity. Homosexuality certainly did not fit into this new ideal of the German na­ tion during the Adenauer era. The gay man represented a dangerous threat to the reestablishment of the German family (and thus the state), and be­ cause he failed to live up to his duty as husband and father, he forfeited his right to full citizenship. “Sexual outsiders would remain political outsiders,” historian Robert Moeller writes, “in a society where political rights, defined by the sexual contract that accompanied the liberal social contract, dictated that men’s claims to citizenship were grounded in their identities as hus­ bands and fathers.”35 Same-sex desire among women did not seem to pose as dangerous a threat to the new Germany, and so the Federal Republic kept Paragraph 175 limited to men, thus continuing in the footsteps of the Impe­ rial, Weimar, and Nazi regimes. The desire for the reestablishment of sexual order, which entailed the belief that queer identities and lifestyles hindered the realization of the ideal democratic state, vindicated the West German government’s decision to not only uphold the Nazi-era version of Paragraph 175, but to enforce it with zeal.

Challenging Paragraph 175 in Court While the Nazi and West German states had different rationales, both re­ gimes asserted that men who engaged in “indecency” with other men were criminals. Recollections and memories about queer people during the Third Reich only bolstered the perceived connections between gay sex and

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criminality in the Federal Republic. On the rare occasions that public offi­ cials or West German citizens mentioned the topic of queer people in Nazi Germany, it was not to discuss suffering they faced, but instead to focus on the openly gay SA leader Ernst Röhm. The specter of Röhm was deployed to tie together homosexuality and Nazism as immoral, criminal, and ultimately genocidal. West Germans consistently portrayed gay men in the Third Reich as dangerous perpetrators, not as victims. When the legal experts of the Criminal Code Commission (Strafrechtskommission) convened in 1954 to discuss, among other things, the fate of West Germany’s laws regarding sex and morality, some members cited Röhm as evidence of the “dangers of the creation of [homosexual] cliques” within the highest echelons of political and military power.36 Three years earlier, the Cologne branch of the League of People’s Guard­ ians had published The Third Sex: The Criminality of Homosexuality, written by Richard Gatzweiler. In this work, the Bonn municipal court judge claimed that gay men—whom he called a “cancerous ulcer” to the German people— were also a threat to the “young German democracy.”37 Just as Röhm and his circle of gay men had done during the Third Reich, Gatzweiler wrote, homo­ sexuals in West Germany were busy forming a “state within a state.” In this regard, Nazi-like rhetoric of homosexuality was used to reinforce the widely held notion that men who gave in to same-sex desires also partook in any number of criminal activities and should be treated as enemies of the state. Referring to the escalating purge of queer people from the US federal gov­ ernment, Gatzweiler wrote, “The USA has recognized the danger of secret homosexual organizations and espionage groups. We must also be careful!”38 But one did not have to be involved in legal debates or high politics to encounter discussions of LGBTQ+ people under Nazism. In 1949, Werner Landers, a barkeep in Hamburg, was shocked to learn that his mother had found out he was a “warm brother.” Landers’s mother was fine with the fact that her son was different, but she feared for his safety and consequently gave him a warning: it had not been too long ago that gay men disappeared and ended up in concentration camps. And she had reason to fear. Later that year, a jealous boyfriend denounced Werner to the Hamburg authorities, and he was arrested under Paragraph 175.39 As an adolescent in Hamburg during the early 1960s, Peter M. heard his stepfather talking to a group of friends around the kitchen table: “Under Adolf, the warm brothers were sent to the work camps. And if that wasn’t enough, then they were thrown into the gas chamber, and the problem was solved.”40 For many young gay men, these occasional mentions of the Röhm scandal or learning about the presence of gay men in the concentration camps reified the notion that their same-sex

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desires remained a criminal offense, something that should be hidden in the young democratic Federal Republic. For gay West Germans, history became a lesson in closeting both their sexuality and their memories. Most of the discussion about the Nazi treatment of queer people was directly related to debates over Paragraph 175. Many—including a new wave of activists in the 1950s who referred to themselves as “homophiles” to de­ tract from the clinical stigma that was increasingly associated with “homo­ sexuals”—saw the continued use of Paragraph 175 in West Germany as a direct contradiction to the democratic foundations of the new country. The notion that a manifestation of fascism lived on in West German law was the basis for the first major challenge to Paragraph 175 in late 1950. An appellant listed only as “N.” had been arrested in the fall of 1949 for having sex with an­ other man. N. immediately appealed his conviction, and the trial eventually reached Germany’s highest court on all matters of criminal and private law, the Federal High Court (Bundesgerichtshof ). On March 13, 1951, the court summarily rejected the notion that the 1935 version of Paragraph 175 con­ stituted a “realization of National Socialistic goals or thoughts.” The entire German penal code had undergone a thorough revision, and many laws that contained the spirit of National Socialism had been stricken from the books. Paragraph 175, however, survived these rounds of scrutiny, argued the court, and “that in itself should speak for its continued validity.” The law had been amended in “an orderly fashion” in 1935 and was therefore not unconstitu­ tional. The High Court ruled that Paragraph 175 would remain in effect.41 Only three months later, the Federal High Court struck down a second challenge to the anti-sodomy law. Homophile activists had argued that Para­ graph 175 contradicted Article 3 of West Germany’s constitution, which upheld the equality of women and men. They argued that because it only criminalized same-sex acts among men, it violated the constitution’s protec­ tion of gender equality. On June 22, 1951, the High Court ruled that the differences in Paragraph 175’s treatment of men and women were based on “the naturally given differences between the sexes,” and thus the law did not contradict the constitution.42 In the mid-1950s, Günter R. and Oskar K. had been arrested separately, and both had been sentenced to over a year in prison under Paragraph 175. They combined their cases and took the appeal all the way to the Federal Constitutional Court (Bundesverfassungsgericht), the ultimate authority on the constitutionality of Germany’s laws. When the appellants argued that the law was sexist, the Constitutional Court, like the High Court before it, claimed that there were natural differences between men and women that dictated that the two sexes be treated differently in some legal matters.

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Further explaining its reasoning, the justices of the Constitutional Court re­ lied on testimony from sociologist Helmut Schelsky, who asserted that the stronger sex drives of gay men rendered them a greater danger to West Ger­ man society than lesbians.43 Hans Giese, a physician and sexologist who had joined the Nazi Party in January 1942, also testified before the same court in 1957. At that point, Giese was the director of the Institute for Sexual Re­ search in Frankfurt, and he argued before the court that unlike gay men, who were allegedly more likely to fall victim to their “unshackled sexual needs,” lesbians could more easily abstain from sex, since women, he believed, had a weaker libido. Finally, gay women who decided to embrace the lesbian lifestyle tended to remain monogamous, therefore causing less of a distur­ bance to the public order.44 In yet another instance of the continuity of the approach to homosexuality across the 1945 divide, members of the Consti­ tutional Court utilized ideologies that were nearly identical to those used by Nazi jurists to justify the continued focus on gay men and not lesbians. Additionally, the appellants argued that Paragraph 175 infringed on the right to freely develop one’s personality, which was guaranteed by Article 2, Paragraph 1, of the constitution. The Constitutional Court denied that Paragraph 175 was a “forcible confinement of the existence of people with homosexual feelings” on the assertion that these “feelings” did not consti­ tute an innate part of an individual’s personality.45 As the federal minister of justice had announced that same year, the Constitutional Court ruled that Paragraph 175 in its 1935 form was constitutional and would remain on the books.46 Just a few years earlier, however, in 1951, the Hamburg Dis­ trict Court had disagreed; it had sentenced two men convicted of violating Paragraph 175 with the most lenient punishment allowed by the law: a fine of just three marks. As justification, the Hamburg court declared that any law that demanded German citizens to suppress their sexuality was asking too much of them.47 Nonetheless, the 1957 Constitutional Court decision echoed a previous ruling of the Hamburg State Court: “The wording of Paragraph 175 may have been reworked in 1935, but this reformulation does not represent . . . a typical Nazi law, and it will remain in effect today.”48 As a definitive conclusion, the Constitutional Court declared in 1957 that its “validation for the criminalization of same-sex indecency is granted by public opinion.”49 Paragraph 175 predated the Third Reich, and legal pro­ hibitions against homosexual acts existed in German lands even before the founding of the German Empire in 1871. The historical “moral sensibility of the people” (Volksempfinden), therefore, demanded that the law remain in place. What the lawmakers did in 1935 (the court did not mention that these lawmakers were Nazis) was not to align Paragraph 175 with typical

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National Socialist ideals, but instead to simply address a technicality in the enforcement of the law to sidestep the difficulties of proving “intercourse­ like acts.”50 According to the Federal Constitutional Court of 1957, the Nazi amendment of Paragraph 175 was an appropriate clarification of a law, and nearly twenty years later, it still aligned with what judges understood as the moral consensus in German society. Further east, the socialist government of the German Democratic Re­ public (GDR) had a different understanding of politics, sexuality, and the past. East German politicians viewed the existing Paragraph 175 as tainted by fascist ideology and so reverted the anti-sodomy law to its pre-Nazi ver­ sion within a year of the founding of the GDR. This led to a drastically lower number of arrests and convictions of gay men in East Germany in the postwar decades. From 1957 to 1959, the only years for which there are complete statistics, the number of convictions was just over one hundred per year. After a supplemental East German criminal code was passed in December 1957, authorities scaled back enforcement of Paragraph 175. The rationale behind this decision was that “an act did not warrant crimi­ nal punishment if it had no deleterious effects upon individuals, society, or the project of constructing socialism.” East Germany did continue enforcing Paragraph 175a, the statute against the “seducing” of men and boys under twenty-one into the gay “lifestyle,” as well as using coercion or force. When the GDR introduced a new criminal code in 1968, it abolished Paragraph 175 and replaced it with a law that applied to both men and women. Paragraph 151 made sex between an adult and a minor (under eighteen years of age) of the same sex a criminal offense. This paragraph remained in force until the GDR’s supreme court invalidated it in 1987. The East German legislature officially expunged it in 1988.51 Different agencies of the West German state consistently interpreted the 1935 version of Paragraph 175 as a normal German law rather than an exemplification of Nazi ideology. As a result, West Germany arrested over one hundred thousand men between 1949 and the law’s eventual liberal­ ization in 1969. Just over fifty-nine thousand of those men were eventually convicted.52 The law itself was not the only holdover from the Nazi era; in many cases, even the judges on the bench were ex-Nazis or had been trained by Nazi jurists. There were also startlingly similar tactics used to police male homosexuality in West Germany. Law enforcement in the Federal Republic continued to use surveillance to compile registries of men even suspected of being gay. These “pink lists” were available to law enforcement agencies across the country and contained the names of thousands of men. In 1954,

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Figure 2.1. The Federal Republic of Germany issued a total of 55,497 convictions with the Nazi version of Paragraph 175 between the nation’s founding in 1949 and the amendment of the law in 1969. That is an average of 2,775 convictions per year (compared to the average of 4,457 an­ nual convictions during the Third Reich, 538 a year in the Weimar Republic, and 205 a year in the German Empire). In total, Germany issued 127,581 Paragraph 175 convictions between 1871 and 1994, for an average of 1,037 annual convictions across 123 years. Statistics from Rainer Hoffs­ childt, “140.000 Verurteilungen nach ‘§175,’ ” in Invertito 4 (2002): 149.

West Berlin’s pink list contained the names of 3,500 men, while 4,679 men were on Cologne’s list.53 West German police agencies also relied heavily on denunciations by the public to arrest gay men. During the summer and fall of 1950, the police began investigating over 280 men in Frankfurt am Main they suspected of being gay. One hundred of those men were ultimately arrested, of whom seventy-five were indicted. All these cases resulted from the coerced testi­ mony of one seventeen-year-old call boy.54 In some cases, West German law enforcement used entrapment to ensnare gay men. In 1953, readers of the mainstream weekly news magazine Der Spiegel and homophile presses like Humanitas were shocked to read about the case of a government official who was arrested in Wiesbaden for violating Paragraph 175. The trial quickly turned scandalous when the official revealed that his bosses at the Hesse State Prosecutor’s Office had ordered him to infiltrate the local gay scene and even have sex when necessary to gain sufficient evidence to arrest as many men as possible.55 There were numerous consequences of an arrest for violating Paragraph 175, beyond the prison sentence or fine. Authorities could confiscate men’s

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driver’s licenses if it was discovered that their name was on a pink list. It was legal to fire someone for being arrested under Paragraph 175, and institu­ tions also revoked certificates, memberships, or educational degrees from men who were outed as gay. A Paragraph 175 verdict almost certainly meant that these men were forcibly outed to their family and friends, often resulting in family crises, social ostracization, and the loss of personal relationships. Some men fled West Germany and went into exile to avoid prosecution. Un­ fortunately, suicide was not uncommon among those who became branded immoral and were outcast as sexual criminals. One young man poisoned himself in the back aisle of a theater; the cleaning staff found his corpse when they were closing up for the night. A nineteen-year-old in Frankfurt threw himself off the Goetheturm, a 140-foot-tall observation tower on the outskirts of the city. In total, seven of the nearly one hundred men convicted during a 1950 wave of arrests in Frankfurt died by suicide.56 The state’s exclusion of gay men from the definition of Nazi victimhood and its continued use of the 1935 version of Paragraph 175 demonstrate how memory and the law were tied together during this period, as West Ger­ man society sought to define itself in relationship to the Nazi past. Because the public and lawmakers understood homosexuality as a criminal offense in the present, they projected this notion of criminality back onto the past. Furthermore—and more importantly—the continued use of Paragraph 175, a law tainted by National Socialism, dictated that the West Germans had to remember the Nazis’ treatment of gay men in a certain way. If officials in the Federal Republic had agreed that gay men had been victims of injustice during the Third Reich, it would have meant that the thousands of men convicted with the same version of Paragraph 175 after 1945 were also un­ justly persecuted. This would have cast the Federal Republic as a perpetrator of injustice. As a result, the men convicted under the law during the Third Reich simply could not be remembered in the postwar years as victims of Nazi injustice, because doing so would draw startling connections between the Hitler and Adenauer eras. If gay men were not remembered or understood as victims of Nazi per­ secution, then law enforcement in West Germany could reject the stigma of operating under National Socialist ideals or using fascist methods. In 1955, the Bonn jurist Hans Langemann responded to the rather widespread belief that gay men tended to band together in cliques, were easy targets of Com­ munist blackmail, and that they generally fostered resentment toward the German government for enforcing Paragraph 175. He wrote in the police journal Kriminalistik that, given the political threat gay men posed, the Ge­ stapo had been justified in persecuting them during the Third Reich.57

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dissenting memories: Pink Triangle Testimony As the West German government continued to make use of historical nar­ ratives and contemporary policies to construe homosexuality as immoral and illegal, the mainstream press said very little about the suffering of queer people during the Third Reich. A 1950 article in the popular news magazine Der Spiegel mentioned that prosecutors during the Third Reich had sent “ho­ mosexuals to concentrations camps, where they got a pink triangle on their chest, and sometimes castration.” The rest of the lengthy article focused on the massive wave of arrests of gay men that was currently under way in Frankfurt. That the prosecutors and judges were still using the Nazi version of Paragraph 175 to convict hundreds of Frankfurters was never mentioned. Instead, the author was concerned that, at the current rate, Frankfurt’s court system would soon be overwhelmed with cases.58 With only the rarest of exceptions, publications about the Nazi era, whether they were survivor testimonies or scholarly studies of the pe­ riod, did not mention that queer people were also targeted by the Hitler regime. Those that did reference queer people mostly focused on gay concentration camp inmates. Directly after the war, Eugen Kogon, who had been a political prisoner in Buchenwald, wrote what remains one of the most significant firsthand accounts of life inside the concentration camps. First published in 1946, his book dedicated more attention to gay concentration camp prisoners than any other book for the next fifteen years. In two paragraphs (out of nearly four hundred pages), Kogon de­ scribes that the fate of the men “marked with the pink triangle” can only be described as “ghastly.”59 The autobiography of Auschwitz comman­ dant Rudolf Höss, first available in German in 1958, also mentioned gay concentration camp prisoners, noting that they were often segregated from the other inmates and that they were subjected to various methods of conversion therapy.60 Other accounts perpetuated homophobic tropes of gay men as immoral and predatory. Ota Kraus and Erich Kulka, two Czech Jewish Auschwitz survivors, wrote that the pink triangle was “worn by persons imprisoned for sexual perversion or homosexuality. In the camps they had a splendid opportunity to corrupt the maximum number of young lads.”61 In his 1966 account of his time in Dachau, Raimund Schnabel mentions gay men on one page, writing that among the “cheap hustlers and blackmailers” there were some “exceptional people whose deviance could be called tragic.” Be­ fore moving on, Schnabel concluded, “The prisoners with the pink triangle never lived long.”62

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West German readers looking to discover the men with the pink triangle in scholarly history books were left wanting. When the German edition of William Shirer’s The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich was released in 1961, it was the first major historical study of the Nazi regime and sparked contro­ versy in Germany. Shirer never mentioned the fact that gay men were among the many groups targeted by the Nazi regime. Yet he did write that “homo­ sexual perverts” were notorious among the Nazi SA. He went on to highlight that an early leader of the Nazi movement, Ernst Röhm, was gay, and then asserted without evidence that “a conglomeration of pimps, murderers, ho­ mosexuals, alcoholics, and blackmailers flocked to the party as if to a natural haven.”63 In Karl Bracher’s Die Deutsche Diktatur, which was published in 1969 and long enjoyed a position as the definitive account of the Nazi dictatorship, the only reference to anyone gay was to Röhm.64 In only mentioning homo­ sexuality in connection with the Nazi perpetrators, these historians erased hundreds of thousands of queer victims from history and perpetuated the widespread and homophobic stereotype that being gay was somehow linked to fascism and criminal behavior. Gay men themselves attempted to add their own voices to the growing dialogue about homosexuality in the Federal Republic. By pointing to the glaringly obvious parallels between the Nazi and West German approaches to policing homosexuality, gay men attempted to reframe their treatment as an unjust and unconstitutional persecution in a democratic society. In a 1950 letter to the editor of the Swiss homophile magazine Der Kreis, a West German man wrote, “For us, what is now happening . . . is a continuation of what we thought to be permanently ended with the destruction of the Third Reich, [but] . . . the words of the prosecutor and judge betray a complete clinging to a long obsolete belief in Nazi ideologies.” The author continued, “I would like all similarly inclined men to know that there is barely any dif­ ference between the methods of the Nazi police and those that are used today by the officers of the Federal Republic.”65 By turning to a journal with an international audience to highlight the continuation of discriminatory ideologies and practices, this German man was challenging the claim that the Federal Republic had been thoroughly democratized. The continued enforcement of Paragraph 175 helps explain why the Nazi campaign against homosexuality was not more widely acknowledged among the West German public. If gay men wanted to speak out about their expe­ riences during the Third Reich, they would have to admit to acts that the Federal Republic still deemed illegal. Negotiating life in a criminalized realm put enormous pressure on gay men, most often forcing them to keep their experiences during the Nazi period to themselves. Sometime in the 1950s,

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Heinz Dörmer, who had spent almost five years in Neuengamme for an of­ fense against Paragraph 175, was working in a theater in Flensburg. There he recognized one of his coworkers as a fellow Paragraph 175 prisoner in Neuengamme. The two of them exchanged shielded glances and met back­ stage during a break. After checking on each other, they both agreed that they should never mention their time in the camp to anyone, not even to each other. It was simply too dangerous. “It wasn’t beneficial and could have consequences,” Dörmer later recalled. “So, we kept our silence.”66 Gay survivors seemed to face animosity everywhere they turned. Andreas K., a former concentration camp inmate, sought to register with the Associa­ tion of the Persecuted of the Nazi Regime (Vereinigung der Verfolgten des Naziregimes, VVN) so that he could get support from the organization in the late 1940s. The clerk in the VVN Hamburg office told Andreas that gays “were a bunch of dirty pigs” and that he should leave immediately.67 The hostile atmosphere of homophobia forced queer people in West Germany to keep their sexuality a secret, hidden away. Fear of legal and social persecu­ tion also created a closet of sorts for memories of the Nazi past. Just as they could not express their sexual identity openly, pink triangle survivors also had to closet their past experiences. By the early 1950s, however, gay men in the Federal Republic had begun creating alternative spaces for themselves in which they could, at least partially, come out and interact with one another. The emergence of homophile communities offered a safe space in which they could begin to speak about their experiences in the Third Reich. Because men at the time had more access to capital and resources, the early homophile movement in Germany was largely run by men. The expe­ riences that they wrote about in the reemerging homophile press focused on gay men. In February 1952, Die Insel published an article that called the persecution of gay men in the Third Reich a “shocking example of inhu­ manity and a source of shame that every self-respecting German should not forget.”68 Several months later, the journal, now operating under the title Der Weg, published an open letter that called for everyone to remember that gay men had also survived concentration camps and perished in gas cham­ bers.69 In the early 1960s, the article “Redemption for Punishments during the Nazi Period” connected the topic of Nazi persecution to contemporary politics when the author questioned why Paragraph 175 convictions were not included in the cases that the Federal Ministry of Justice wanted to over­ turn for being too harsh. The author posed a question to readers: “One is always left asking: Why are all of the other people who were persecuted by the Nazis successful in getting compensation, while only the homophiles are left out?”70 Many of the authors, who wrote anonymously or under a

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pseudonym, expressed the hope that telling these stories of the Nazi past would positively influence the fight against Paragraph 175 and for the official recognition of gay men as Nazi victims. For these authors, keeping silent on past persecution would hinder contemporary attempts at political reform. The most extensive early account of the experience of a pink triangle survivor appeared in the homophile magazine Humanitas. Between Febru­ ary 1954 and February 1955, Humanitas published a series of seven articles written by a gay concentration camp survivor. The author, writing under the pseudonym L. D. Classen von Neudegg, recalled that “out of the mo­ saic of memories of the haunting years of tyranny, the blood red days of internment in Sachsenhausen shine most clearly in my mind.”71 While docu­ menting in vivid detail the horrors of everyday life in Sachsenhausen and Oranienburg—a place he called a “city of skulls”—Neudegg returned to two themes throughout his articles.72 First, he highlighted the isolation of the men “branded with the pink triangle,” both in the camps and after liberation. Second, Neudegg continually emphasized that gay survivors must use their past experiences as motivation to fight for justice in the present. Already in his second article, he wrote, “The future of the homophiles has only two pos­ sibilities: Courage can lead to freedom, or resignation can lead to demise.”73 Nine issues of Humanitas later, Neudegg wrote, “The groaning wheel of world history turns further into fog and darkness. But we survivors carry the names and scars of the fallen brothers in our hearts and haven’t given up the fight against the Hydra of hate, ignorance, and the lack of mercy against our fellow man! Rather, we’ve taken up the fight for now and forever!”74 Neudegg felt optimistic about the future of the push for homophile rights, but the future of the homophile press in West Germany would turn out to be much bleaker. In 1953, the Bundestag passed the Law against the Distribution of Written Material Endangering Youth—the “trash and smut law”—which prohibited the public sale of printed material that promoted “immorality” or glorified crime, war, or racial hatred.75 Although the law did not mention homosexuality specifically, the review boards in charge of identifying “dangerous material” placed homophile periodicals on the list of banned publications since they allegedly promoted immorality. The sudden loss of revenue forced Humanitas and other homophile publications out of business. Homophile activists had been fighting against Paragraph 175 for years in West Germany. Yet the journalist and activist Johannes Werres noted that the passing of the 1953 law was the moment in which gay communities noticed that the tides had firmly shifted against them.76 Paragraph 175 was old; it had survived four political regime changes since its origin in 1871. In a way, while gay men in West Germany were dismayed that their new

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government had maintained the anti-sodomy law, they could not have been fundamentally surprised. The 1953 law, however, represented a deliberate action demonstrating the resolve of lawmakers in the Federal Republic to ac­ tively enforce heterosexuality as the only acceptable expression of sexuality. Paragraph 175 occupied a central place in the collective memories of queer Germans because it represented a legal continuity of persecution be­ tween the Hitler and Adenauer eras. It was arguably this new 1953 law, how­ ever, that most directly prohibited the establishment of a more widespread recognition of the suffering of gay men under the Nazis by taking away the only medium in which pink triangle survivors were able to articulate their stories. When the periodicals, including those that were published domesti­ cally and abroad, were forced from West German shelves in 1953, so too were the only voices that portrayed gay men as victims rather than crimi­ nals or perpetrators.77 Where social stigma and Paragraph 175 had created a “closet” for the expression of pink triangle memories, the “trash and smut law” effectively locked it shut. This demonstrates, yet again, the unequal access to the public sphere in which collective memories of the past are negotiated. Even if gay survivors decided to face the social repercussions of speaking publicly about their ex­ periences, they would be admitting to acts that were still illegal in the Federal Republic. Their voices therefore carried little or no weight in politics or the public eye. Additionally, the discourse that evolved in courtrooms and in the homophile press focused only on Paragraph 175 and the fate of concentra­ tion camp inmates imprisoned for being gay. As a result, these discussions centered the experiences of gay men in the Third Reich. When combined with the gender dynamics that shaped the German homophile movement as predominantly cisgender and male, the relationship between power, visibil­ ity, class, and gender within the queer community produced a male-centric historical narrative. This is a pattern that would define the understanding of queer communities in Nazi Germany for years to come.

Compensation and the definition of Victimhood A series of compensation laws legislated whom the Federal Republic would officially consider victims of Nazi Germany. Generally, Germany’s process of compensating the Nazis’ victims is referred to as Wiedergutmachung, a word that brings three specific processes under one umbrella term: the restitution of confiscated property (Rückerstattung), financial compensation (Entschädi­ gung), and legal exoneration for unjust criminal convictions (Rehabilitation).78 Taken as a whole, the term Wiedergutmachung itself, which literally translates

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as “a making good again,” implies more than legal or financial procedures; it asserts a manner of moral atonement for past wrongs. While critics of the term claimed that it trivialized the Nazis’ genocide and persecution by implying that these events could ever be “made good again,” the term’s pro­ ponents hoped that it would “appeal to people’s conscience” more than cold, legal language such as “indemnification” or “restitution” would.79 In her study on Wiedergutmachung and transitional justice, political sci­ entist Angelika von Wahl asserts that there are two types of compensation that a government can grant.80 Symbolic reparations come in the form of official recognition of suffering and injustice via speeches, commemoration ceremonies, or monuments. Material reparations, in contrast, are monetary payments or other programs of concrete support such as vocational training, restitution of property, or provision of health care. During the early decades of West Germany, only a small percentage of the Nazis’ victims received symbolic reparations of any kind, and an even smaller portion received mate­ rial reparations from the Federal Republic. Some groups, such as gay people, people with disabilities, and the Roma and Sinti, were denied both forms of compensation in the first decades of the Federal Republic. The general framework of compensation for the victims of the Nazi re­ gime was established by the Allies during the years of occupation. When the Federal Republic was founded, it was understood that the new government would standardize the compensation laws existing in the individual occu­ pation zones and apply them nationwide.81 West German politicians from across the political spectrum concluded almost unanimously that those most in need of compensation from the new government were German former prisoners of war and expellees returning from the east. To this end, Chancel­ lor Adenauer established the Ministry of Expellees, Refugees, and the WarDamaged within months of West Germany’s founding.82 This cabinet-level ministry handled the compensation of Germans who suffered losses during the war, and Adenauer himself negotiated the Wiedergutmachung of Jewish victims. But there was no high-level government agency established to ben­ efit the other groups that had been persecuted by the Third Reich. By early 1952, the Allies sought to hand over more autonomy to the West German state and take the next step in gradually bringing the era of lim­ ited sovereignty to an end. One condition of the Treaty of Transition signed in 1952 was that the Federal Republic should handle equally “all people who were persecuted on the basis of their political beliefs, racial reasons, their religion, or their ideology.”83 Defining victims only in racial, political, or religious terms excluded entire groups of people whom the Nazis had persecuted. Unfortunately, this formulation of victimhood influenced and

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reflected compensation procedures, commemoration ceremonies, and scholarship for decades to come. In 1956, the West German Bundestag passed the Federal Compensation Law (the Bundesentschädigungsgesetz, or BEG), which replaced a simi­ lar but less extensive law from 1953. Under the BEG, only those who had been persecuted for reasons of race, religion, or political and ideological belief and who still lived in West Germany at year’s end in 1952 were eli­ gible. Persons who had lived in Nazi Germany and were persecuted for the aforementioned reasons, but who had chosen to relocate to Israel after the war’s end were also eligible for compensation. By concluding that only those persecuted because of race, religion, or ideological belief were eligible for compensation, the BEG built on the precedent established by the definition of crimes against humanity during the Nuremberg war trials, the United Nation’s definition of genocide in 1948, and the Allies’ earlier suggestion for compensation legislation. The BEG further constricted the circle of officially recognized victims to West German nationals, thus excluding the millions of non-Jewish Polish and Soviet victims of the Nazi quest for eastern territory. As historian Susanna Schrafstetter has noted, the BEG “did not regard the war of extermination in the East as a specifically Nazi-perpetrated injustice.” The Nazis’ non-German victims would have to take up the issue of compen­ sation with their own national governments since the Federal Republic was already making war reparation payments to a number of states.84 Because gay men were not—according to the West German government— persecuted on racial, political, or religious grounds, they were not eligible for any form of compensation under the BEG. Even the gay men who had spent years in concentration camps were ineligible to apply. Several submit­ ted petitions anyway, hoping against all odds that their government would approve their case. They were all denied. Gay men were not alone in being excluded from the various processes of commemoration and Wiedergutmac­ hung in West Germany’s earliest decades. Many groups, including the Roma and Sinti, people with disabilities, and the victims of medical experimenta­ tion and “euthanasia” programs, were disqualified from any form of com­ pensation under the 1956 BEG. (In 1960, under pressure from the United States, the Bundestag did agree to compensate all victims of “pseudo-medical experiments” regardless of nationality or residence.) Even those who were punished for resisting the Nazi regime were excluded from compensation, since they were technically “enemy combatants” and “saboteurs” of their own government.85 Like gay men, these minorities did not fit into contem­ porary West German ideals of upstanding morality. And like queer people, they were victimized for a second time as the memories of their suffering

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and persecution were marginalized in the wider West German understand­ ing of the Nazi past. For the men with the pink triangle, the 1956 BEG was nothing new; for years German authorities had been denying their applications for com­ pensation. In June 1946, Helmut Höppner applied for financial aid from the city council of West Berlin because he had been arrested as a politi­ cal prisoner. The council’s reply a full year later confirmed that their re­ cords indicated that the Nazis had convicted Höppner in December 1936 for political reasons. “But, you have failed to mention the true reason for your long incarceration in prison and the concentration camp,” the reply continued. “On May 27, 1935 you were convicted for unnatural in­ decency under Paragraph 175. . . . Your application is denied.”86 Without exception, no survivors received official compensation from the federal government if they had a Paragraph 175 conviction on their records or if their names appeared on one of the pink lists. Gay survivors knew this and often sought to gain compensation by highlighting another manner of persecution that was acknowledged by the Allies and, later, the West German government. Knowledge of same-sex relationships also caused problems for lesbians applying under categories that were eligible for compensation. Such was the case for Frei Eisner, who was born to a Jewish father and Christian mother in 1907. She faced discrimination and violence both for being Jewish and gay. Her mother had had her committed to a psychiatric hospital in 1926 in an attempt to have her “cured.” Within months of the Nazis’ coming to power in 1933, a group of men beat her in the streets of Berlin for her alleged “Jewish appearance.” Her mother, sister, and half-brother were all arrested in February and March 1933, but she managed to escape to Paris via Stockholm. When she returned to Germany after the Nazis’ defeat, Eisner applied for financial compensation, since her education and career training had been disrupted by her persecution as a Jew. The Freiburg Regional Office for Reparations denied her application in 1955, stating that Eisner had not technically been enrolled in vocational training at the time she left Germany in the spring of 1933. The office’s response also stated, “She was not excluded from attending school or examinations; she merely feared such exclusion.” Eisner applied with another regional office. Despite evidence that she was persecuted for being Jewish, which made her eligible for compensation un­ der the existing regulations, the review board objected because they discov­ ered she was a lesbian. Eisner persevered, and she was ultimately awarded a small compensation.87

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The various victims’ organizations that sprang up across the country consistently barred gay men from joining. In the late 1940s, Dr. Rudolf Klimmer petitioned the Association of the Persecuted of the Nazi Regime (VVN) to acknowledge gay men as victims and to lobby on behalf of their compensation. The VVN rejected Klimmer’s petition, stating (incorrectly) that gay men had never resisted the Nazi regime.88 When Heinz Dörmer sought to join the Committee of Former Inmates (Komitee der ehema­ ligen Häftlinge) in Hamburg, he lied and applied as a “career criminal,” since he knew that he would never get accepted as a gay survivor. Un­ fortunately, some of the committee members knew Dörmer personally and therefore knew that he was a “175er.” They rejected his application. Dörmer later recalled, “They wanted to keep the circle of recognized vic­ tims as small as possible.”89 The continuities in law, social attitude, polic­ ing tactics, and even judicial personnel led the historian and theologian Hans-Joachim Schoeps to feel justified in 1963 to claim, “For homosexu­ als, the Third Reich hasn’t ended yet.”90 Gay survivors did, however, find at least a nominal chance for compen­ sation when the Bundestag passed the General Consequences of War Law (Allgemeine Kriegsfolgengesetz, or AKG) at the end of 1957. Under the AKG, individuals who had been excluded from the federal compensation law, such as gay men and so-called social deviants (“asocials”), could apply for aid from the Federal Republic if they had been imprisoned in a con­ centration camp. Those who were persecuted in other ways but were not sent to a camp were ineligible. The name of the legislation itself asserted that these groups were not actual victims of the Nazi regime, but rather the casualties of the outcomes of warfare, collateral damage of sorts. When the deadline for applications came on December 31, 1959, only fourteen men (out of the estimated 1,750 to 3,500 pink triangle survivors) risked exposing themselves to further prosecution by revealing they had been incarcerated for being gay.91 All fourteen petitions were denied. The AKG review board continued along the precedent set by the West German High Court, Constitutional Court, and the Ministry of Justice in asserting that men convicted under Paragraph 175 were not victims and were thus unworthy of federal compensation. Such examples prove, yet again, that there was not a complete silence on the part of gay concentration camp survivors. It is true that the social taboos and laws forced many to choose to keep their experiences a secret, but several men did tell their stories, call for the repeal of Paragraph 175, and apply to be acknowledged as a victim of Nazi injustice. Everywhere

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they turned, pink triangle survivors were rejected. No one—not the fed­ eral and state governments, not the courts and the conservative parties, not the majority of the population, and not even fellow concentration camp survivors—acknowledged them as legitimate victims of Nazi injustice. Since the government denied queer people the freedom of the press, it was impos­ sible to organize their own victims’ associations and lobby for their acknowl­ edgment and compensation.92 The men with the pink triangle were forced to go it alone as they sought to be “made good again.” In the fall of 1965, Klaus Born was twenty years old and, by his own ac­ count, naïve when he moved from his small hometown in northwestern Germany to West Berlin. Only a couple of months after his arrival, he was caught by police while having sex with a man in a public park. Instead of charging him with public indecency, which carried a more lenient sen­ tence, a court convicted Born under the Nazi version of Paragraph 175. The judge sentenced him to six weeks in prison but ultimately decided that the time Born had already spent in jail before and during the trial sufficed, and he set Born free.93 Forty-seven years later, Born became one of the first of the approximately one hundred thousand West German gay men arrested under Paragraph 175 to speak openly about the Federal Republic’s use of the Nazi statute. Speak­ ing to a reporter of a national German newspaper in 2012, he stated that the conviction had “destroyed a piece of his soul.” When asked whether the men sentenced under Paragraph 175 in the Federal Republic should receive Wie­ dergutmachung, Born answered, “A pardon of my conviction would be impor­ tant, and it would be the right thing to do. But compensation?” He dismissed the idea with a wave of his hand. “That would be enough for some people. But the truth is, you can’t make amends for it, you can’t ‘make it good again,’ not with all the money in the world.”94 For thousands of queer people who survived Hitler’s “Thousand Year Reich,” as well as generations born in West Germany, the year 1945 did not represent a clean break with the past. Everywhere they looked, gay men in Nazi Germany were portrayed as immoral criminals or as perpetrators in the fascist regime. When survivors spoke out to be included in the processes of financial and symbolic compensation or to challenge the continued use of Paragraph 175, politicians, judges, law enforcement officials, and repre­ sentatives of victim organizations consistently silenced them. One gay con­ centration camp survivor stated in 1954, “Germans tend to believe that the former prisoners of those camps were ethically or morally inferior, or other­ wise they wouldn’t have been thrown in there. And naturally one can’t have

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compassion for a criminal!”95 Gay men became skeptical of West Germany’s promises of freedom and democracy during the Adenauer era, promises that did not seem to apply to them. At every opportunity, it seemed, the government denied them the full rights of citizenship that the new constitution should have granted to them. The year 1969, however, would prove to be much more significant for West Germany’s gay communities than 1945. Important changes to “the shameful paragraph” cleared the path for the emergence of a gay liberation move­ ment, one that would have the most dramatic impact on the “rediscovery” of the Nazi persecution of queer people after an era of silence that was not really a silence at all.

Ch a p ter 3

“The Only Acceptable Gay Liberation Logo” The Reclamation of the Pink Triangle in West Germany

In 1972, a small publishing house in Hamburg released a unique book. It was the first full-length account of a gay concen­ tration camp survivor. The author tells in detail and poignancy the story of a young Austrian man who was arrested in 1939, one year after the Nazi annexation of Austria, and convicted for engaging in “indecency” with an­ other man.1 The young man spent over five years in concentration camps and was then forced to hide his memories for a quarter century, keeping his experiences to himself lest he draw the ire of society and law enforcement. The subject of the book was Josef Kohout, who had decided by the end of the 1960s to break his silence. He understood that there would be social, fi­ nancial, and legal risks to sharing his story publicly. Homosexuality was still illegal in Austria, where he lived, and in West Germany, where he hoped to publish his book. Kohout knew that he would need to tell his story under the protection of anonymity. Eventually, Kohout met Johann “Hanns” Neumann, a fellow Austrian who agreed to write Kohout’s story while keeping Kohout’s and his own identity a secret. Over a series of meetings, Neumann captured Kohout’s experiences in exacting detail. “For reasons of humanity and to help prevent such barba­ rism from repeating in our society,” Neumann stated in the book’s introduc­ tion, “the author has tried to write down all the suffering, experiences, and

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feelings as told by the source. Nothing was kept silent, nothing was exagger­ ated, and nothing was glossed over.”2 Except for the introduction, Neumann wrote the book in the first person, so that it read as an autobiography. How­ ever, Neumann never tried to hide the fact that the stories in the book were not his own. In the introduction, he stated clearly, “The author did not have to suffer the treatment described in this book himself. He only wants to tell what was told and shown to him by one of the very few surviving men with the pink triangle.”3 Like Kohout, Hanns Neumann had a reason to commit to anonymity. He himself was gay, and he knew that publishing Kohout’s story under his own name would out him as such. This would put him in danger of losing his job and livelihood, being evicted from his home, becoming a social pariah, or even being arrested. And so Neumann penned the book under the pseud­ onym Heinz Heger. In 1970, he submitted the manuscript to several publish­ ers, knowing full well that it would be hard to find a company ready to print such a book. He received a constant stream of rejection letters, although most publishers did not respond to “Heinz Heger” at all. Eventually, Merlin Verlag, a new and independent publishing company in Hamburg, agreed to publish the book, and it appeared on shelves across West Germany in 1972. Within a matter of months, the slim book would come to have an extraordinary impact on an international scale. It finally presented to mainstream audiences a chapter of history that professional historians, journalists, and government officials had erased since the end of the Holocaust. Heger’s book, therefore, represented a “coming out” of this chapter of Holocaust history. While the content of the book shed light on a hidden history, it also inspired a new generation of gay and queer West Germans to come out, mobilize, and build a more just future. The symbol of this new gay liberation movement was inspired by the cover of Heger’s book, which was solid black, save for a prominent pink triangle, and the title in white block letters: The Men with the Pink Triangle. Within months of the book’s release, gay activists across West Germany donned the pink triangle in their efforts to liberate queer communities from oppression. In a twist of fate, the book that required its authors to shield their identities with a double layer of anonymity ultimately inspired and shaped the ways in which genera­ tions of people in West Germany and North America came out and publicly claimed a gay identity. In the concentration camps, the pink triangle marked Josef Kohout as a prisoner. For generations of gay Germans who read his story decades later, the pink triangle became a symbol of liberation.

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Figure 3.1. Cover of Die Männer mit dem rosa Winkel (The men with the pink triangle), by Heinz Heger (pseudonym), published by Merlin Verlag in 1972.

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Sexual Politics and the Amendment of Paragraph 175 From the nation’s inception, policy makers in the Federal Republic of Ger­ many conceptualized the ideal citizen as both a husband and a father, both a wife and a mother.4 Therefore, persons embodying full West German citi­ zenship had to conform to heterosexuality, monogamous marriage, and par­ enthood. These were not simply abstract ideals. The West German criminal code punished individuals who engaged in a whole range of behaviors it defined as sexually deviant. When politicians and jurists in West Germany debated the fate of Para­ graph 175, they were both implicitly and explicitly expounding on the nature of homosexuality, on the extent of civil rights, and their relationship to the definition of citizenship. In the decades after the war’s end, West German homophile organizations asserted that a truly democratic society could not condone the use of the Nazi version of Paragraph 175. Doing so violated the basic rights that the Federal Republic’s constitution had granted to every citi­ zen, especially Article 2, Paragraph 1, which guaranteed all German citizens the right to freely develop their personalities. In the 1950s, West German jurists countered that Article 2 provided citizens the right to develop their personalities only as long as doing so did not “offend against the constitu­ tional order of the moral law.”5 The court argued that because Paragraph 175 only criminalized certain acts and not personalities, it did not violate Article 2. West German homophile advocates, on the other hand, asserted that it was impossible to separate homosexual acts from homosexual individuals themselves. By arguing that same-sex desire constituted more than sexual acts, and indeed represented an expression of a subjective identity and a part of one’s personality, these homophile advocates sought to form a new, broader defini­ tion of personhood in which sexual desire, in its various manifestations, was simply one aspect of an individual. Queer people were full and equal citizens who should enjoy all the civil rights granted by West Germany’s constitu­ tion. As long as it was legal for West German law enforcement agencies to surveil and arrest gay people and for employers and landlords to discriminate against gay people, gay West Germans were excluded from the full benefits and protections of citizenship. In practice, then, West Germany’s LGBTQ+ people had been relegated to second-class citizens. It was in the context of these debates that the Federal Ministry of Justice created the Criminal Code Commission (Strafrechtskommission) in 1954 to evaluate West Germany’s laws governing sexuality. For some lawmak­ ers, jurists, and LGBTQ+ civilians in both liberal and radical leftist circles,

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Paragraph 175 had become a measurement of the extent to which the Fed­ eral Republic had adequately dealt with the legacies of its Nazi past. Even an official of the Ministry of Justice understood that the government’s decision whether or not to amend Paragraph 175 would affect more than the legality of certain sexual acts. Choosing to uphold the 1935 version of the law yet again could attract accusations that the government was not fully inclined to grapple with the consequences of the Third Reich.6 Other social commenta­ tors weighed in on the issue as jurists and legislators debated the future of Paragraph 175. The conservative, openly gay, and Jewish professor of theol­ ogy Hans-Joachim Schoeps, who spent eight years as a refugee during Nazi rule, stated, “Since the gas ovens of Auschwitz and Majdanek burned, one should think twice, or three times, whether one wants to continue in the new criminal code to treat the minority of homosexuals as people for whom there must be separate laws.”7 In West Germany, then, the politics of memory over the implications of the Nazi past influenced the debates over the constitu­ tional rights of the country’s LGBTQ+ communities, though conversations at that point focused mainly on gay men and, to a lesser extent, on lesbians. Many of the jurists advocating for a liberalization of Paragraph 175 were not doing so to advance gay rights per se. Instead, the burden of Germany’s recent past impressed on them that the Federal Republic should be especially mindful of how it treated minorities. Despite these arguments, the Criminal Code Commission did not change Paragraph 175 for another fifteen years. During the 1960s, the political landscape in the Federal Republic of Ger­ many underwent significant shifts. Konrad Adenauer, who had been the na­ tion’s chancellor and leader of the conservative Christian Democratic Union (CDU) since 1949, resigned in October 1963. By 1966, the left-wing Social Democratic Party came to power as a coalition partner with the CDU in the Bundestag, West Germany’s federal parliament seated in the capital city of Bonn. Three years later, liberals and Social Democrats composed the major­ ity in the Bundestag. The 1960s also saw extensive changes in social, cultural, and political val­ ues across the globe. Influenced by leftist philosophies such as Marxism and second-wave feminism, demonstrators in cities ranging from Berlin, Berke­ ley, and Prague, to Warsaw, Rio de Janeiro, and Cape Town protested against imperialism and authoritarian governments, the use of atomic power, racial segregation, social inequality, and sexism. The rise of the New Left, com­ posed primarily of a new generation born after the end of World War II, was skeptical of Communist parties and other groups that had been the bed­ rock of earlier leftist activism. Members of the New Left demonstrated for the expansion and protection of minority rights, global peace, and a sexual revolution. Amid the general atmosphere of change in the decade, a series

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of pivotal events rocked the world in 1968: the assassination of the US civil rights leader Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.; citywide strikes and protests in Paris; the Soviet military suppression of the Prague Spring; a mass murder during a protest in Mexico City; and reports of the US military’s My Lai massacre in Vietnam. The year 1968 came to encapsulate the social and political upheav­ als that characterized the “long sixties.” In the spring of 1969, a new version of Paragraph 175 was proposed that would set the age of consent at twenty-one for gay men. This would legalize sex among consenting adult men while still appeasing some politicians who argued Paragraph 175 was necessary to protect Germany’s male youth from “homosexual predators.” Even the leaders of the Social Democratic Party of Germany (SPD), which led the effort to reform Paragraph 175, clarified that they did not condone homosexuality. Rather, the decriminalization of sex between consenting men was meant to be a step toward realizing the ideals of individual liberty in a democratic state.8 On May 9, 1969, the reform of Paragraph 175 came to the floor of the Bundestag for a vote. The Social Democrats supported the amendment, and enough members of the Christian Democratic Union also lent their sup­ port. Emmy Diemer-Nicolaus of the Free Democratic Party called for those who opposed the bill to abstain and not impede progress. In the end, 255 members voted in favor of the law’s amendment, 61 voted against, and 202 abstained.9 Five days later, the bill passed in the Bundesrat, the legislative body representing the West German states. Almost thirty-four years to the day after Nazi jurists amended Paragraph 175, the reform bill was published on June 25, 1969, and then went into effect on the first of September. Sex was legalized between men twenty-one years or older. The new version of Paragraph 175 still retained the provision against men who abused their po­ sition to coerce sex with a subordinate. The maximum prison sentence was reduced from ten years to five years.10 The law still represented a fundamen­ tally different treatment of the sexual lives of citizens, however, since the age of consent for heterosexual people was sixteen. Moreover, the new version of the law carried on a century-long tradition of excluding any mention of lesbians. It was in this context of social, legal, and political change that an organized, politically active gay movement (Schwulenbewegung) emerged in West Germany in the early 1970s.

The Pink Triangle, “Coming Out,” and Identity Politics Two years after the government’s amendment of Paragraph 175, impor­ tant developments among West Germany’s queer communities spilled over onto the national stage. On July 3, 1971, at the twenty-first annual Berlin

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International Film Festival, the director Rosa von Praunheim premiered his film It’s Not the Homosexual Who’s Perverse, but Rather the Situation in Which He Lives. The highly controversial film, which provoked strong reactions in straight and gay viewers alike, was soon broadcast across the airwaves by public television stations throughout the Federal Republic, though initially only during the late-night slots.11 Scholars and contemporary observers alike credit the debates instigated by the Praunheim film with sparking West Germany’s gay liberation move­ ment. A gay political action committee in Aachen informed readers of their newsletter that, in their city “as with so many others in West Germany, ev­ erything began with the screening of the Praunheim film.”12 The showing of It’s Not the Homosexual Who’s Perverse across the country proved to have a lasting impact. Within months, LGBTQ+ West Germans had established the first wave of gay groups throughout the nation.13 More than seventy West German gay groups were formed over the next two years.14 By 1980, the number of gay groups nationwide had risen to 148.15 In November 1980, members of the Münster Homosexual Initiatives reflected with a hint of surprise that the gay rights movement in the Federal Republic had begun not with a wave of protests, as was the case in the United States, but rather with the showing of a movie.16 One of the first, and eventually the largest and most significant of West Germany’s gay liberation groups was the Homosexuelle Aktion Westber­ lin (HAW). The HAW was founded on August 15, 1971, by a group of one hundred college students who credited Rosa von Praunheim’s film with cultivating the feeling of solidarity necessary to form an organization with the purpose of demonstrating for gay emancipation.17 While the HAW was established to address gay issues specifically, members of the group saw the treatment of gays and lesbians as interrelated with broader social, economic, and political concerns. Peter Hedenström, a founding member of the HAW, expressed that from early on one of the concerns of the group was how to make gay activists visi­ ble to the rest of the West German public.18 The desire for visibility stemmed from several factors. One was a political necessity; members of the HAW wanted to fight what they saw as a public misconception of all gays and lesbi­ ans as morally corrupt, deviant, or mentally ill. Moreover, increased visibility was meant to demonstrate that, while a minority, gays and lesbians could become a political force to be reckoned with. The push for gays and lesbians to “come out” and make their homosexual­ ity openly known also served another, more important purpose. Gay libera­ tionists asserted that coming out was a necessary first step toward liberating

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gays as a group from wider social stigmatization. “Self-awareness and selfconsciousness requires you to accept yourself before you are accepted [by others],” stated one of the HAW’s principal documents.19 The politics of coming out represented a drastic shift in tactics from those employed by the homophile groups of the 1950s and 1960s. It also represented a shift in the perception of the relationship between sexuality and citizenship. Many of the assertions of homophile organizations had been based on claims of citizens’ right to privacy. In other words, citizens had the right to perform consensual sexual acts in private. The gay emancipation movement of the 1970s, however, renounced the claim to privacy, asserting instead that citi­ zens in a democratic society—whether queer or heterosexual—had the right to personally claim a sexual identity and the right to express one’s sexuality freely and openly. The politics of coming out revealed tensions surrounding gender, con­ cepts of respectability, and the direction of the new gay movement. Activ­ ists in the Schwulenbewegung of the 1970s sought to clearly and definitively distance themselves from the homophile activists of previous generations, whom the gay liberationists portrayed as conservative and conformist. But there were also stark differences within the Schwulenbewegung itself that be­ came more pronounced as gay activists began definitively articulating their goals and strategies. Ultimately, the pink triangle would come to play a key role in the debates about the future of gay rights activism in the Federal Republic. Some gay activists, including many in the HAW, sought to situate gay activism within the broader movement of the New Left. In many ways, leftwing social movements, such as the student movement, provided both an outlet and a model for gay activists in the early 1970s. With the start of the Schwulenbewegung, “left-wing homosexuals were now able to integrate their gayness into their political identity,” notes researcher Patrick Henze.20 It is understandable, then, that many in the Schwulenbewegung wanted to work toward solidarity with the social revolutions of the Left more broadly, rather than emphasize gayness specifically. In May 1973, the HAW adopted as their logo a clenched fist over a heart. By that point, the clenched fist had become associated with multiple leftist movements, and the heart was supposed to represent the relationship to sexuality, and thus to being gay.21 These gay activists argued that the suppression of LGBTQ+ people was just part of the broader repression of all sexual activities and identities that did not conform to conservative, bourgeois ideals. On the other side of the debate were those who argued that the Schwul­ enbewegung should focus on issues that were unique to queer people, which

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were often overlooked or intentionally shunned by other leftist movements, such as homophobia, sexism, and what today would be referred to as toxic masculinity. It was not enough to “run around holding up little signs,” Elmar Kraushaar recalled. “It was like we didn’t exist. We didn’t appear in the me­ dia. And we weren’t even that well liked in the left-wing groups that we had bravely joined.”22 Largely driving these debates were gender-nonconforming gay men, namely those who were known as Tunten (“fairies” or “queens”). Tunten of­ ten included drag queens, but also referred to men who purposefully com­ bined elements of masculine and feminine aesthetics in dress, mannerisms, and speech. These men often referred to each other using feminine pronouns and sometimes adopted female names to use among each other. In doing so, they publicly challenged prevailing norms of both gender and sexuality. In West Berlin, Tunten would often don their unique style—perhaps a combina­ tion of jeans and heels, a skirt and shirt, with light makeup and jewelry—and ride the subway trains for hours to demonstrate how horribly West Germans would treat them. Such actions demonstrate that being a Tunte was both an expression of personal identity and a political act that starkly highlighted how shallow “tolerance” in West Germany really was. The debate came to a head in June 1973 during a weeklong event orga­ nized by the HAW for gay groups across the Federal Republic and West­ ern Europe. During the Pfingstreffen (Pentecost meeting), which drew over seven hundred attendees, some French and Italian activists showed up to the main demonstration in drag and spent their time mingling and dancing in the streets. Many West German gay activists were outraged, claiming that the Tunten had detracted from the politics of the demonstration. Some were disappointed that the Italian and French Tunten had made fun of the Ger­ mans by characterizing them as uptight Prussians committed to marching in lockstep.23 Wolfgang Theis, who was there that day, later stated that the Tunten had “disrupted the holy solemnity of the revolution.”24 The Tunten­ streit (“Queens’ Quarrel”) spread throughout West Germany’s gay groups, and in 1974, a group of Tunten broke off and formed their own group, AK Klappe, which existed until 1977. The Tuntenstreit foregrounded the importance of visibility in the West German gay movement. The politics of drag and Tunten aesthetics was one way to render gays in society visible, but other activists sought to identify alternative strategies of facilitating a public coming out. Some activists pro­ posed adopting a “gay logo” that queer Germans could wear in public to achieve personal and societal visibility and liberation. As historian Craig Griffiths has articulated, by wearing a gay symbol, “activists who did not

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want to adopt gender transgressive dress or behavior could show their soli­ darity with those who did so.”25 An individual would have to consciously don the symbol each day, thus representing a daily self-emancipation. By wearing it in public, the individual would contribute to the collective coming out of the gay community. Several possibilities were put forward for consideration. One suggestion was the Greek letter lambda, which had been used by some of the American gay liberation groups because of the lambda’s use in science to represent kinetic energy and potential. Critics in West Germany argued that the lambda was too abstract and did not explicitly refer to homosexual­ ity or oppression. Some suggested a crossed-out §175, but opponents stated that this would focus too narrowly on a single law.26 In 1972, Merlin Verlag published Heinz Heger’s The Men with the Pink Tri­ angle, the earliest firsthand book about a gay concentration camp survivor. Dieter Schiefelbein, who was active in the gay movement, later recounted that Heger’s book quickly became “required political and moral reading for gay movement activists.”27 The title of the slim book offered a solution to the gay movement’s problem of identification and visibility. In March 1972, the Frankfurt gay group Rot Zelle Schwul (or RotZSchwul) wore and handed out pink triangle pins during a demonstration. Some of the group’s mem­ bers worried that the general public would not immediately recognize the meaning or history of the pink triangle. So they added the word schwul (gay) boldly against the buttons’ white backgrounds. The use of a concentration camp badge was striking, and the decision to use schwul was consciously meant to distance RotZSchwul from the other groups that continued to use the older term homosexuell. RotZSchwul’s March 1972 demonstration was the first documented in­ stance of the use of the pink triangle as a gay liberation logo. But it was members of West Berlin’s HAW that first articulated a detailed argument for why West German activists should adopt it as a symbol of the German Schwulenbewegung. In the fall of 1972, members of the HAW’s Feminist Group (Feministengruppe), which was composed primarily of Tunten and gender nonconforming gay men seeking to challenge heteronormative and patriarchal and gender norms, led a discussion during an HAW meeting to propose the pink triangle as the group’s official logo, but the motion was defeated. There was still a pervasive—and justifiable—fear of publicly out­ ing oneself. The HAW feminists regrouped and authored a twenty-five-page document that argued in exacting detail why West Germany’s gay activists needed to use a gay symbol in their movement, which they presented to the full HAW for review in October 1973. Central to their argument was, as be­ fore, the need for visibility. The HAW Feminist Group asserted that “straight

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passing” gays should experience what it was like to be visibly out in public. “Oh sure there’s always talk about discrimination,” wrote one HAW femi­ nist. “But look around! Most of you here can walk through life as a straight person, and so you don’t experience it firsthand.” Bearing a gay mark and liv­ ing openly as a gay man, the author continued, “would shatter that façade.”28 For the HAW feminists, there was no doubt of what the symbol should be. “The pink triangle is the only acceptable gay liberation logo,” they con­ cluded. As support for their argument, they noted that RotZSchwul had al­ ready begun using the pink triangle in Frankfurt.29 Peter Hedenström argued that the symbol was perfect not only because it solved the problem of gay visibility. “At its core,” Hedenström recalled, “the pink triangle represented a piece of our German history that still needed to be dealt with.”30 As a refer­ ence to the Third Reich’s concentration camps, it would act as a powerful re­ minder of what happened to queer people in Germany’s not-so-distant past. In using it, gay activists also sought to draw attention to the continued mar­ ginalization of and violence against LGBTQ+ Germans in the present. The use of the pink triangle, then, posed a provocative question in the context of gay activism: Had West German society really exorcised its fascist demons? In addition to the motion to adopt the pink triangle, the Feminist Group proposed that the HAW change its name to the Schwule Befreiungsfront, a direct translation of “Gay Liberation Front,” which had been founded in New York City in 1969. When the full HAW met during a plenum on No­ vember 4, 1973, the proposal was defeated. But the HAW feminists con­ tinued to advocate, and in May 1975, the HAW conducted its first public demonstration involving the pink triangle. Along the crowded sidewalks of the Kürfürstendamm, a swanky shopping avenue in Berlin, members of the organization handed out flyers and leaflets with the pink triangle that pro­ vided information about Germany’s persecution of gay people in both the past and present. Six HAW members stood before the subway station, each holding a pink cardboard triangle with letters that collectively spelled schwul (gay).31 From that point forward, the pink triangle became a ubiquitous com­ ponent of HAW activism. As the HAW was one of the oldest and largest gay groups in the country, its integration of the pink triangle into its activism influenced the symbol’s role in the West German Schwulenbewegung. Inspired by the published ac­ counts of one individual’s memories of terror in the Third Reich, these activ­ ists began a process of transforming the pink triangle from a badge of shame and victimization into a sign of affirmation signifying resiliency, power, and liberation. Through the adoption of the pink triangle by the HAW, the Nazi past became foundational to the new “out” and politicized gay identity.

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Figure 3.2. At a demonstration in 1975, members of the Homosexuelle Aktion Westberlin (HAW) hold up a series of pink triangles, the letters on which spell schwul (gay). Individuals holding the signs include Andreas Pareik (S), Peter Hedenström (C), Erich Hoffmann (U), and Egmont Fass­ binder (L). Those holding the H and W are unidentified. Photo: Ludwig Hilgering, courtesy of the Schwules Museum, Berlin.

Gay liberation and rights groups across West Germany—from Munich, Nuremberg, and Stuttgart, to Frankfurt, Marburg, and Bielefeld—soon fol­ lowed the HAW’s lead and began using the pink triangle in their demonstra­ tions. In 1976, protesters in Würzburg, for example, carried a large banner emblazoned with a pink triangle over the words “Gays were murdered in concentration camps. And today?”32 When the first issue of Unter Uns (Be­ tween us), a gay magazine published in Cologne, appeared on the shelves in the summer of 1977, the initial message from the editor asserted that while other symbols were prominent in other countries, West Germany’s gay rights symbol was undoubtedly the pink triangle.33 Gays and lesbians in Wuppertal formed a political action group, and they chose the name “Pink Triangle Wuppertal.” Members told a journalist from a gay politics maga­ zine that “the naming of the group should remind everyone of the largely unknown annihilation of homosexuals in Hitler’s Germany. . . . At the same time, we want our group’s symbol to point out the continued oppression of gays in 1970s Germany, too.”34 The adoption of the pink triangle was not uncontested. Some gay groups refused to draw a direct comparison between the discrimination that

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LGBTQ+ people faced in the 1970s and the torture and murder of concen­ tration camp prisoners who were victims of actual Nazis. In 1976, during a meeting of gay organizations in Cologne, participants debated whether they should include pink triangles on the flyers and banners they were making for an upcoming public information campaign. Those in favor highlighted the triangle’s ability to raise consciousness about past and present discrimina­ tion. Opponents called the use of the pink triangle “cynical” and asserted that it was “arrogant” to compare the present situation to the Third Reich. Ultimately, the Gay Liberation Front Köln chose not to participate, and the Schwule Aktion Köln implemented it alone.35 Other individuals and organizations were unsure of the potential unin­ tended consequences of using a symbol that originated as a tool of dehu­ manization and oppression. If groups in the Schwulenbewegung used the pink triangle, would that forever link the rhetoric of gay activism to victimization? Was it possible to fully reclaim a symbol so that it no longer represented victimhood, but rather a future-oriented identity rooted in pride? Indeed, the pink triangle represented an inherent tension between the needs of activ­ ism to historicize homophobia and discrimination on the one hand, and the simultaneous efforts on the other hand to overcome oppression and craft an identity based on agency and self-determination. Historian Craig Griffiths argues that “it seems unproductive to posit a dichotomy between pride and victimhood, just as between pride and shame: rather, it is the oscillations between these poles that structured the course of gay liberation and lent a powerful ambivalence to the pink triangle symbol.”36 This powerful ambiva­ lence meant that the pink triangle never had to represent just one thing. It bound together trauma and warnings from the past with the liberation of coming out, community building, and the call for justice all at the same time. This limited resistance to or ambivalence about the pink triangle did not hinder it from becoming a widely recognizable symbol of gay activism in West Germany. The spread of the pink triangle signifies the dissemination of a specific manifestation of gay activism throughout the nation. The coming out of individuals, the formation of gay organizations, and the adoption of a gay liberation logo all created an awareness among gays and lesbians that there were people like themselves throughout the Federal Republic who not only shared similar sexual desires, orientations, and a fraught history, but an aspiration to engage in political activism as well. And as more and more groups used the pink triangle and adhered to the goals of the gay liberation movement as laid out in numerous manifestos, group documents, and fly­ ers, individuals who came out and joined the movement began sharing and using similar political strategies and reifying a particular definition of what

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it meant to be gay. This was a reflexive process, because just as activism shaped identity (political groups publicly defined to audiences what being gay entailed), the acceptance and embodiment of this particular gay identity also demanded political activism. Thus, by tracing the dispersal of the pink triangle—on individuals, in gay rights marches, on flyers, plastered on park benches, train station walls, and throughout universities in cities across the Federal Republic—it is possible to track the spread of a certain, politically active gay identity. Equally as significant as whom the pink triangle represented is who was not included in the creation of this identity and shared gay past. The estab­ lishment of the pink triangle as an emblem of gay consciousness in West Germany represented liberation for some—primarily cisgender white gay men37—but did not bridge the divides within West Germany’s diverse queer activist communities. In some cases, the pink triangle highlighted or even exacerbated the fissures within the communities. This is true about the re­ lationship between lesbians and gay men, who had often worked closely to­ gether in the beginning of the queer liberation movement. There were over one hundred lesbian members of the HAW, for example, who established a HAW Women’s Group (Frauengruppe, not to be confused with the Femin­ istengruppe) in 1972, which immediately became an active committee with West Germany’s largest gay group. By the following year, however, second-wave feminists highlighted how patriarchal the gay movement was. Because the leadership of influential gay action groups, such as the HAW, could not—or would not—take seriously the issues that impacted lesbians as women, lesbians were compelled to form their own organizations in which they could establish communities and work toward their specific goals. “We are lesbians and of course we are oppressed because of that,” Cristina Perincioli recalled of her time in West Germany’s lesbian movement. “But we are first and foremost women and therefore have a common struggle with all women.” When she was at work, she explained, she not only had to fear being outed as a lesbian. She also had to face the common discriminatory practices that impacted all women.38 When the members of the HAW Women’s Group split in 1974, they formed the Les­ bian Action Center of West Berlin (Lesbisches Aktionszentrum Westberlin) a year later.39 So when the HAW began using the pink triangle on a wide scale in 1975, it was almost exclusively an organization of queer men. Observing the reclamation of the pink triangle also showcases the racial dynamics of the West German Schwulenbewegung. “While Black people are hypervisible in a society that defines national belonging as racial or ethnic belonging and sets itself up as predominantly white,” writes scholar Simon

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Dickel, “Black Germans become invisible as German residents or citizens, as they are excluded from the German cultural imaginary.”40 West German gay organizations also whitewashed the experiences and needs of LGBTQ+ West Germans by shunning issues of race. Groups like the HAW positioned themselves in the intersectional movements of the Left, but antiracist activ­ ism was glaringly absent. It was not that West German gay activists were unaware of the problems of racism. In the HAW’s November 1971 news­ letter, for example, the group translated and printed a letter from Huey Newton, cofounder of the Black Panther Party in the United States. In the letter, which was originally published in the Black Panther’s newspaper in July 1970, Newton called on Black activists to establish a “revolutionary al­ liance” with the women’s liberation and gay liberation movements.41 While the HAW promoted Newton’s letter as a call for solidarity, that same zeal for intersectional activism did not seem to translate into solidarity with queer, Black West Germans. The reprinting of Newton’s letter was not the only instance of the HAW using racialized discourse and connections to the struggle for Black civil rights in the United States. In its March 1975 newsletter, the HAW printed an article that called for West Germany’s gay citizens to come out, organize, and contribute to the strengthening of the gay liberation movement. The seven-page article positioned the Nazis’ destruction of the Weimar era’s ho­ mosexual emancipation movement as a warning of what could happen in West Germany if gay communities were complacent. It ends with a starkly problematic appropriation of the stereotype of Black servility (and thus complicity) in the policies of racial suppression in the United States: “We wear the pink triangle to dismantle our Uncle Tom consciousness.”42 West German lesbian and women’s groups also shirked analyses of rac­ ism. Ika Hügel-Marshall, an author and activist who grew up in West Ger­ many in the fifties and sixties, later wrote in her memoir that West German feminists fought for equal rights and the end of oppression, but not against racism. “None of my sisters in the women’s groups—no one in the entire women’s movement, in fact—is interested in hearing the story of black women’s struggles. They don’t want to see that our society is racist as well as sexist.”43 The effects of racism within the Schwulenbewegung resulted in what amounted to segregated gay spaces. That did not mean that queer Black Germans did not organize to fight against marginalization. Recent work by scholars like Tiffany Florvil showcases how Black queer Germans, especially women, created networks and movements of their own that had to meet the needs of their identities and experiences in the Federal Republic. Queer

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Germans of color carved out spaces through activism, art, literature, and community organizing. National and local chapters of organizations such as the Initiative of Black Germans (Initiative Schwarze Deutsche) and AfroGerman Women (Afrodeutsche Frauen) “made Black Germanness visible in a majority-white nation that failed to acknowledge its colonial past and its afterlife, its long-standing multiracial and multicultural populations, and the persistence of racism and racial violence after the fall of the Third Reich.”44 In the late 1980s, Afro-German gay men formed their own groups, like the “Hot Chocolates,” which Carl Camurça organized out of his apartment in West Berlin.45 Black German feminist lesbians like Katharina Oguntoye and Dagmar Schultz, along with American author and activist Audre Lorde, who taught in Berlin in the mid-1980s, worked to build a grassroots movement that addressed issues unique to Black people living in West Germany, even while they tied those spaces to global movements. “Embracing international­ ism,” writes Florvil, “they strengthened their political consciousness and ac­ knowledged similarities and dissimilarities with other marginalized groups worldwide.”46

Out of the Closet, into the Streets By the mid-1970s, the Schwulenbewegung had emerged as a formidable social movement composed of a community that now understood itself as a sex­ ual, social, and political minority. As West German gay activists demanded that their local and federal governments end discriminatory practices and dismantle systemic inequality, they often referred to their nation’s Nazi past as a warning of the dangers of oppressive governments. In this way, the pink triangle was deployed as a defense against what historians Dirk Moses and Craig Griffiths call the Weimar Syndrome: “a lack of trust in West German institutions and fear that the Federal Republic might meet the same fate as the Weimar Republic.”47 The virulent backlash that many gay activists received from West Ger­ man politicians and members of the public must have certainly lent credit to the notion that the destruction of the democracy and vibrant queer culture of the Weimar era could happen again. In April 1979, the General Homo­ sexual Committee (AHA) attempted to participate in an antifascist march organized by the Association of the Persecuted of the Nazi Regime (Vereini­ gung der Verfolgten des Naziregimes). As soon as they unfurled their banner, which read “Gays in Concentration Camps—Never Again!” two members of the demonstration’s organizers, dressed in long gray and blue raincoats that looked like police uniforms, violently removed the AHA activists from

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the march.48 Three years earlier, the Würzburg Homosexual Action Group hoisted a larger banner in the Würzburg town square with the question, “Gays murdered in the concentration camps—and today?” One passerby told a news crew filming the demonstration that if their son were gay, “I’d have him castrated.” Another commented that gay people “should be gassed.”49 A common trope during this time was the call for queer West Germans to “come out of the ghettos,” a clear reference to the history of the Third Reich. In February 1981, for example, a writer for Gay Journal celebrated that thousands of people had begun actively taking part in the German gay rights movement. Despite this achievement, he continued, no one wants to acknowledge that “we’re still stuck deep in the ghetto.” He then described the contours of the gay ghetto to his readers: subscribers to gay magazines still ask for them to be delivered in unmarked envelopes; gay people were still forced to keep their identity hidden in the workplace; the media continued to make homosexuality taboo, gay bars and meeting places were still too often shrouded in secrecy. “We should all get it through our own heads just how deep we’re still in the ghetto. At the same time, we need to reflect on how we get out of here.”50 Rhetoric about the Nazi past was directed both internally to motivate the queer community and externally to fight against persecution. West Ger­ man gay activists used the pink triangle to achieve multiple specific goals. For example, it became a way for groups in cities across West Germany to demand that their government officially acknowledge that the Nazis had tar­ geted queer Germans during the Third Reich. Gay liberationists asserted that after the Federal Republic acknowledged gay people as Nazi victims, it should then compensate gay concentration camp survivors. Survivors who had worn the pink triangle had been excluded from the Federal Compensa­ tion Law of 1956, and the next fifteen years had witnessed no progress. In 1970, one observer stated that as long as West German politicians and judges still adhered to the sentiment that gay people were “moral criminals,” resti­ tution was impossible.51 In 1979, a lesbian activist in Mainz distributed a flyer that reprinted the May 1957 decision of the Federal Constitutional Court, which stated that “the version of Paragraph 175 that was amended during the National Socialist regime does not represent a typical Nazi mind-set, and the law was amended in an orderly [legal] fashion.” The flyer boldly claimed, “That means that the massacre of the homosexuals under fascism conforms to the spirit of the new, oh-so-liberal, Federal Republic.” The flyer then con­ cluded that this was how the West German government was able to justify the fact that gay concentration camp survivors would receive no compensa­ tion of any form.52

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Figure 3.3. A flyer advertising a series of events during a three-day meeting of gay action groups in Munich on June 4–7, 1976, contains a slogan at the bottom reading “Out of the Ghetto.” Cour­ tesy of the Forum Queeres Archiv München.

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Advocating for reparations for gay Holocaust survivors was an important aim of gay activism in West Germany, and the use of the pink triangle was seen as a key strategy in strengthening the argument for reparations. By the 1980s, thanks to the work of these gay groups in influencing politics and informing the West German public of the fate of gay men under Hitler, gay organizations gained political allies in the Bundestag. Members of the Social Democratic Party and the new environmentalist party, the Greens, joined in the sustained effort to push for changes in the federal regulations regarding the compensation of the Nazis’ victims. When it became apparent that the federal government would not change its stance, activists and politi­ cians pushed for the West German states to take up the cause. Chapter 6 will demonstrate the challenges and limited successes of these local-led efforts to acknowledge and provide aid for gay concentration camp survivors. Gay emancipation groups throughout the Federal Republic more broadly sought to end social and legal discrimination against West German gays and lesbians by informing the public about contemporary oppression and push­ ing for legal reforms. To this end, a team in the sociology department at the University of Bielefeld produced a documentary titled The Pink Triangle? But That Was a Long Time Ago. . .53 Promotional material for the film, released in 1975, stated that “in the concentration camps of the Hitler-Fascists, there was a group of prisoners who are, still to this day, gladly ‘forgotten’ in the writing of history: the homosexuals.”54 Five minutes at the beginning of the film are dedicated to informing viewers of the fate of gay men in the Third Reich. The rest of the documentary details various forms of discrimination that gays and lesbians faced in the Federal Republic. Referencing that this “gladly forgotten” chapter of history had yet to be researched lent historical legitimacy to the filmmakers’ argument that gays and lesbians in the pres­ ent day faced widespread discrimination. The Pink Triangle? film ultimately asserted that “after the war, the behavior of the Federal Republic’s leaders and populations toward gays barely changed.”55 In many ways, the film was correct. The documentary garnered attention and prompted political action among the emancipation groups. In July 1975, the Braunschweig Homo­ sexual Taskforce (Arbeitsgruppe Homosexualität Braunschweig, AHB) led an information campaign throughout the city streets after watching and discussing the Pink Triangle? film. The local newspaper, the Braunschweiger Zeitung, reported, “With a flyer campaign, the AHB is currently attempting to bring a renewed awareness of the persecution of homosexuals under the National Socialist regime, and to compare it with the ostracization of homo­ sexuals in the present day.”56 It continued, “The pink triangle has been chosen

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as their symbol, and it’s worn on one’s lapel as a symbol of emancipation, and also as a way to publicly denote oneself as ‘different.’ . . . The AHB says that the present isolation that gays must face is a form of mental persecution experienced at the workplace, in the search for housing, and in interactions with families and acquaintances.”57 The AHB was retrieving a memory that was important in its own right, but then using it to make a point about con­ temporary issues as well. By adopting the concentration camp badge and pointing out the contin­ ued existence and use of Paragraph 175, most organizations sought to draw direct connections between the situation of gays and lesbians in Nazi Ger­ many with those living in the Federal Republic. “The gay people who were affected by Nazi terror didn’t want to shake off, or leave behind, the shock of their concentration camp experiences,” wrote members of the HAW in 1973. “Rather, they wanted to activate those experiences,” transforming them into an impetus for change in the present. “The pink triangle should consciously make clear among the general public,” the author continued, “the correlation between the eradication of homosexuals in the Nazi con­ centration camps and the discrimination against gays in the FRG.”58 Even after the amendment of Paragraph 175 in 1969, gay activists con­ tinued to push the federal government to recognize that any separate law governing the sexual lives of queer and heterosexual people differently was not only discriminatory, but also inconsistent with the ideals of democracy and citizenship. In 1973, Paragraph 175 was amended yet again. This time, the age of consent for sex among males was lowered from twenty-one to eighteen, which was still higher than the age of consent for heterosexual sex. The wording of the law was also changed in 1973. The derogatory term “indecency” (Unzucht) was replaced with the more neutral “sexual acts” (sex­ uelle Handlungen); despite the change in terminology, the purpose of the law remained the same. While these activists used the pink triangle and narratives of the Nazi past to achieve specific goals, they were also fundamentally challenging the broader correlation between sexuality, citizenship, history, and civil liberties. A flyer from the Mainz Initiative Group on Homosexuality (Initiativegruppe Homosexualität Mainz) expressed that as long as legislation, state actions, and social practices continued to deny homosexuality as a valid and legal form of sexual expression, “everyone is denied the ability to develop and ex­ perience every aspect of their personalities.”59 Viola Fliederwild, a lesbian activist from Mainz, crafted and distributed a collection of flyers to gay groups across the Federal Republic. One of these flyers, compiled in 1979, asked readers, “Normalcy?” and responded with a resounding “No thanks!”60

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Fliederwild’s rhetoric challenged the limited and exclusionary definition of what “normalcy” entailed. In doing so, she and others sought to challenge the assumption that one had to conform to mainstream definitions of “nor­ mal” in order to receive the full benefits of citizenship. Another of Fliederwild’s flyers makes this goal explicit by expounding on what she proposed as twelve specific demands of the gay rights movement. Seven of the demands referred to legal matters and civil rights, including the full repeal of Paragraph 175, an end to the police raids on gay meeting places, the prohibition of the registration of gays and lesbians on “pink lists” com­ piled by law enforcement, and the protection of “the full rights to freely de­ velop one’s personality without any limits defined by age, sexual orientation, or anything else.”61 Seven years later, the “Pink Ticket”—a gay party running for election to the University of Braunschweig’s student council—wrote in their campaign materials that “the Nazis’ special law was carried over into the criminal code of the FRG and was only weakened in 1969. Special legisla­ tion that discriminates against gays as ‘abnormal’ persists to this day, despite the principle of equality that guides the Federal Republic’s constitution.”62 In the mid-1970s, Links Unten, a leftist newsletter published in Freiburg, ran an article titled “The Pink Triangle: The Meaning of an Old and New Gay Symbol,” in which the author highlighted the hypocrisy of a govern­ ment whose constitution claimed to enshrine the liberties and equality of all citizens, yet continued to enforce a separate law governing the lives of a sexual (and increasingly political) minority. “We wear the pink triangle,” the article read, “to present ourselves publicly and to draw attention to the pseudo-democratic scams in our social order.”63 A representative of Munich’s gay group Homosexuelle Aktion München appealed to his fellow West Ger­ mans, “We don’t want to hide in bars or alone at home anymore. . . . We want to do everything that all other people get to do!”64 The pleas from these Munich activists sought to present gays and lesbians as normal West German citizens who should no longer have to feel ashamed and hide. The majority of gay groups in West Germany were not only involved in gay rights activism. The second-oldest gay liberation group in the Federal Republic, RotZSchwul, founded in Frankfurt am Main by Martin Dannecker (who also wrote the script for the influential Praunheim film), was deeply involved in the student movement. The group’s name—Red Cell Gay— signifies the Marxist leanings of the organization, and in West Germany’s first gay rights demonstration, Dannecker helped carry a large banner that read, “Brothers and sisters, ‘warm’ or not, fighting capitalism is our duty!”65 West Berlin’s HAW firmly situated itself within the broader social movements of the New Left. The first demonstration that the group ever participated in, for example, was a march for workers’ rights.66 Even after the gay liberation

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movement gave way to a less radical movement by the end of the 1970s, gay groups across the Federal Republic continued to advocate for a wide range of issues facing minorities. In September 1980, members of the Nuremberg gay group Fliederlich joined with other activists to protest against an antiimmigrant initiative led by the extreme right-wing National Democratic

Figure 3.4. Sticker from a gay rights group depicting a pink triangle destroying a swastika. The sticker was used in a campaign against the rise of neo-Nazis in West Germany, ca. 1984. The text reads, “Stop the Brown Danger—Gays and Lesbians against Nazis!” Courtesy of the Centrum Schwule Geschichte, Köln.

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Party of Germany.67 Gay activists in Cologne often used the pink triangle and other references to the Third Reich as they fought the rise of neo-Nazi violence against minorities in the late 1980s. It is clear that gay activists’ use of the pink triangle and narratives of the Nazi past was significant beyond gay activism specifically. These protesters did not consider themselves to be solely gay rights activists; they advocated for a number of issues, all of which they understood as interconnected and interdependent. Gay rights, workers’ rights, immigrant rights, the right to freely develop one’s personality—all these, and more—were considered nec­ essary components of achieving full human rights. Gay rights were just one facet of defining a broader understanding of personhood, and therefore a broader definition of civil rights, that everyone, by nature of being an indi­ vidual and a citizen, should expect to enjoy as a member of a liberal, demo­ cratic society. Gay activists in the Federal Republic understood that Germany’s recent history added a particular potency to the debates over civil rights and citizen­ ship in a democracy. In this context, the discourse used by gay activists often presented the treatment of LGBTQ+ people as a litmus test for the extent to which Germans had progressed from the era of fascism. In August 1979, the General Homosexual Committee (Allgemeine Homosexuelle Arbeitsge­ meinschaft, AHA), which was founded in West Berlin in 1974 as a moderate alternative to the leftist-oriented HAW, published a pamphlet in which the group asserted, “Our gay way of life is certainly not the norm for the whole society, but the treatment of gays is a way to gauge the development of free­ dom in society.”68 In 1989, on the fortieth anniversary of West Germany’s founding, the Munich gay magazine Südwind weighed in on this gauging of freedom in German society. “Forty years of democracy and freedom in the Federal Republic of Germany are not forty years of freedom for gays.”69 The pink triangle originated as a tool of humiliation, dehumanization, and control, weaponized by the Nazis to label men in concentration camps who were to be violently “cured” of a vice deemed dangerous to the future of the so-called master race. Thirty years later, gay activists transformed the indi­ vidual memories of the men with the pink triangle into collective memories that propelled a successful social movement promoting the dignity, equality, and inherent self-worth of queer people in the new Germany built in the ruins of Hitler’s Third Reich. Ironically, although Nazi leadership operated under the belief that homosexuality was a set of abhorrent behaviors and not an inborn identity, it was the very badge that Nazis used to condemn this behavior that ultimately became the foundation for a modern gay identity.

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The success of the pink triangle as a gay activist logo was tied to the fact that it was recognizable to West Germans as a concentration camp symbol. This was due to a greater awareness of the details and nature of the Third Reich and the Holocaust in the broader public by the 1970s. Members of the 1968 generation, the first born after the defeat of Hitler, expressed a greater willingness to confront more directly the crimes of the Nazi state, but also the role that everyday Germans (their parents and grandparents) had played in Nazi atrocities.70 Part of this process of coming to terms with the Nazi past was exploring the hitherto largely ignored history of the Nazis’ victims ( Jewish and non-Jewish alike), rather than focusing primarily—as much of the previous generation had—on the suffering of Germans themselves. The gay emancipation movement’s discovery and then politicization of the Nazi campaign against homosexuality is part of the larger West German Vergan­ genheitsbewältigung, or attempts to come to terms with the Nazi past. Gay organizations were not the first or last to integrate Holocaust imag­ ery into their political rhetoric. As information about the atrocities of the Third Reich spread, the Holocaust came to represent what historian Wilfried Mausbach called a “shared moral universe,” a means through which contem­ porary actors came to conceptualize notions of guilt, innocence, complicity, good, and evil.71 Protests against America’s war in Vietnam, for example, drew endless comparisons to the Holocaust. In 1967, the philosopher Günter Anders suggested that “the Vietnamese, charred by napalm, resembled the Jews cremated in Auschwitz.”72 The treatment of African Americans in the United States drew comparisons with the situation of Jews living in Hitler’s Germany.73 Activists in the disability rights movement in the United States also employed the image of the Holocaust from time to time.74 When gay activists adopted the concentration camp badge as the logo of gay rights activism, they stepped into a shared moral universe in which others already navigated. It was through this shared universe that the pink triangle, a uniquely German symbol, came to have a profound impact on the course of gay life on the other side of the Atlantic Ocean.

Ch a p ter 4

“It’s a Scar, but in Your Heart” The Pink Triangle in American Gay Activism

In 1946, James “Jim” Steakley was born in Mi­ ami, Florida, though he and his family did not live there for long. Steakley’s father was an officer in the US Army Air Corps (a predecessor to the US Air Force), and they moved around often. Beginning in 1956, Steakley’s family spent four years living in Wiesbaden, West Germany. The time spent abroad affected him deeply and was the reason he ultimately chose to pursue studies in German language and literature. Upon the completion of his senior year as an undergraduate at the University of Chicago, Steakley got the chance to return to West Germany. He received a scholarship to spend the 1968–1969 academic year at the University of Frankfurt. “That year shaped me in a lot of ways,” Steakley said.1 Steakley returned to the US in the fall of 1969 to begin graduate school at Cornell University. During two years of coursework, he decided to write his dissertation on German literature and wanted to include an introduc­ tory chapter on German history to provide context for the rest of his work. Consequently he crossed the Atlantic again in 1971 to live for a year in West Berlin. Arriving just weeks after the premiere of the Praunheim film It’s Not the Homosexual Who’s Perverse, but Rather the Society in Which He Lives, Steak­ ley quickly immersed himself in the nascent gay liberation movement. He joined the new Homosexuelle Aktion Westberlin and developed an extensive network of connections throughout the city. It was during this stay in West 106

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Berlin that Steakley learned of a chapter of German history that he had not known before: the fate of gay men during the era of Holocaust. After returning to the US one year later to work on his doctorate, Steakley received an invitation in the spring of 1973 to move to Canada to collaborate on a project with a gay group in Toronto. The organization had founded the Body Politic, which Steakley later called “the best gay paper anywhere in the world at that time. . . . It was developing a kind of theory of gay libera­ tion from a socialist feminist perspective.”2 When members of the Toronto

Figure 4.1.

Passport photograph of scholar-activist Dr. James Steakley, circa 1975.

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collective that published the Body Politic learned what Steakley had discov­ ered about the Nazis’ campaign against homosexuality, they encouraged him to write a series on Germany’s gay history for the paper. His work appeared in a five-part series, and when his article “Homosexuals and the Third Reich” appeared in January 1974, it was the most extensive work on the topic in English. Because it was published in the Body Politic, it reached LGBTQ+ audiences in both the United States and Canada.3 At the same time, two gay activists living in New York City were conduct­ ing research on gay communities in Germany in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. David Thorstad and John Lauritsen began trans­ lating the work of the esteemed German sexologist Magnus Hirschfeld into English. They published a fourteen-page pamphlet that included a brief pas­ sage on how the Nazis had destroyed the early homosexual rights movement and then sent gay men to concentration camps, where they had to wear the pink triangle. Lauritsen and Thorstad’s pamphlet was published six months before Steakley’s article but was initially only distributed among members of the Socialist Workers Party, and thus reached a more limited audience. Thorstad and Lauritsen’s work ultimately led to a different important mo­ ment in the history of the pink triangle. David Thorstad had moved to New York City in his late twenties and was active in the Socialist Workers Party (SWP) for seven years. Thorstad left the SWP in the summer of 1973 and traveled across Europe for a month. He spent considerable time in West Berlin, visiting gay activists with whom Jim Steakley had connected him, and even attended HAW meetings. When Thorstad returned to New York later in 1973, he joined the Gay Activists Al­ liance (GAA). “I had attended some of their meetings before,” Thorstad later recalled. “They were chaotic, and I was fascinated by them. Everybody went to their meetings: drag queens, gay Democratic types, socialists, teachers, academics, the transvestites from STAR [Street Transvestites Action Revo­ lutionaries]. It was a real hodgepodge and a cauldron of activity. It was full of energy.”4 Thorstad and fellow activist Lauritsen revived the GAA’s political action committee. One of their first efforts was to continue supporting a proposed gay rights bill that was under consideration by the New York City Council. “It had different names and numbers over the years. That year it was known as Intro 384,” Thorstad recalled. One of the ardent opponents of the gay rights bill was the Rabbinical Council of America, an organization of con­ servative, orthodox Jewish rabbis. Thorstad and Lauritsen proposed that the GAA political action committee picket the Rabbinical Council’s headquar­ ters on north Union Square. The GAA as a whole approved the resolution.

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“I remember the plans for that demonstration very clearly,” Thorstad said forty-seven years later. “I suggested we use the pink triangle as part of our demonstration.” Not everyone in the political action committee knew the history of the symbol, but because Thorstad and Lauritsen had researched it for their SWP pamphlet, they were able to educate their colleagues about its meaning. “The Rabbinical Council was pushing a definition of the Ho­ locaust in which Jews were the only real victims,” Thorstad recalled. “So, in wearing the pink triangle, we wanted to make it known that they were wrong not only in opposing Intro 384, but that they were also wrong to cover up the suffering of so many others in Nazi Germany. Of course, Jews were the main victims, but so many other groups, including gays, were victims, too.” Pausing to contemplate, Thorstad concluded, “So, we wore the pink triangle partially to popularize the symbol. But it was also to correct false impressions about the history.”5 Thorstad designed round buttons for the protesters to wear. Against a white background was a pale pink triangle, peak facing down. “In wearing the pink triangle, it wasn’t that we wanted to portray homosexuals as vic­ tims. Just the opposite. That’s why we put the word “GAY” in bold, black letters over the triangle on the button. It was about asserting power to claim that identity.”6 GAA members wore the buttons during their public picket in August 1974. It was the first documented instance of the use of the pink triangle as a symbol of gay activism in the United States. Because they were activists and researchers dedicated to making German gay history available to American audiences, James Steakley had eventually met up with Thorstad and Lauritsen, and the three of them regularly shared information. Remarkably, however, they had begun researching this history independently. And although they came from different regions and back­ grounds, their work led to the first substantial content on the topic published in English and the first documented use of the pink triangle in American gay activism, within months of each other. Within a decade, the pink triangle would become the most widespread and recognizable icon of gay rights ac­ tivism across North America and Europe. How and why did this symbol with a uniquely German origin find such a receptive audience in North Amer­ ica? How did the memories of the history represented by the pink triangle change as they were grafted across the Atlantic? What implications would this international exchange of memories have? The answers speak to the role social activism played in translating local and individual memories into transnational collective memories that in turn shaped the nature of social movements in the 1970s. The history of the pink triangle’s transformation also demonstrates the ability of visual symbols to embody a multitude of

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resonating messages that evoke powerful emotions, shape identities, and in­ spire people to take political action.

local Activism, Transnational Consciousness The widespread social and cultural changes of the 1960s that led to the amendment of Paragraph 175 in West Germany also brought new under­ standings of sexuality, politics, and the relationship between the two in the United States. Those who supported sexual liberation challenged the pri­ macy of traditional, heterosexual, monogamous relationships and sought to liberate alternative expressions of sexuality and gender from stigmatization. Across the Western world, and especially on the US West Coast, countercul­ tures such as hippies promoted “free love,” asserting that human sexuality was a beautiful, creative force that should not be stifled. Gradually, premari­ tal sex became less taboo, and the sale of contraceptives rose. Among the changes brought by the sexual revolution was the assertion that sexuality was a fundamental aspect of personhood. As such, there should be no need to suppress or keep private one’s sexuality, no matter its orientation. After World War II, homophile activists across the United States mobi­ lized demonstrations and formed organizations to advocate for equality un­ der the law. In the 1950s and 1960s, queer people from Philadelphia to San Francisco rioted, picketed, and protested against legal discrimination, social harassment, and police brutality. It was within this context that on June 28, 1969, patrons of New York City’s Stonewall Inn tavern (a favorite gathering spot for queer people, particularly those who were poor, people of color, transgender, or gender nonconforming) forcefully resisted a routine police raid and initiated five days of rioting. Gay activists quickly spread the story of the Stonewall riots through the nationwide infrastructure established by two decades of activism and organization, which helped rally together the lo­ cal efforts for gay rights across the country into a national social movement.7 In many ways, the American gay liberation movement influenced similar developments in other countries, including West Germany, whose own gay rights movement began two years later in the summer of 1971. This included an emphasis on the political implications of coming out. American gay ac­ tivists used slogans like “Gay is good!” to encourage other queer people to come out, and as a way to alter the widespread conception that homosexu­ ality was criminal or a mental illness.8 The New York–based Gay Activists Alliance began using the lowercase Greek letter lambda as a gay rights logo in 1969, and it soon became a way to provide visibility for individuals and the movement.

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Figure 4.2. This square pin, ca. 1983, is an example of how the politics of coming out were linked to the pink triangle. Courtesy of Stonewall National Museum and Archives, Fort Lauderdale.

In August 1974, GAA members donned the pink triangle in a demonstra­ tion. The arrival of the pink triangle in New York City came within two years of its initial use in West Germany by the gay groups RotZSchwul and HAW. The way knowledge of gays under the swastika traversed the Atlantic is tell­ ing. Organized gay liberation movements in each national context were still young, and local gay press outlets were only in their infancy. There was not an international gay press with a widespread, general readership to speak of, and there was no historical scholarship on the Nazis’ gay victims.9 Heinz He­ ger’s The Men with the Pink Triangle was not yet available in English. The lack of literature on the topic in general indicates that this information spread through word of mouth. This personal transfer of information and memories was possible be­ cause, like the other social movements of the “long sixties,” the gay rights

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movements in the United States and West Germany were not simply interna­ tional; they were truly transnational. That is, they were not simply happen­ ing in different nations at the same time. They were connected by networks that flourished because they transcended national borders. Activists across the world envisioned the collective movement for individual rights as connect­ ing them to a community of global revolution. The German activist Joscha Schmierer later recalled, “In our eyes, the shrinking world . . . once again coalesced into a unified world in 1968, in which not only was everything bound up with everything else, but everyone could also act globally in an ef­ fective way.”10 As the costs of international travel lessened, it became easier for people to cross borders and interact with fellow activists. This transfer of information and ideas created the possibilities for transnational identities that were shared via a public sphere that encompassed and connected indi­ viduals and activist groups around the world. Recent scholarship on the global movements of the late sixties and early seventies largely ignores the gay rights movement even though gay activists participated in, contributed to, and drew from other movements that are traditionally considered part of the 1968 movement. Through international exchanges of information and sharing of history, members of the gay eman­ cipation movement became central players in the processes that ultimately formed transnational identities among protesters across the globe. Through such exchanges, gay activists in West Germany were able to learn about the Stonewall riots in New York. Similarly, North American activists learned about the pink triangle and the Nazi campaign against homosexuality and subsequently used that history in their own activism. By the 1980s, it was possible for readers of the West German gay press to get information about important developments in the US gay movement, since there were always short articles on gay news in foreign countries. But before that, individuals themselves were often the main source of informa­ tion as West Germans and Americans traveled across the Atlantic, bringing with them news, ideas, and the foundation for a transatlantic sense of cama­ raderie. Peter Hedenström, a founding member of the HAW, traveled to the United States on numerous occasions and made contacts there that would ultimately come to shape the development of gay activism and gay life in Berlin for decades.11 Hedenström’s first time in the United States was in the early 1970s, in the early years of the gay emancipation movement. He had met an American who was staying in West Berlin, and they traveled together back to New York City. There, Hedenström spent time at the famous Firehouse, which was a gay community center and headquarters for the Gay Activists Alliance, one

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of the earliest gay rights groups in the United States. Hedenström later re­ called of his interaction with members of the GAA, “I learned many things from these people and brought some stuff back to [West] Berlin.” At meet­ ings of the HAW, Hedenström told his fellow members what activists were doing in New York, but he asserted that on some level, it was about more than politics or strategies. “It was personal. Our feeling was that we were discussing our family, so I had to tell our people here what was going on over there.”12 Hedenström’s comments reveal that there was not only an aware­ ness that similar struggles were under way across the Atlantic, but that activ­ ists in West Germany possessed a feeling of kinship with American activists, and these feelings were fostered through transatlantic ties. Hedenström traveled to the United States for a second time in the late 1970s, spending two to three more months in New York City. While he worked as a dishwasher at a gay club, he sought to get involved in Ameri­ can gay politics. “I was very outspoken, very assertive at that time,” he re­ called.13 Hedenström’s outgoing and emphatic personality also brought him into the milieu of people who would come to be influential in the American gay movement, such as the playwright Larry Kramer and film historian Vito Russo. These contacts created more opportunities for transatlantic flows of people and information. Rosa von Praunheim, whose 1971 film played such an influential role in sparking the West German gay movement, also represents one of these trans­ atlantic connections. In 1942, Praunheim was born as Holger Radtke in Riga, Latvia.14 In the 1960s, the aspiring filmmaker took his new name. “Rosa,” the German for “pink,” was a reference to the pink triangle, and “Praunheim” was the name of the Frankfurt neighborhood in which he grew up. He had made several short films throughout the 1960s, but his breakthrough was It’s Not the Homosexual Who’s Perverse. Interestingly, Praunheim states that when he and Martin Dannecker shot the film, they had no idea about the gay rights movement that was under way in the United States.15 In May 1971, two Americans, whom he had met in Berlin, invited him to visit in New York, and just a month before his film was to premiere, Praunheim made his first trip to the United States. It was during this trip that he learned about the Stone­ wall riots and their impact on the American gay liberation movement.16 He spent his days at the Firehouse discussing ideas and strategies with members of the Gay Activists Alliance. And although he had not known about the American gay movement before his trip, he was emboldened to learn that many of the messages he had recently included in his soon-to-be-released film paralleled the characteristics of the American movement that he found so attractive: the necessity for radical political action, the importance of

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coming out, and the need for solidarity and camaraderie among gays and lesbians of all backgrounds.17 Praunheim’s “fury against the passivity and lethargy of the gays in Ger­ many” motivated him to devote his work to informing West German gays and lesbians about what was going on in the United States, as well as using American gay activism as a model to build a similarly militant, radical move­ ment in the Federal Republic.18 After the premiere of It’s Not the Homosexual Who’s Perverse, Praunheim spent the next four years traveling back and forth between West Germany and the United States, working on a documentary about the American gay liberation movement. He visited several different cities, including Los Angeles, Atlanta, and Boston, and conducted interviews with prominent and influential gay individuals, such as writer Christopher Isherwood and activists Del Martin and Phyllis Lyon, Vito Russo, and Jim Kepner. The documentary The Army of Lovers, or The Uprising of the Perverse was released in 1979, along with a 325-page book of the same title that con­ tained transcripts of interviews, as well as addresses and contact information for thirty-five gay organizations in thirteen different American cities.19 This became a valuable resource for gay West Germans seeking to establish con­ tact with their American brethren. Praunheim was not the only German to document his transatlantic jour­ neys. After spending three months in the summer of 1973 traveling across the United States, Patrick Schneider returned home to West Germany and composed a thirty-two-page report that he titled “Along the Long and Dif­ ficult March toward the New Society: Rays of Light from the American Gay Movement.”20 Other examples of such transatlantic connections were not always explicitly political. And some were in spirit only. A letter received by the Marburg Gay Group in the spring of 1979 illustrates that individuals sought connections even when they themselves did not or could not cross na­ tional boundaries. Harold C. Walker, a resident of San Francisco, had written a letter asserting that he was looking to “meet and correspond with others in the Organization.”21 The archives do not provide an insight into whether Marburg’s gay group ever replied to Walker, but the letter itself is yet another example of the desire to establish personal, transatlantic ties. Roland Müller, who identified as a leftist activist in the 1970s, traveled to San Francisco in 1982 to attend the first “Gay Olympics,” an international gay sporting event that has since changed its name to the Gay Games. The experience had a profound impact on how Müller understood himself and the world. “To see all of these gay people—from all over the world—gathered in one place, not afraid to say ‘I’m gay’ . . . It was really an empowering moment.”22

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The transnational nature of the emerging gay rights movements in North America and West Germany helps explain how pink triangle memories were grafted across the Atlantic despite the dearth of written information avail­ able in English in the early 1970s. The nature of grafted memories meant those pink triangle memories changed as gay Americans fit them to specific context of gay politics, activism, and life in the United States. Pink triangle memories, therefore, manifested differently and were used differently in the two national contexts, even while they helped forge sense of community and shared history. Gay activists in the Federal Republic of Germany used the pink triangle as a way of affirming a positive identity for its wearer, but the symbol also had a very specific, charged meaning in the German context. As a way to bring widespread acknowledgment of gay suffering during the Third Reich, the pink triangle in West Germany was part of a unique process of coming to terms with a Nazi past that American activists using the same symbol did not share. Moreover, the continued existence of Paragraph 175—even after its amendments in 1969 and 1973—remained a clear target for West German gay activists. In America, the rhetoric of gay activists using the pink triangle was different and often more varied than in the West German context. When American activists used the logo, they tended to focus on the general victim­ ization of gay people in the past and present, rather than focusing on the repeal of specific laws or the compensation of Nazi victims. This nuanced yet significant difference again highlights that these grafted memories took on a life of their own in the United States. For gay activist David Thorstad, activism in the present remained tied to accurate understandings of history. In the mid-1970s, US Representative Elizabeth Holtzman (Democrat, New York) authored a bill that called for the deportation of immigrants who had persecuted people during the Nazi re­ gime based on race, religion, or nationality. In January 1976, Thorstad—who was then president of the Gay Activists Alliance—wrote to Holtzman urging her to include discrimination based on sexual orientation to the definition of Nazi persecution in her bill. “It is now becoming increasingly understood that homosexuals were among the most persecuted of all groups under the Nazis,” Thorstad wrote. Holtzman, who was “friendly to gay rights in those days,” according to Thorstad, agreed and updated the text of her bill.23 In both national contexts, the Nazi past became a rhetorical tool to high­ light how denying gay people full citizenship stood in contradiction to the ideals of democracy. In 1977, for example, lawmakers in Miami passed a bill that protected the gay and lesbian residents of Dade County, Florida, from

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various forms of discrimination. Many people opposed the ordinance, but the figure most identified with the opposition was singer-turned-activist Anita Bryant. Bryant’s “Save Our Children” coalition asserted that all gays and lesbians were pedophiles, which was also an argument that the Nazi regime had made decades earlier. It did not take gay activists long to draw comparisons between Bryant and the Nazis. In June 1977, protesters in San Francisco carried posters depicting Bryant’s face alongside posters of Adolf Hitler, Idi Amin, Josef Stalin, and hooded members of the Ku Klux Klan. The specter of the Holocaust was not only used to attack opponents. Activists also used it in attempts to forge political alliances. In the very public debate over the gay rights ordinance in Miami, proponents recognized that the Nazi past could be useful in establishing a sense of solidarity. A letter to the editor in the San Francisco Sentinel stated, “In Miami, the pink triangle must become a central part of the campaign to defeat the repeal of the gay rights ordinance. The Jewish vote is essential to our victory in Miami, and the pink triangle can make the difference.”24 In this case, the pink triangle was deployed to foster a sense of shared victimhood and collective action among gays and Jews, since both had been persecuted by the Nazi regime. It would be easy to say that for the sake of political expediency, the Miami gay activ­ ists overlooked or ignored the significant differences in the historical realities for Jews and gays in Nazi Germany, if it were not for the fact that very little historically accurate information was available to them at the time. The fight over the gay rights ordinance in Miami also raises the question of the resonance of the pink triangle within Jewish communities. Since Jews are not a monolithic group, it is impossible to speak of “the Jewish response” to gay activists’ use of the pink triangle. In conjunction with the multitude of denominations, the intersection of regional, cultural, and historical differ­ ences influenced how different Jewish communities reacted to the use of a Holocaust-era symbol in the context of contemporary social activism. Jews made up approximately 15 percent of the population of Dade County in 1977 and represented an influential voting bloc in the fight over the gay rights ordinance. As the work of historian Gillian Frank has shown, both pro- and anti-gay activists courted the Jewish vote in the political fight. At that time, most rabbis from Orthodox and Conservative denominations were firmly against gay rights, but there were also other denominations, such as Reform and Reconstructionist, that often supported liberal political and social agendas. Knowing this, the pro-gay organization Dade County Coalition for Human Rights (DCCHR) regarded Jews as potential allies, because of many Jewish organizations’ historic support of racial tolerance and pluralism. During its campaign, the DCCHR hosted a fund-raiser called

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“The Yellow Star and the Pink Triangle,” in an attempt to foster solidarity.25 Although it initially seemed likely that there would be enough support in defense of the gay rights ordinance, the Save Our Children coalition led a successful campaign to overturn it by a ratio of 2:1. Ultimately, Jewish turn­ out in the vote was uncharacteristically low. And while Orthodox Jews joined other conservatives, including many Catholic and Protestants, to oppose the gay rights bill, polling indicated that most Jews who did vote endorsed the gay rights bill.26 While some community organizers in Miami and across the country sought to build alliances between gay and Jewish communities, these efforts often overlooked the countless individuals who were both Jewish and queer. Many people who promoted the earliest use of the pink triangle for gay ac­ tivism in the United States were Jewish and felt that the symbol represented the intersectionality of their identities. “I’m Jewish. Therefore, I had a dual reason to appreciate the pink triangle,” explained Mark Segal, a gay activist who participated in New York City’s Stonewall riots. “It meant something to me as a Jew and as a gay man. . . . I had a pink triangle and wore it for an awfully long time.”27 In 1983, a contingent of women marched in New York City’s Christopher Street Liberation Day Parade carrying a banner with a downward-facing pink triangle overlapping with an upward-facing yellow triangle to create a Star of David. The text around the symbol said “Jewish Lesbians: Surviving and Proud. United for a Safe World for All.”28 Martha Shelley, who was Jewish and active in the lesbian and feminist movements, succinctly stated her relationship to the symbol: “I liked the pink triangle. . . . It was a way of giving the middle fingers to the Nazis.”29 For Lesléa Newman, who was both lesbian and Jewish, gay symbology was an integral part of coming to terms with who she was. “When I first came out, I wanted the world to know, so I wore a pink triangle.” But time and hindsight prompted her to contemplate the implications of the symbol. “At first, I didn’t stop to think whether it was such a good idea to wear a pink triangle. Thinking back on it now, I find myself wondering: Why do we take back these symbols that were abusive? I understand the concept of reclaim­ ing something, but I’m still rather ambivalent about it.”30 Of course, not everyone supported the use of the pink triangle in con­ temporary gay rights activism. Even into the 1990s, some members of the LGBTQ+ community expressed opposition to the symbol. In 1993, Sara Hart, the senior editor of the gay magazine 10 Percent, criticized the gay movement’s use of the pink triangle. “As a symbol of shared victimization, it is indefensible. To equate the discrimination and harassment of the present with the savagery inflicted upon the lesbians and gay men of the Holocaust

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trivializes their suffering.”31 The article sparked many letters to the editor from readers in favor of the pink triangle over the next several issues. Several years later, social scientist Amy Elman argued against the use of the pink triangle as an affirmation of gay identity because it “served as a distinctive emblem of Nazi heterosexism which signified and even hastened the de­ struction of gay men.” Additionally, Elman asserted that the pink triangle’s use in contemporary settings erased the history of lesbians in the Third Reich, since the symbol was only used to identify gay men in the concentra­ tion camps. Ultimately, Elman concluded that the pink triangle “should be abandoned as a positive symbol for the movement.”32 Such sentiments demonstrate that the pink triangle was not unproblem­ atic. There always existed a tension between those who felt its use trivialized the suffering of those who were originally forced to wear it during the era of Holocaust and those who saw the symbol as a way to honor the memory of the Nazis’ gay victims by using it to fight for a world in which LGBTQ+ people were no longer victimized. Even within the communities who were in favor of the pink triangle—in West Germany and the United States—there were disagreements about whether the emblem primarily symbolized vic­ timization (as a warning in the service of social activism) or a powerful rec­ lamation and act of regeneration (in the service of identity and community formation). Despite the inherent tensions and outright opposition, the pink triangle became the most recognizable symbol of the gay rights movement by the 1980s. Transgender activist Nancy Nangeroni, who designed a T-shirt that com­ bined the transgender symbol with a pink triangle, later reflected on whether she faced any opposition to the use of the symbol. Her thoughts immediately went to how the button with the triangle was received among her Jewish friends. “I don’t recall any pushback. We were always trying to be respectful of the Jewish experience and their history of suffering. I was working with a lot of Jewish trans folks at that time. I hope that I would have heard about any resistance to us using the pink triangle. I would have stopped if they didn’t think it was appropriate, but I never got any pushback.”33 Morgan Gwenwald of the Lesbian Herstory Archives also does not recall facing opposition to the use of the pink triangle, even after the LHA be­ gan selling buttons and T-shirts with the triangles on them. “We had—and still have—many Jewish lesbians in our organization and networks, too. But I don’t remember a single instance of someone pushing back against its use,” she said. “But I think so much of the pink triangle’s use is also about recogni­ tion, and honoring, and keeping visible this part of history that should not be forgotten. So maybe if people felt any hesitancy about its use at first, they

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probably recognized that it was just as much a memorial as it was about activism.”34 In addition to the pink triangle’s use to commemorate gay victims and as a tool of social activism (both as way to attack political opponents and foster solidarity among allies), the specter of the Nazi past was also used to moti­ vate America’s LGBTQ+ community into action. In May 1975, for example, Janet Cooper wrote a particularly moving installment of her column for Boston’s Gay Community News. She looked to the history of the Holocaust— and in particular, Jewish responses to Nazi violence—as both a warning and source of inspiration. “The spirit of the Warsaw Ghetto inspires us gays to courage and determination so that no one will silence us.” Her next words then weave together different historical eras across time and space by using the connecting thread of gay history. “The spirit of the Warsaw Ghetto lives on in the spirit of the Stonewall for those of us who have come out of the closets, and for those of us about to come out.”35 In June 1978, after becoming the f irst openly gay person elected to public office in California, Harvey Milk told a crowd that San Francisco’s queer inhabitants would actively fight against discriminatory measures. “We are not going to sit back in silence as 300,000 of our gay brothers and sisters did in Nazi Germany. We are not going to allow our rights to be taken away and

Figure 4.3. Transgender activist Phyllis Randolph Frye marches with an American flag in front of a contingent carrying a pink triangle banner during the first National March on Washington for Lesbian and Gay Rights, October 14, 1979. Photo: Larry Butler, courtesy of the JD Doyle Archives.

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then marched with bowed heads into the gas chambers.”36 As both gay and Jewish, Milk felt comfortable using German history as his own, because—as is evidenced by his use of “brothers and sisters”—his identity as gay pro­ vided a fundamental connection that was perceived as more important than national identities.

The Nazi Past and AIdS Activism By the mid-1980s, the debates and discourses resulting from the rising death toll of the AIDS epidemic had already drawn rhetorical ties between sexual­ ity, citizenship, and the Nazi past. The death of thousands of people—most of whom were queer people—paired with inaction on the part of the Reagan administration, resulted in numerous comparisons with the Holocaust. In 1986, radical left-wing activist Lyndon LaRouche organized California Prop­ osition 64, a ballot initiative to add AIDS to the list of communicable dis­ eases. This would have mandated that State Department of Health Services officials document and report all individuals with AIDS. LaRouche asserted that this was a necessary public health tactic, while opponents argued that it would force people with HIV out of their jobs and into quarantine. As part of their efforts to block the proposition, the Central Coast Citi­ zens against LaRouche designed a series of political posters urging people to vote against Proposition 64. One featured the slogan “NEVER AGAIN,” which had emerged after the Holocaust as a popular promise to end geno­ cide. In the background was a concentration camp watchtower and barbed wire.37 A second poster featured the silhouette of a man with a downtrodden expression. Through barbed wire, viewers can see a pink triangle attached to the man’s bare chest. The slogan on the poster reads, “I didn’t think my vote counted.” The design implies that the inaction of gay men led to their imprisonment in the concentration camps during the Holocaust and that inaction could lead to something similar in the present if they did not show up at the ballot boxes to stop LaRouche.38 When the votes were counted in November 1986, Proposition 64 was defeated by a margin of 71 percent to 29 percent. In 1985, a group of six gay New Yorkers—Avram Finkelstein, Brian How­ ard, Oliver Johnston, Charles Kreloff, Chris Lione, and Jorge Socarrás— began meeting to discuss the personal and communal toll of HIV/AIDS. The group met weekly, sharing feelings of grief, fear, and anger that organically evolved into a commitment to raise awareness about HIV and its impact. Before long, “I felt we were bordering on a political collective,” recalled Fin­ kelstein.39 “I will forever be grateful to Jorge Socarrás for inviting me as his

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plus one,” recalls Brian Howard. Reflecting on the importance of those early meetings, which ultimately became the Silence = Death collective, Howard emphasized, “We saved each other’s lives.”40 Four members of the group were graphic designers, and they agreed that something visual and striking would be the best tactic for raising awareness. “For public discourse to pierce through the churning perpetual motion ma­ chine of the American commons, it needs to come in bursts. Manifestos don’t work. Sentences barely do. You need sound bites, catchphrases, crafted in plain language,” Finkelstein later reflected.41 And so, the group settled on a plan of action: they would design a poster. As they were working, the conservative author William F. Buckley Jr. wrote in the New York Times in March 1986 that all HIV-positive individuals should be tattooed (on the arm for IV-drug users, and on the buttocks for gay men). The imagery of forcibly tattooing people—a mere forty years after Allied troops liberated legions of concentration camp survivors who bore similar marks of dehumanization—was haunting.42 Buckley’s comments in­ censed the group and instilled in them a greater sense of urgency. Someone suggested the poster feature a photograph of a body with a tattoo in response to Buckley’s statements. But that led to questions about representation: what race and gender would the body be? Wanting to find something that was as inclusive as possible, the group decided the poster should be pictographic. Because New York City streets are packed with diverse passersby, the image needed to “act as a signal beacon to its lesbian and gay audiences without excluding other audiences.”43 The first image they considered working with was the pink triangle. They quickly dismissed it because they feared it was too closely associated with victimhood and could thus be disempowering. The collective then “tore through, debated, and rejected every agreed-on symbol of the lesbian and gay community.”44 They rejected the lambda and the labrys, a double-headed ax that had become a popular lesbian symbol. “We talked about the rainbow flag. We hated it. It was ugly. It was too friendly,” Finkelstein recounted.45 Ul­ timately, the collective returned to the first symbol they had suggested. “We came back to the pink triangle, but with some reservations about it. Half the collective was Jewish. Jews don’t take Holocaust analogies very lightly,” Finkelstein added.46 The collective gave the iconic gay symbol a makeover by changing the pale pink to a vivid fuchsia to give the poster an aggressive tone. They placed the fuchsia triangle against a solid and expansive black background to cre­ ate a “meditation zone.” The black was “sexy, authoritative, and above all, to be taken seriously.”47 During a discussion over the slogan for the poster,

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Finkelstein mentioned reading a New York Times article that described how some silences can be deafening. “How about Gay Silence is Deafening?” he sug­ gested. Johnston responded, “What about Silence Equals Death?” Someone else in the room said, “We should use an equal sign.” “It was literally that fast. It was four comments,” Finkelstein recounted.48 Howard later reflected on the moment they finished the poster: “It was in Jorge’s apartment, we were all seated around his table, covered with colored paper, geometric cutouts, glue, tape, pencils. . . . We had finalized the design of the Silence = Death poster. A sense of excitement, calm, togetherness, fear, strength and of love filled the apartment. We were all there. . . . I had a brief moment of hope that then was eclipsed by a frightening and very certain thought as I scanned each of my friend’s faces: which one of us will be the first to go?”49 The Silence = Death slogan challenged President Ronald Reagan’s silence on AIDS, but it was also full of implications that were tied to the persecution of the Nazi era. On the surface, it was meant to imply that remaining silent in the face of discrimination and oppression would lead to fatal consequences, analogous to silence of onlookers and bystanders in Nazi Germany. In an­ other way, however, the motto was a complete reversal of the situation of gay men during the Third Reich; for them, hiding one’s sexuality often meant the chance to avoid detection by the Nazis. Thus, silence equaled life. Dur­ ing the AIDS crisis, keeping silent—about one’s HIV status, about the need for funding and support, about the need for education and consciousness­ raising—would lead to death. The Silence = Death collective chose March 1987 to paste their posters across New York City. “Our aim was to hit New Yorkers during the transi­ tional period when they came out of hibernation hungry for social interac­ tion, but before the distractions of spring set in and people started leaving town on the weekends.”50 They hung the posters on the streets and in gay spaces like bars and cafés. When they asked to hang a poster in the Oscar Wilde Bookstore, they were denied. The reason? The triangle was facing the wrong way. Johnston, one of the collective’s members, had been tasked with researching the direction of the triangles in the Nazis’ camp badging scheme. He never did. So, the collective now had stacks of posters, many of them already hung around the city, that featured pink triangles with the peak fac­ ing up instead of down. Finkelstein asked if the collective wanted to reprint the posters. Kreloff suggested they tell people they had flipped the triangle on purpose to reclaim the symbol and blaze a trail upward and out of the darkness of the epidemic.51 Finkelstein agreed they should own the change. “We already had reservations about the use of the triangle because we didn’t want to be seen as trivializing the Holocaust. So, the change in direction was

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Figure 4.4. The Silence = Death poster, designed and created by the Silence = Death Project, 1987. The smaller text at the bottom reads: “Why is Reagan silent about AIDS? What is really going on at the Center [sic] for Disease Control, the Federal Drug Administration, and the Vatican? Gays and lesbians are not expendable . . . Use your power . . . Vote . . . Boycott . . . Defend yourselves . . . Turn anger, fear, grief into action.” Poster, offset lithography, 33½ × 22 inches.

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a perfect accident because it further distanced our triangle from the original camp badge while still clearly referencing that history.”52 That same month, a group of activists in New York met for what would become the AIDS Coalition to Unleash Power (ACT UP). At one of the ear­ liest meetings, several members asked about the Silence = Death posters that had appeared around the city. The collective had agreed among them­ selves to remain anonymous, but with each meeting of ACT UP, there were more questions about Silence = Death. Collective member Oliver Johnston stood up and began answering questions, which fostered even more interest. Finally, the collective decided to lend ACT UP use of the slogan design indefi­ nitely. Over the course of four months, the Silence = Death poster organi­ cally became ACT UP’s logo, even though there was never an official vote.53 Soon, they put the design on buttons, stickers, and T-shirts. “If the poster had opened a door to thinking about the politics of AIDS, the button could help more people cross the threshold.”54 Over the next couple of years, the poster came to represent AIDS activism around the world. On May 31, 1987, Ronald Reagan backed mandatory HIV testing for certain communities, as well as banning immigration of HIV-positive indi­ viduals. The New York Times called mandatory testing a “hasty step toward detention camps.”55 Earlier that year, eight hundred government officials gathered at the Centers for Disease Control (CDC) in Atlanta to discuss the national health crisis. During the closing remarks, members of the militant gay activist group the Lavender Hill Mob interrupted Dr. Walter Dowdle, deputy director of the CDC, as he suggested that blood testing may become mandatory for anyone the government suspected of having AIDS. Members of the Lavender Hill Mob stood up and began chanting, “Test drugs, not people!” At least two of them were wearing concentration camp uniform costumes, thereby accusing the CDC of being Nazis, as one shouted, “We’re tired of the genocide!”56 ACT UP took the Holocaust analogy further when the group made its first appearance at the annual gay pride demonstration in New York City in June 1987. The ACT UP contingent rolled through the parade atop a con­ centration camp float. Activists wearing the emblematic Silence = Death shirts sat within a fence of flexible plastic tubing that was made to look like barbed wire. Ronald Reagan’s face stared down from a wooden watchtower. Along the perimeter, uniformed guards wore the same kind of rubber gloves that police officers wore to AIDS demonstrations out of fear of infection. The presence of a float designed to look like a concentration camp caused a range of reactions, which is just what ACT UP wanted. Their float was meant to disrupt the celebratory atmosphere of the Gay Pride March, which

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had evolved into a parade, and to reassert the event’s origins as a political demonstration. “I was on the Pride March committee that year, and when the idea of a concentration camp float was suggested within the committee, I was surprised by it,” recollected Finkelstein. “I was even more surprised that no one on the floor of ACT UP seemed to have any reservations about it. We had had very lengthy debates about the use of Holocaust analogies in the Silence = Death collective. So, the fact that there didn’t seem to be any hesitation to design a concentration camp float was shocking to me. But, at the same time, you had Buckley calling to tattoo people. So, it was a conver­ sation that was already in the national consciousness.”57 Attendees of the Pride March were not put off by the float either, it seems. As ACT UP marched, they encouraged more people to join them. “At first there weren’t that many of us. By the time we reached the Village, we took up several city blocks.” At one point, the float stopped for a moment of silence to memorialize those who had died of AIDS. After the minute was over, the crowd erupted into a spontaneous chant of “We’ll never be silent again! ACT UP!” Three decades later, the moment still resonates with Finkel­ stein. “Fists pumped in the air around me, and I heard voices cracking with tears. . . . There had been such a long silence, and for the very first time, I felt as if it might be behind us.”58 Later that year, ACT UP put together an exhibit that was displayed in the window front of Manhattan’s New Museum. The museum’s location in the SoHo neighborhood offered the exhibit, titled Let the Record Show, invaluable exposure to the constant flow of pedestrians passing by. The in­ stallation featured a neon-pink triangle and the Silence = Death slogan, but the primary focus was a large photograph of Nazi officials facing conviction in the Nuremberg war trials. Superimposed in front of the Nazi criminals were photographs of six American politicians, commentators, and leaders, who obstructed help for people with AIDS: Jesse Helms (Republican sena­ tor from North Carolina), Cory SerVaas (member of the Presidential AIDS Commission), an anonymous surgeon, Jerry Falwell (Southern Baptist tel­ evangelist), William F. Buckley Jr. (conservative author), and President Rea­ gan. As scholar Christopher Vials notes, the installation was designed so that passersby who stopped to view the exhibit were “positioned simultaneously as prosecutor, judge, and jury.”59 Offered as evidence were tablets containing a quote from each of the six accused. Under Buckley was his incendiary call for the tattooing of people with AIDS. The anonymous surgeon’s quote said, “We used to hate faggots on an emotional basis. Now we have a good reason.” The tablet for Reagan— who never even said the word “AIDS” publicly until the end of May 1987,

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after six years in office—was left blank. Falwell’s tablet read, “AIDS is God’s judgement of a society that does not live by His rules.” The inclusion of Falwell in the exhibit introduced the idea that “the American incarnation of fascism may very well have an evangelical Christian face.”60 Another instance in which ACT UP called on Holocaust history was on April 22, 1991, during a demonstration outside New York governor Mario Cuomo’s office in the World Trade Center. To protest the lack of leader­ ship and funding for AIDS programs from the governor’s office, ACT UP members dressed in suits and wore masks that were “basically just ovals with holes for eyes.” The masks were labeled “faceless bureaucrat.” The protest­ ers wore signs that provided hypothetical excuses government officials told themselves to justify inaction: “It’s not my fault”; “I didn’t know anything about it”; and “Nobody told me about the ovens.” Simultaneously referenc­ ing the infamous crematoria and the shirking of personal responsibility for the collective (in)actions of government bureaucracy was a clear allusion to the excuse that many Nazi functionaries offered at the end of the war: I was just doing my job.61 The use of Holocaust imagery—the pink triangle, concentration camps, ovens, faceless bureaucrats, the Nuremberg war trial—placed AIDS activism into the “shared moral universe” formed by societies seeking to make sense of human rights, civil liberties, and the relationship between citizens and their governments in a post-Holocaust world.62 This further fueled an intense and heated renegotiation of sexual citizenship. AIDS activists holding posters or wearing shirts adorned with a pink triangle and the Silence = Death motto asserted that everyone had a right to health care, regardless of sexual identity or HIV status. As members of society, they had an expectation that the gov­ ernment would do everything in its power to protect them—a clear stance against comments by William Buckley Jr. and other conservative politicians and social commentators who suggested that the rights of health care were not understood as universal. Similar public debates were under way in West Germany, where the in­ fluential conservative politician Peter Gauweiler had sparked controversy when he called for forced testing of anyone suspected of having the virus and the quarantining of everyone who tested positive.63 Such sentiments, when coupled with Buckley’s comments about tattooing individuals with HIV, re­ vealed that some people in conservative circles felt that HIV-positive indi­ viduals forfeited their basic civil rights by allegedly endangering the health of the national body through the spread of a deadly disease. Discourses of sexuality, public health, civil liberties, and the Nazi past converged in the public debates about AIDS in the 1980s and 1990s. When Larry Kramer, a

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playwright and outspoken advocate for health care for HIV-positive individu­ als, published his account of the epidemic, he titled it Reports from the Holo­ caust: The Making of an AIDS Activist.64 In the midst of a national AIDS epidemic, queer communities across the United States planned a massive protest in the nation’s capital. When the March on Washington Committee—the organizational headquarters for the national march—decided on a logo for the demonstration, scheduled for October 1987, it chose a symbol that it knew powerfully bound together issues of civil rights and a stark warning from history. The official logo of the 1987 National March on Washington for Lesbian and Gay Rights was a silhouette of the US Capitol Dome superimposed on a pink triangle.65 A let­ ter from the national headquarters sent out to various subcommittees and regional planning offices in preparation for the march highlighted the per­ ceived importance of the upcoming march by employing Holocaust memo­ ries to underscore the organizers’ advocacy for the right of personal privacy and the importance of the gay community’s public visibility. “Dear friends, we are not going back into the closet,” the letter began. “We are not going to be herded into any concentration camps. We are not giving back the hardwon rights we have fought for. And we are not going to tolerate the police in our bedrooms. Not now—not ever.”66 An informational flyer encouraging gay people and their allies to participate in the upcoming march made ex­ plicit the connection between the pink triangle, the act of coming out, and the protection of equality, human rights, and civil liberties. A pink triangle occupied half the page, and over the symbol was the slogan “Come out for yourself; come out for your friends; come out for Justice.”67 On Sunday, October 11, 1987, nearly half a million queer people and their supporters marched on Washington, DC. It was by far the largest national rally ever staged for queer rights in America. As a Boston Globe reporter ob­ served, “Many marchers wore buttons and sweatshirts emblazoned with pink triangles.” As part of the march, a group of hundreds of gay and lesbian activists staged a peaceful protest on the steps of the Supreme Court. An­ other reporter noted that the group scattered “pink triangles like confetti.”68

Transatlantic memories, Personal Identities In his provocative work The Holocaust in American Life, historian Peter Novick asserts that invoking the Holocaust in political campaigns to dramatize vic­ timhood, or even to make people feel guilty in order to get them to act, has become a common political tool for many groups, not just gay activ­ ists.69 Though there are examples of political instrumentalization, Novick’s

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argument is too cynical and overlooks the more important transformations that gay activists’ reference to the Nazi past reflected and facilitated. As Christopher Vials states, “I take issue here with scholars who label the evo­ cation of Nazi Germany by gay writers and activists ‘paranoid’ and instead argue that they, like other activists before them, have effectively used antifas­ cism to highlight the very real historical dangers—dangers to everyone—of right-wing social movements that strive to create national purity and cultural homogeneity.”70 While the pink triangle and memories of the Holocaust played a pivotal role in gay rights activism, the grafting of pink triangle memories simultane­ ously facilitated substantial transformations in identity and conceptions of the past. Through meticulous research, historian Erik Jensen has demon­ strated that invoking memories of Nazi persecution, apart from being politi­ cally expedient, “served as a locus for gay identity.”71 But Jensen studied the role that the Nazi past played in gay rights activism and identity formation in West Germany and the United States as two parallel phenomena, happening along similar paths in two different contexts. As groundbreaking and com­ pelling as Jensen’s work was when it was published in 2002, studying these two national developments side by side misses the substantial connections between the two. The pink triangle not only helped shape local gay iden­ tities, but also more broadly contributed to the formation of transatlantic gay identities that connected gay activists in West Germany and the United States with a shared history. The pink triangle and its history made an emotional and meaningful im­ pact on people from diverse backgrounds and experiences. For Morgan Gw­ enwald, who became a lesbian activist and archivist in the 1970s, it was hard to recall American gay activism before the pink triangle. “I can’t remember the first time I saw a pink triangle in the context of activism. Thinking back, it was so pervasive by the 1980s that it’s hard to remember when it actually started.” Gwenwald knew about the pink triangle before she noticed its use in contemporary activism. “When I was a kid, I did a lot of reading about history. I was very aware of the badges that were used in the Nazi camps. So I knew about the pink triangle before I ever saw it used in an activist way. Because I had read about it earlier, when I did first notice [the pink triangle] in activism, its use made sense to me. I understood the connection and its message and didn’t need any further explanation.”72 Jose Gutierrez is a gay Latino activist and grassroots archivist who has fought for the visibility and rights of LGBTQ+ Latinx communities for over forty years. Born in Mexico, he moved to Atlanta in the 1980s, where he saw the pink triangle for the first time. “There was an ACT UP chapter in

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Atlanta, and I saw their Silence = Death poster. That’s when I saw my first pink triangle, and I wanted to learn where it came from.” Gutierrez found one of the only sources of information that was widely available at the time: The Men with the Pink Triangle by Heinz Heger. “I had no clue about what happened to gay men in the Holocaust. I didn’t know that’s where the pink triangle came from. That history made the Silence = Death poster so much more powerful.” He always keeps a second copy of Heger’s book in case he meets someone who wants to read it.73 Gutierrez attended the 1993 March on Washington for Lesbian, Gay, and Bi Equal Rights and Liberation, and one of the first things he did was buy a Silence = Death T-shirt to wear for the march. “For me, that was a symbol of respect, a way to honor what happened to gay men in Germany. It was a way to remember, but it was also a symbol of hope . . . hope that we would not let something like that happen again.”74 After the 1993 march, Gutierrez moved to Washington, DC, where he became a community organizer. In June 1997, he was a cofounder of a group that provided services and advo­ cated for the queer Latinx community. “We chose the name Triángulo Rosa for our group,” Gutierrez said, “because we wanted to take the pink triangle as a symbol of unity, visibility, and support. We used Spanish to highlight our commitment to Latinos and Latinas who needed our help.” Triángulo Rosa, which met weekly on 17th Street in DC, provided a wide range of services from educational programming to housing for youth whose family had kicked them out, legal advice for immigrants, and computer access to help people find jobs. “I remember we also had some Jewish Latino gays in the group,” recalled Gutierrez. “They taught us about their religion. We did that a lot—learning from each other about the different ways to be gay and Latino. But the triángulo rosa brought us together.”75 Reflecting on the con­ temporary and historical power of the pink triangle, Gutierrez added, “The triángulo rosa is a burning memory. It’s a scar, but in your heart. It may be healed, but it’s a reminder of the pain that the LGBTQ community has gone through in history.”76 Gutierrez was always interested in history, and once he moved to Amer­ ica, he began studying as much about gay history as he could. “I immediately began saving a copy of everything I read, pictures I took, posters and flyers I saw.” He helped cofound the Rainbow History Project, a grassroots archive dedicated to preserving the memories of Washington’s LGBTQ+ commu­ nities, and has since undertaken a new archival project. The Jose Gutierrez Archives is dedicated to collecting, preserving, and educating about the his­ tory and culture of the Latinx LGBTQ community. One of the first artifacts donated to his archive was a small, handheld flag, given to him by the owner

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of Lambda Rising, one of DC’s LGBTQ+ bookstores that is no longer in existence. It is black with a pink triangle in the center. “I took it to the Pride Parade that year because I wanted to display this historical symbol. And a lot of young people asked me what it was and where I got it.” That was the only year he took it to the parade, though. “I realized that I shouldn’t wave around this historical artifact that was twenty years old. I needed to protect it. Future generations need to know what this symbol means and where it came from.”77 Cheryl Head, who is now retired from a career in public broadcasting, describes herself as a Black and queer writer, friend, activist, and mother. Although it occurred nearly forty years ago, “I remember exactly when I be­ came aware of the pink triangle,” declared Head. She was researching about Israeli-Palestinian relations while working at a public radio station in the early 1980s. She was one of a dozen journalists invited to Israel for a twoweek stay. “I met Menachem Begin and Shimon Peres, and we met with Israelis and Palestinians. We’d sit in people’s living rooms or share meals to learn from them. It was an amazing experience.” One moment in particular stood out to Head. “Part of our trip was a visit to Yad Vashem, Israel’s national Holocaust museum. We were in the exhibit, and there was a poster with all of these different badges that the Nazis made the concentration camp prisoners wear. They were triangles of several dif­ ferent colors. When I stepped closer to get a better look, I noticed the pink one.” The moment had a profound impact on Head, who had not come out as queer at that time. “Here I was, this Black girl from Detroit, who had just had a child, whom I left at home with my husband. I’m standing in this museum in Israel dedicated to a history that I didn’t know much about, and reading about the pink triangle, letting it sink in that the Nazis had a symbol just for homosexuals. That whole experience at Yad Vashem was moving, but learning about the pink triangle was overwhelming.” The next time Head saw a pink triangle was several years later back in the United Sates. “It was the Silence = Death poster. I remember it vividly, but I don’t think that poster would have been as meaningful to me if I hadn’t learned the history of the pink triangle at Yad Vashem.”78 Head eventually moved to Washington, DC, and volunteered to help or­ ganize Black Pride, which began as the first official Black gay pride event in the United States. “I volunteered for eleven years beginning in the mid-1990s and was the vice president of the group that organized the event for several years,” she recalled. “I was still semi-closeted at that time, but that commu­ nity helped me.” She remembers seeing pink triangles in gay spaces in the nation’s capital during those years. “It was on knickknacks, T-shirts, buttons,

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magazines, at bars. Everywhere.” But Head also remembers that there was a racial dynamic to the pink triangle, too. “To be honest, I don’t remember seeing the pink triangle as often at Black Pride. It was there. Definitely. But it wasn’t as ubiquitous as it was in the Capital Pride events, which were pre­ dominantly white.” Head does recall the ways in which radical lesbian com­ munities provided opportunities for the sharing of histories. “Black queer women and Jewish queer women were mixing pretty regularly. They appre­ ciated each other and felt like they came from the same kind of oppression in certain ways.” In this instance, the past—including Holocaust history— helped foster intersectional, queer activism and community building even when it did not use the symbolism of the pink triangle specifically.79 Although it meant something different to different people (and did not resonate with others still), the pink triangle was embraced by diverse in­ dividuals and communities. In June 1983, women from Boston’s Bisexual Women’s Network added pink triangle patches to their “bi” T-shirts for the annual Christopher Street Liberation Day parade in New York City.80 Two years later, the New York Area Bisexual Network and the Bisexual Women’s Liberation contingents in the parade carried posters with pink and purple triangles exclaiming “Bisexual Pride!”81 In April 1993, a contingent of Asian American and Pacific Islanders marching in the national March on Washing­ ton for Lesbian, Gay, and Bi Equal Rights carried a black banner with the text “Asian/Pacific, Queer-n-Proud!” The exclamation point was composed of a vibrant pink triangle over a lilac dot.82 For Marianne Diaz, a Latina lesbian growing up in Lennox, California, the pink triangle played an important role. “When I came out, I came out really intense, hard. With the pink triangle and everything, and [was] really militant about the whole thing.”83 Born in 1950s Boston, Nancy Nangeroni came out as transgender in the early 1990s. She first got involved in transgender rights activism after attend­ ing the annual Fantasia Fair in Provincetown in the fall of 1990. “Meeting these trans women who were out and organizing for equal rights was a big turning point for me,” she recalls. One evening, Nangeroni invited to dinner Holly Boswell, a transgender community organizer in Asheville, North Car­ olina. “Holly showed me a symbol she used in the newsletter she published. It combined elements of male and female, and I was intrigued by it, and I wanted to create something to promote it.” Nangeroni decided to design a symbol for the transgender community.84 “At that time, the pink triangle was already a recognizable symbol of the gay community. And that’s how I learned about what happened to queer peo­ ple in the Nazi period, too. History was always a component of what activists were saying in public. It was a way of saying ‘Not only are we discriminated

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against today; it’s happened throughout the past. Just look at what happened to gays in Nazi Germany.’ ” So it seemed natural to Nangeroni to design a symbol that referenced that history. What she created in 1994 was the sym­ bol from Boswell’s newsletter (that combined the gender symbols of male and female) placed in the center of a pink triangle. The transgender symbol was blue for strength. She softened the edges of the trans symbol within the triangle to connote gentility, accommodation, and permission. “In my opin­ ion, the fates of the gay and trans communities were very tightly connected, even if not everyone agreed. There was a fair amount of homophobia in the trans community at the time, just as there was transphobia in the gay com­ munity. I wanted to fight that.” Nangeroni also saw the symbol as a tool for community outreach. “I didn’t personally have many connections with the gay, lesbian, and bi community at that time. So, the symbol I designed was about uniting these communities and bridging a divide.”85 Nangeroni eventually put the design on pins and started selling them as a fund-raiser for the International Foundation for Gender Education but re­ members that she did not sell that many. “I was perplexed at first but wasn’t deterred. It’s just one of those things that you put out there, and maybe it gains traction, or maybe it doesn’t.” Just because people were not buying the pin does not mean that it did not resonate. “Someone sent me a picture showing that somebody had displayed the symbol on the side of a building. It was three, maybe four stories tall! So, you never know what kind of a life a symbol like that will take on once you set it free in the world.”86 At least two of Nangeroni’s pins now reside in archives—one at Harvard University and one at the University of Michigan—and will help document and preserve transgender history in perpetuity.87 Crystal Mason, a queer Black activist and artist, was born in Richmond, Virginia, and spent their early adult life in Washington, DC. The first time they saw a pink triangle was on ACT UP’s Silence = Death poster. In the late 1980s, they moved to San Francisco and joined the local chapter of ACT UP. Mason found the work meaningful but soon became discouraged by the inequality they witnessed. “A lot of my clients of color who often pre­ sented with multiple diagnoses—HIV/AIDS and mental health issues, for example—could not get access to the medicines. They were turned away simply because they were homeless or drug users and were seen as ‘non­ compliant.’ So, yes, [AIDS] drugs got into bodies, but which bodies?” Mason insists that we must have an accurate understanding of the history of AIDS activism, even when it is not flattering. “I want people to remember that ACT UP wasn’t just gay white men and white lesbians. I want us to have a fuller understanding of ACT UP. That organization did a lot of good. There’s

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no doubt. But I would also say there’s a difference between ACT UP having successes and ACT UP being a successful movement.” The inequities along lines of race, gender, and ideas of “respectability” altered Mason’s relation­ ship to ACT UP and the pink triangle. “There was a while when I wore the pink triangle. I was into the activist gear, the leather coat, the pins and the stickers. But because I came to associate it with representing a movement focused on gay, white, cis men, the pink triangle was never really my thing.”88 While in San Francisco, Mason befriended Miriam Kronberg, a lesbian Jewish activist who started a political zine called On Our Rag. “Right as I was coming on board,” Mason recalls, “they were doing an issue that featured the black triangle, which I learned was forced on prostitutes, people of ill re­ pute, lesbians, all of these people that the Nazis considered outsiders.”89 That was Mason’s introduction to the black triangle. Beginning in the mid-1980s, some lesbian organizations sought to reclaim the black triangle as a symbol of lesbian activism, one that signified their history and their contemporary situation as comparable yet distinct from that of gay men as symbolized by the pink triangle. The black triangle had denoted “asocials” in the concentra­ tion camps, a broad category that included alcoholics, drug addicts, pacifists, prostitutes, and other individuals who did not fit into the Nazi ideal national community. “We’d been doing research on it at the archives,” stated Morgan Gwenwald, coordinator at New York City’s Lesbian Herstory Archives. “In our [June 1991] newsletter, there was a short article about the black triangle that mentioned lesbians were left out of Paragraph 175. It also stated that lesbians were more likely to wear a black triangle in the camps since it was meant for social deviants. So, we were tuned into the black triangle’s mean­ ing and tried to make sure that our members were, too.”90 In 1991, Henrietta Hudson opened in Manhattan’s West Village. From its inception, it was much more than a bar. It is a pillar of the lesbian com­ munity in New York City by serving as a hub for information, a safe space, and providing community services. The bar’s logo features the profile of a woman’s face situated in the center of a black triangle. In 2021, Henrietta Hudson rebranded its logo to be more inclusive of everyone in the LGBTQ+ community. Instead of the woman’s profile, there is now an amalgamation of symbolism meant to represent the bar’s relaunch after the COVID-19 pandemic as a “Queer Human Bar Built by Lesbians.” What remains from the original logo is the black triangle. Henrietta Hudson is now the longestrunning lesbian bar in the United States.91 Author Lesléa Newman, whose work explores LGBTQ+ and Jewish themes, later reflected on the use of triangle symbolism in contemporary gay and lesbian communities. “I read that lesbians wore black triangles in the

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camps. But I haven’t seen any mass embracing of the black triangle in the same way that the pink triangle was embraced.”92 It’s true that the black tri­ angle as a symbol of lesbian activism, community, and identity never became as widespread as the pink triangle. Crystal Mason thinks that is revealing. Mason moved from San Francisco to Berlin in 1995 and lived there for nearly a decade. “I was living and working in the capital city of a nation that was still deeply involved in dealing with its history and in the midst of myth making. In America, we haven’t had that reckoning with our past yet, not in the same way. So, that was new to me.” Mason recalls seeing a pink triangle memorial at Nollendorfplatz dedicated to the gay men the Nazis persecuted. “I remember hearing that there were other such memorials around the coun­ try. But there weren’t any dedicated to the folks with black triangles. To be frank, I find that troubling. I always wondered why the story of the pink tri­ angle made it out while the story of the black triangle did not.” For Mason, it is about much more than representing what happened in the past. “There’s so much politics involved with all of this. Who has the clout, the money, the activism, and the networks to get these stories out?”93 Mason understands that the black triangle was not an exclusively lesbian badge in the concentration camps in the same way that the pink triangle was used to label gay men. “The fact that the black triangle was used to label all of these so-called social deviants makes it a much more apt symbol of activism today,” they asserted. “Look, I know that people from all kinds of backgrounds have been drawn to the pink triangle. But I also think the pink triangle as a present-day symbol runs the risk of focusing on cis, white, gay men. The black triangle didn’t focus on a specific group or identity. It was a blanket disavowal of people on the margins. I think that means it has the potential to forge solidarity among different marginalized groups today. We need truly intersectional activism today, and I think the black triangle can represent that.”94 As Crystal Mason’s comments demonstrate, the lega­ cies and future of the pink triangle as a symbol of activism are still being negotiated. In 1989, historian and gay activist Jonathan Ned Katz wrote in the leading gay magazine the Advocate that “displaying the pink triangle [is] an act of resistance.” Highlighting the role that historical consciousness played in the contemporary gay rights movement, Katz continued, “We transform a Nazi badge of shame into its opposite: a memorial to the anonymous homosexu­ als slain in hate. It is a symbolic marker of our solidarity with all those who fight injustice.”95 The history of the pink triangle’s emergence as a gay rights logo highlights the active role that individuals and societies play in imbuing

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existing symbols with new significance. Even core symbols that originated in the atmosphere of hate and oppression, like the pink triangle, can be trans­ formed to embody a message of solidarity and to help establish a positive sense of selfhood. Communities can empower visual symbols with a multitude of resonat­ ing messages and meanings that evoke stirring emotions, shape identities, and inspire people to take political action. In using the pink triangle beginning in the 1970s, West German and Amer­ ican gay activists referred to a history that had largely not been written yet. This led to a grassroots movement to fill a void in the publicly acknowledged narratives about the Nazi period and more thoroughly explore a past that the historical profession had hitherto refused to study.

Ch a p ter 5

“Remembrances of Things Once Hidden” Piecing Together the Pink Triangle Past on Stage and on Page

For theatergoers in the small English town of Havant, the fall of 1983 caused quite a buzz in the local arts scene. For a week in September, the local Bench Theater ran a production of Bent, a tragic love story about the fate of gay German men during the early years of the Third Reich. The theater received outspoken criticism for putting on a production that allegedly promoted sin and immorality. One Havant resident wrote a letter to the editor of the local newspaper expressing a hope that the “good people” of their town would not support the show. Of course homosexuality occurs in the world, the author of the letter continued. “So does diarrhea, but I don’t like to watch it.”1 One week later, another resident wrote in. “I agree with the letter from L Wilton concerning the play about homosexu­ als to be put on at Havant. . . . Who could be entertained by a play about Na­ zis or homosexuals?”2 As it turns out, tens of millions of people worldwide could be—and were—entertained by the play. The American playwright Martin Sherman had written the script five years earlier while living in London. “I thought the play was only going to be done in a little fringe theater,” Sherman later recalled. The man who ran the Gay Sweatshop, the theater for whom Sherman had written Bent, read the script and told him, “We can’t do this. . . . It has to go out into the world.”3 And go out into the world it did. Bent premiered in London’s West

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End in 1979 and on Broadway a year later. By the time Michael Lynch, a lo­ cal author in Toronto, saw the play in the spring of 1981, he was impatient with anticipation. “The play is here at last,” Lynch wrote, but only after playing in cities throughout England, the United States, Brazil, Greece, and elsewhere in Canada. “Will it give Toronto a view of Nazi Germany that will help us understand better where we are?” speculated Lynch. “Will it inform, at last, both gays and non-gays of this suppressed, horrible chapter in our long, uneven history?”4 His question was a reasonable one. Although gay activists in West Germany and the United States had made references to the pink triangle past for years, it was always in the context of contem­ porary social activism. The historical profession and the mainstream press continued to shun the topic. As a result, very little was known about the history itself. In the previous decade, activists had pushed for specific policy changes so that gay people could enjoy the full rights and protections of citizen­ ship. More than a legal classification, citizenship is also experienced as a sense of belonging to a shared community. And belonging to a national community also means being represented in its history. Thus, citizens seek to point back into the past and see themselves reflected in the national his­ tory. Moreover, they expect to explore their past openly in public without fear of reprisal. In this way too, then, queer communities sought to rede­ fine both the legal parameters of citizenship and the broader, communal boundaries of citizenship to include queer people—both in the present and the past. By the 1980s, gay communities began publicly exploring their pasts and cultivating historical roots for the modern gay identity that had been forged by the activism of the previous decades. Because professional scholarship in academia mostly continued to ignore LGBTQ+ topics, gay authors, journal­ ists, and artists turned to a number of avenues that were open to them in order to tell these histories: novels, poetry, the emerging gay press, and the theater. In the 1970s and 1980s, the lines between queer activist and queer researcher were blurred or nonexistent. The two went hand in hand, and the people picketing on the streets were often the same individuals who con­ ducted interviews, scoured archives, and wrote grassroots histories of the pink triangle past. The transatlantic memories grafted through activism also spurred and fostered networks of research in West Germany and the United States. The sudden proliferation of works about the fate of gay people dur­ ing the era of Holocaust demonstrates that when mainstream scholars con­ tinued to ignore this history, gay people set out to write it themselves.

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The Pink Triangle and the “homocaust” in the gay Press In the United States, readers of the nascent homophile press could find in­ formation about gay German history as early as the 1950s. A book published in 1956 by the Los Angeles–based homophile organization ONE presented its readers with an overview of the history and current situation of gay com­ munities living in countries across the world. “Germany presents a bewilder­ ing complexity of aspects concerning the Homophile,” begins the chapter on Germany. The author states that the first scholarly research on homo­ sexuality began in Germany and recounts the “legendary” pre-Hitler years during which gay communities enjoyed “more or less complete freedom.” The essay cursorily addresses the Third Reich. “Familiar to us all is the story of how the Hitler regime became worse and worse as its power increased.” The author mentions gay victims only in passing, stating that “the atrocities against homosexuals equaled those against other minority groups.”5 It is not surprising that the book did not contain more detailed information about the persecution of gay men in Nazi Germany, since there was no literature yet available in English. That would change by the mid-1970s. The gay leftist activists David Thorstad and John Lauritsen, living in New York City in the early 1970s, both were interested in learning more about gay movements and gay history throughout the world. One day, Thorstad came across a footnote referencing the Jahrbuch für Sexual Zwischenstufen (Year­ book of Sexual Intermediaries), published by Magnus Hirschfeld’s ScientificHumanitarian Committee from 1899 to 1923. Thorstad and Lauritsen both spoke German and set out to discover more about Hirschfeld and his work. The only place they were able to find a complete set of the Jahrbuch was the New York Academy of Medicine. “John and I would go up there every weekend and any time that we had off,” Thorstad recalled years later. “We read the whole thing! It was such a wonderful discovery. It was full of so much information. . . . And these weren’t just some strange scientists who sat around discussing homosexuality. They were activists! They led a political movement. It was an eye opener.” Thorstad and Lauritsen concluded that it was crucial that gay activists in America learn about this history. “There was an entire movement before our own—sixty years before ours! We needed to know that. We needed to know that we weren’t the first, and we also needed to know that this previous movement had been destroyed by the Nazis.” Thorstad and Lauritsen set out to write that history for the American gay community.6 Their trips to the New York Academy of Medicine in those years dem­ onstrate that gay activism and research into the gay past were intertwined.

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And as they translated information into English and shared it with their networks in New York City, Thorstad and Lauritsen were grafting memo­ ries of gay history from a German context into an American one. These memories ultimately took on new dimensions as gay activists in the United States internalized, made sense of, and used them to contextualize their own activism and place in history. As Thorstad and Lauritsen transplanted these memories, they contributed to the understanding of a larger gay history that transcended national boundaries. Lauritsen and Thorstad were both members of the Socialist Workers Party at the time. “Three months before each convention, they [the SWP] would circulate some literature, and there would be internal discussion lead­ ing up to the convention. So John and I decided to publish our findings that way.” In June 1973, the SWP circulated Lauritsen and Thorstad’s fourteenpage pamphlet among its members. It included information on pioneering individuals like Hirschfeld, as well as on the Nazis’ and Stalin’s destruction of early gay movements, including a reference to the pink triangle. Laurit­ sen and Thorstad asked the SWP to publish the pamphlet as a book, but the party refused on the grounds that the two had been too favorable to the German Social Democrats in the pamphlet. The two resigned from the party and decided to promote it themselves. They sold copies of the pam­ phlets at bookstores across New York City. They soon received an inquiry from Times Change Press, a small anarchist publisher, and in 1974, Lauritsen and Thorstad’s work was published as The Early Homosexual Rights Movement (1864–1935).7 “I was so impressed when I read that book,” recalled Jonathan Ned Katz, a pioneering gay activist-scholar who was living and working in New York City. “I was astonished that the existence and history of an impor­ tant, influential German homosexual emancipation movement had not been told. It was so clearly an earlier example of what we were doing at the time in the early 1970s.”8 Earlier that same year, James Steakley had published his groundbreaking article “Homosexuals and the Third Reich” in the Body Politic.9 When Lau­ ritsen and Thorstad revised their pamphlet for publication as a book, they were able to incorporate information from Steakley’s article.10 “Steakley’s article—his entire series of articles—was a major moment of historical re­ covery,” Katz later recalled. At the time, Katz was a member of the Gay Aca­ demic Union, an organization founded in 1973 by gay and lesbian academics in New York who sought to make academia a more welcoming space for queer people while also making scholarship on gay history and culture more accessible to the public. Steakley’s article in the Body Politic “was eye-opening for us,” Katz noted. “Not only was it the first time I learned about gay people

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during the Holocaust; his articles were the first I had read that provided such a detailed account of the gay rights movement that emerged in Germany before Hitler came to power. And then the Nazis destroyed it all.”11 The col­ lective that published the Body Politic changed its name in 1978 to the Pink Triangle Press after the success of Steakley’s article. “We chose this name to reflect our interest in our history and our commitment to vigilance.”12 New York City became a hub that brought together the individuals who first introduced American audiences to the pink triangle past. It was where David Thorstad and John Lauritsen met James Steakley, who was traveling back and forth between New York City and Toronto, where he was working with the Body Politic. Through these activist-scholar networks Thorstad also met Richard Plant, a gay German Jewish émigré who had fled the Nazis and who would go on to write the first substantial book in English on the Nazi persecution of gay men. “Richard hadn’t published anything about his expe­ rience until the rediscovery of this topic, in which Lauritsen and my book played a role,” Thorstad recalled. “I think he was at least partially inspired to write his own book by the fact that it had become a topic that people were aware of and beginning to talk about.”13 These same networks are where Steakley met Katz, who reached out and encouraged him to publish his Body Politic articles as a book. Katz was the general editor of a series by Arno Press called “Homosexuality: Lesbians and Gay Men in Society, History, and Literature.” The series reprinted hundreds of books from the nineteenth and twentieth century. “The reason I thought it was so important to republish those German books in the Arno Press se­ ries,” Katz later stated, “was a way to counter the German burning of the books in the Hirschfeld Institute.”14 In 1975, Arno Press released Steakley’s book The Homosexual Emancipation Movement in Germany.15 “When I first pub­ lished my research on this in the 1970s, there was just nothing on the subject in English, and there was also very little in German,” Steakley recalled. “I got into a lecture circuit, presenting . . . this talk about the Nazi persecution of gays. [I went] all over Germany, Amsterdam, Toronto, Oslo, Montreal, Van­ couver, Cape Town, Namibia, and Stockholm.”16 His book offered a thorough account of the long history of Paragraph 175 and the ways in which the Nazis adapted it for their own ends. Steakley’s own work was heavily influenced by Harry Wilde’s The Fate of the Ostra­ cized, which had been published in West Germany in 1969. Both Wilde and Steakley characterized the Nazis’ treatment of gay men as a gay genocide.17 Indeed, Steakley’s chapter on Nazi Germany is titled “The Final Solution,” and he estimated that over two hundred thousand gay men were killed by the Nazis.

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The mainstream West German press remained largely silent on the topic. One notable exception was a May 1969 issue of Der Spiegel reporting on the amendment of Paragraph 175 to replace the Nazi version of the law. The headlines read “Paragraph 175: The Law Is Falling; Will the Condemnation Remain?” The thirty-page cover story included a history of the anti-sodomy law and dedicated a few paragraphs to the persecution of gay men during the Third Reich. Citing Harry Wilde’s work, the article explicitly referenced that gay concentration camp prisoners were marked with a pink triangle. As Der Spiegel was the nation’s most prominent weekly newspaper, the article was a significant mainstream acknowledgment of the Nazis’ gay victims during a time characterized by collective silence.18 The reform of Paragraph 175 in the West German Criminal Code in 1969 cleared the way for the reemergence of a gay press. Gays and lesbians in cities across the Federal Republic began publishing new periodicals, from monthly newsletters to weekly magazines. The most successful of these publications was Du & Ich (You and I), which ran its first issue in October 1969, just one month after the liberalization of Paragraph 175. Don and him were two glossy magazines with color photographs and articles on a number of issues that appealed to a wider gay and lesbian audience. Others catered to a particular readership. EMMA, for example, became a leading feminist newspaper, and Unsere Kleine Zeitung (Our little newspaper) was a periodical written by and primarily for lesbians. At the same time, a gay press was also emerging in the United States. Periodicals such as the Washington Blade, Christopher Street in New York, and Gay Sunshine in San Francisco reported on local and national issues facing gay communities across America. The early gay press in the United States was meant to do more than simply inform or entertain readers. Editors of Bos­ ton’s Gay Community News articulated what they saw as the importance of their newspaper: “We play an activist role in the gay and lesbian community by encouraging debate, by generating controversy, by helping to mobilize gay men and lesbians into action.”19 The same can be said of the gay press in the Federal Republic, especially those outlets that were dedicated primarily to political news, such as Emanzipation, or Gay Journal, published by a group in Heidelberg that chose to use English for the title. All these gay publications ran stories about the fate of gay men during the Third Reich. Given the large, combined readership of these periodicals, the information presented in their pages reached a much larger audience than the protests and demonstrations of gay rights activists, although this audi­ ence was almost exclusively gay.20 For nearly two decades, the gay press was the primary source for anyone seeking information on the fate of Hitler’s

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gay victims. How these gay press outlets framed this persecution, there­ fore, greatly influenced how West Germans and Americans understood this history. Nearly all these articles, especially in the 1970s and 1980s, focused on the history of Paragraph 175 and pink triangle concentration camp prisoners. As a result, they dealt almost exclusively with the experiences of gay men. This is understandable inasmuch as gay men had a separate designation in the concentration camp classification system and were the target of a spe­ cific law. The persecution of other individuals whose sexuality and gender identity did not conform to Nazi ideals, however, was often more difficult to discern and trace, especially in the early days of research. As a result, the ex­ periences of lesbian, bisexual, and trans people during the Third Reich were not mentioned in these articles, and the collective memories of the Nazis’ campaign against homosexuality became epitomized by the fate of gay men. One of the earliest publications to mention the Nazi persecution of gay men was Uni, a magazine published by a gay group in Denmark. The 1970 article presented the National Socialists’ atrocities against gay men as a tar­ geted, systematic genocide. “Around 100,000 gays were convicted and sent off to concentration camps,” the author stated. “Never before in the his­ tory of mankind have homophiles been so systematically persecuted and eradicated. . . . The Jews were the only group that the Nazis treated more horribly.”21 In the 1970s, the dearth of information on the terrorization of queer people in Nazi Germany led many gay activists and writers to (con­ sciously or not) understand the pink triangle past through the lens of the Jewish experience during the Holocaust, for which there was more historical information at the time. As a result, early articles in the gay press depicted the Nazis murdering all gay people in a systematic gay genocide or “Homo­ caust.” The numbers of gay victims cited in these articles ranged from sev­ eral hundred thousand into the millions. This mischaracterization persisted in some publications well into the 1990s. A 1995 issue of the Munich-based Südwind, for example, contained an article titled “The Gay Holocaust.” The author claimed that people all across the world worked to stifle and hide the fact that the Nazis had murdered up to one million gay people. “If Hitler had persecuted and murdered only gays,” the author concluded, “the rest of the world would have applauded him.”22 Josef Kohout’s life story—published under the pseudonym Heinz Heger as Die Männer mit dem rosa Winkel (The Men with the Pink Triangle) in 1972— was the first book-length account by a gay concentration camp survivor and therefore played a crucial role in shaping how subsequent generations under­ stood this history. Gay press outlets frequently reprinted portions of Heger’s

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book for their readers. Within a few months of the book’s release, Du & Ich ran a three-page article titled “The Degenerates in the Concentration Camp,” composed of excerpts from The Men with the Pink Triangle.23 The arti­ cle was accompanied by gruesome images of skeletal corpses in Nazi camps. Emanzipation also reprinted a gay concentration camp survivor’s testimony. In its spring 1977 issue, the magazine published “A Crown of Thorns,” an essay by a gay survivor detailing his time in Sachsenhausen.24 The essay had originally appeared twenty-three years earlier in an issue of the West Ger­ man homophile magazine Humanitas under the pseudonym L. D. Classen von Neudegg.25 In the late 1980s, amid renewed calls for the West German government to acknowledge gay men as official victims of Nazi injustice, Du & Ich ran a collection of gay survivor testimony, including an excerpt from Heger’s memoir, under the tagline “A necessary reminder of a past that quite simply isn’t past yet.”26 The gay press often brought up the Nazi past during particular political battles or events in contemporary West Germany. In May 1975, for example, Emanzipation printed an article with the headline, “Mass Murder of Homo­ sexuals Unexposed to This Day.” The article ran on the thirtieth anniversary of the end of World War II, a day that some in the Federal Republic saw as a moment of defeat, while others celebrated as a day of liberation. “No one, though, thinks about the meaning of this day for homosexuals,” wrote the author.27 Articles such as this one pointed out that the continuity of discrimi­ natory laws and practices represented a denial of “liberation” for West Ger­ many’s gay citizens. Ten years later, on the fortieth anniversary of the war’s end, the gay press continued to highlight the fact that not all Germans could celebrate the occasion equally. The author of an article titled “The Eighth of May: A Day of Liberation?” expressed in 1985 that it was certainly a day of celebration, but pointed out that gay Germans could not fully join in. “The continuities between the Third Reich and the Federal Republic are evidenced by the fact that those persecuted with the pink triangle are still not acknowl­ edged as victims and have not been part of the process of acknowledgment and commemoration. And the few gay survivors—in contrast to almost all other groups—have received absolutely no financial benefits as a financial or symbolic compensation.” In conclusion, the author answers the question posed by the article’s title: “It was the end of a dictatorship . . . but we can’t really call it ‘liberation.’ ”28 Not everyone was pleased with how the gay press presented the pink tri­ angle past. In a 1988 letter to the editor of the Munich-based Südwind, one gay man wrote that the discovery that homosexuals had also died in camps must have come as a “pleasant surprise” for West German gays and lesbians.

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“It was especially practical for those seeking to initiate the gay rights move­ ment in the early 1970s,” he continued. The Nazi past “saved us from having to insist on our rights armed with nothing more than our self-respect. In­ stead, the comfortable path of guilt and pity offered itself to us.” The author concluded by pondering, “How much harder it must be for gays in other nations who don’t have a few deaths to point back to.”29 Subsequent articles in various American gay press periodicals, especially in the 1970s and 1980s, addressed the Germans’ terrorization of gay men during the Nazi dictatorship. The New York Times even dedicated attention to the topic in a 1975 essay written by Ira Glasser, the executive director of the New York Civil Liberties Union. “Nearly a quarter of a million homo­ sexuals were executed by the Nazis between 1937 and 1945, along with the six million Jews. . . . Many know about the yellow star, but the pink triangle still lies buried as a virtual historical secret.”30 Because the little scholarship that was available—like Steakley’s—was still only beginning to circulate, and primarily among a gay readership, the articles in the gay press inflated the number of gay men killed and perpetuated an oversimplified narrative that did not differentiate between the persecution of different groups. In 1975, a professor writing in Boston’s Gay Community News stated that “the Nazis fully intended to apply the final solution to gays as well as to Jews.”31 One notable exception to this trend was an article that ran in a Memphis gay periodical. The 1980 article stated that “homosexuals were not to be eliminated. Instead they were to be reeducated.”32 By far the most extensive coverage of the Nazi persecution of gay men appeared in the Wisconsin Light, a gay and lesbian newspaper published in Milwaukee. Terry Boughner was a historian and founder of the newspaper, and beginning in September 1988 he published a twenty-six-part series titled “A Time to Die.” Boughner informed readers that the series resulted from ten years of research, including several trips to Europe to interview over twenty gay concentration camp survivors. The narrative Boughner con­ structed can certainly be characterized as a Homocaust. “This is not a pretty story,” he wrote. “This is the story of the Pink Triangle, the Holocaust of the Gays in Nazi Germany.”33 The series represents a litany of horrors: prisoners subjected to medical experiments; rape scenes; a man being forced to eat the flesh of his dead lover. More significantly, Boughner argued throughout the series that the Nazis’ attempted genocide of gay men was the original “final solution,” and only later were Heinrich Himmler and Joseph Goebbels able to convince Hitler that the same methods should be applied to Jews.34 Ultimately Boughner concluded that “there is reason to believe that the total number of Gays and Lesbians murdered at Auschwitz may have come closer

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to three quarters of a million people”—and that was just at one camp.35 He argued that not much had changed since the end of the war. “What the Na­ zis failed to do, historians of the Holocaust, Jewish and others, have almost succeeded in accomplishing.”36 He continued to assert, “By them denying us our history, they are saying we are subhuman and not fit to be remembered. Damn them! The Nazis annihilated us, the chroniclers erase our memories and so kill us again.”37 Boughner’s series is full of historical inaccuracies and overgeneral­ izations. For example, his claim that 750,000 gay men and lesbians were murdered at Auschwitz is patently false. Moreover, he provides no docu­ mentation for any of his sources; thus, none of his claims can be substanti­ ated. Boughner’s articles may have raised awareness among a specific audi­ ence of gay readers in Milwaukee that gay men had been victims of the Nazi regime. Unfortunately, the extensive series misinformed readers about the historical reality. In addition to informing their readers about local or national news, the gay presses in Germany and the United States also reinforced the transat­ lantic ties that the gay rights movements had established. Bookshops, such as West Berlin’s Prinz Eisenherz, and publishers, such as the Rosa Winkel Verlag (Pink Triangle Press), benefited from mutual partnerships and ex­ changes of information with American institutions, like Giovanni’s Room, a gay bookstore in Philadelphia.38 All major gay press outlets in the Federal Republic contained a section on news from America in nearly all issues, espe­ cially during the 1970s. These sections contained informational stories rang­ ing from travel tips to important developments in the American gay rights movement. American gay press outlets, too, ran stories about their brothers and sisters across the Atlantic, though not nearly as often as the West Ger­ man press reported on developments in America. Interestingly, much of what gay and lesbian West Germans read about America in the gay press came from a single person. Johannes Werres was a gay West German journalist who traveled to the United States in the 1950s to familiarize himself with the nascent homophile movement. He hoped to bring back useful information to support a similar movement in his home country. While in the US, he made contacts with advocates who kept him updated on the latest American news once he returned to West Germany. Written under at least six different pseudonyms, Werres’s articles about the American gay movement filled the most prominent West German gay pub­ lications for decades.39 Rainer Hoffschildt, a gay researcher in Hanover, later recalled, “As it turns out, almost everything we knew about America, we learned from Werres.”40

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Beginning in the 1970s, when historical scholarship on the subject was still lacking, these articles in the gay press acted as a primary source of in­ formation for millions of readers. By the 1980s, these articles increasingly mentioned the fate of lesbians in Nazi Germany. Moreover, they portrayed the Nazi past as a part of gay history writ large and thus reinforced the no­ tion that gays and lesbians living in West Germany and the United States shared a common historical lineage. Boughner, the author of the Wisconsin Light series, said that studying the fate of the Nazis’ victims had a profoundly personal impact on him: “I can frankly state that never before nor since have I felt so drained, so full of sorrow and anger—and so very much a Gay.”41 In many ways, it did not matter if the content of that history was—as historians have later come to demonstrate—not entirely accurate; the gay press was fill­ ing a void left by academia and the mainstream press and, in doing so, helped to shape a generation’s understanding of gay history. Gaining knowledge about the pink triangle past signified much more than acquiring historical facts. Having access to a past that one could call one’s own contributed to a sense of belonging and laid the foundation for present-day identities and an understanding of personhood grounded with historical roots.

fictional Accounts of the Pink Triangle Past By the close of the 1970s, members of the gay community in the United States found other ways to grapple with the pink triangle past. These in­ cluded fictional representations of the Nazi persecution of queer people. The fictional character of such works should not diminish their importance in shaping how (mostly gay) Americans—and later, Germans—understood the plight of queer people in the Third Reich. It added yet another angle to the variety of narrative strategies used to build a history of LGBTQ+ people. Fiction about gay life in the Third Reich includes a handful of novels, such as Lannon Reed’s Behold a Pale Horse: A Novel of Homosexuals in the Nazi Holocaust (1985) and Robert Reinhart’s Walk in the Night: A Novel of Gays in the Holocaust (1994).42 Given the narrow market and readership of these novels, it is hard to ascertain how much of an impact they had on the general un­ derstanding of the pink triangle past. Two far more influential works came in the form of stage plays. One of the earliest and most enduring fictional depictions of queerness in the early Nazi era is Cabaret. Given the show’s multiple adaptations over the course of more than fifty-five years, it has influenced how generations of people understand and imagine this chapter of history. The show was in­ spired by Berlin Stories, Christopher Isherwood’s fictitious recounting of his

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life in Berlin in the early 1930s. John van Druten turned Isherwood’s novels into a Broadway play, I Am a Camera, in 1951, which in turn inspired the cre­ ation of the musical Cabaret in 1966. The show has since undergone multiple iterations. The film version of Cabaret directed by Bob Fosse debuted in 1972, and a revised version of the musical appeared on Broadway in 1998. There is a common theme that cuts across all versions. Set in a seedy nightclub, the show depicts 1920s Berlin as a hedonistic den of iniquity. On the one hand, the nightclub (and nightclubs throughout the city, audiences assume) offers a place for queer people to come together to openly express their desires. On the other hand, the show depicts Nazis, who are gaining power by the end of the show, as sexually indulgent and violent individuals who have joined the movement to fulfill their own desires. The dancers and other patrons at the club (indeed, many of the Nazis themselves) fetishize the young men in uniform and ignore the antisemitic ideology of those wearing the swastika armbands. Different iterations of the show imply to varying degrees that sexual excess is a reason for the collapse of Weimar democracy and the rise of Nazism, which is a depicted as a sexually perverse movement. Cabaret is one of the first works (fiction or nonfiction) to include a por­ trayal of a trans or gender-nonconforming person in Weimar or Nazi Ger­ many. In all versions of the show, the character of the Emcee is depicted as androgynous, and Fosse’s film version further plays up the theme of crossdressing by including Elke, a transvestite. Far from showing trans identities or gender-nonconformity in a positive light, the show portrays the Emcee as dubious and sinister. As scholar Andreas Krass notes, the character of Emcee is “a grotesque demon embodying the queerness of Weimar Berlin.” This re­ flects the transphobia in the United States at the time the show was written. Krass also notes the irony of portraying the queerness of Weimar Berlin as destructive and immoral, since it was the city’s reputation as a center of gay life that drew Christopher Isherwood there in the first place.43 By far the most influential fictional account was offered by Martin Sher­ man’s drama Bent. When the play premiered in London’s West End in 1979, actor Ian McKellen played the main character. One year later, the play opened on Broadway with Richard Gere as the lead. The same year, Bent opened in cities across West Germany. Since its debut it has been performed in over thirty countries and has been nominated for many accolades, including a Tony Award and a Pulitzer Prize for Drama. In 1997, Bent was adapted into a successful Hollywood movie of the same name, and award-winner Clive Owen played the main character. The play was groundbreaking in raising awareness that gay men had also been victims of the Nazi regime. “I had no idea about the persecution of

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homosexuals in Nazi camps,” wrote Richard Monette, a producer in To­ ronto. “In fact, I thought [Sherman] had fabricated it,” until he later spoke with Sherman and learned that the script was based on fact.44 Sherman attrib­ uted James Steakley’s research as having greatly influenced the production of Bent.45 This influence is apparent in the script, which follows the story of several gay men living in Germany during the early years of Nazi rule. The play begins with a display of lavish and raucous nightlife of Berlin. Max, the main character, is with his lover, Rudy, at a rowdy cabaret, which seems to be a popular gathering place for queer Germans. Eventually, Max and Rudy are arrested and put on a transport to Dachau. Along the way, Max is warned that being a pink triangle prisoner in a concentration camp is even worse than being a Jew. Max embarks on a series of grotesque undertakings to prove to the SS guards that he is not gay. First, he beats one of his gay friends to death, but the guards are not convinced. As a final test, the guards observe as Max has sex with the corpse of a teenage girl. Satisfied that Max is not “bent,” the guards give him a yellow star instead of a pink triangle upon arrival at Dachau. Both Bent and the novel Behold a Pale Horse assert that to identify as a Jew meant having a better chance at survival in the concentration camps. This sparked controversy among other survivor groups and fueled what historian Erik Jensen calls a “crass game of competitive victimhood,” in which victim groups “compete” for a unique place under the umbrella of Nazi persecu­ tion.46 Some Jewish Holocaust survivors passionately contested the claim that the pink triangle condemned its wearer to be the “damnedest of the damned” inside the camps, a trope that appeared in most accounts of queer life in the Third Reich. In a response to an op-ed written by author Richard Plant in the New York Times, Herbert Loebel wrote, “As a survivor of Aus­ chwitz, I can assure him that any Jewish inmate would have gladly swapped his yellow triangle for the homosexual’s pink one.”47 Ultimately, the importance of these fictional accounts lies not in their historical accuracy. In fact, scholar Dorthe Seifert wrote that the historical reality presented by Behold a Pale Horse is “so incongruent with the historical facts that the reader cannot rely on any of the information that is presented in the novel.”48 The importance of these accounts, then, was that they pro­ vided the basis for a contemporary gay identity by establishing a sense of historical roots, a feeling that gay people had a past. Bent in particular came to act as a source for laying historical roots for the transatlantic gay identity that emerged during the gay rights movement. One reviewer of the play more recently reaffirmed the central place that the play occupies in modern gay literature, art, and culture: “Bent is culturally for the Gay and Lesbian

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community a landmark play that helped their community and the greater community to re-evaluate the manner in which they looked at history.”49 Similarly in 1997, a film critic for the New York Times wrote, “In establishing the pink triangle, a concentration camp badge denoting homosexuality, as a symbol of embattled gay pride, Bent has earned its place in cultural history.”50 No such fictional accounts originated in West Germany, though Bent went on to be a smash hit there. Even before the play came to the Federal Repub­ lic, the West German gay magazine him reported on its success in London and New York.51 The play made its German premiere at the National Theater in Mannheim in 1979 and was subsequently performed across the country under the title Rosa Winkel (Pink Triangle). For many West Germans, gay and straight alike, this play was the first information they had ever encountered about the Nazis’ gay victims, and Rosa Winkel garnered waves of attention in the mainstream press. The national weekly news magazine Der Spiegel informed its readers that “a Broadway play about homosexuals in Hitler’s concentration camps is now playing in Germany.”52 A few months later, the Westdeutsche Allgemeine Zeitung, Germany’s largest regional newspaper, re­ viewed the play in an article titled “Love behind the Barbed Wire.”53 One commentator stated, “I ask myself if the play shouldn’t have been on a Ger­ man stage a long time ago.”54 After seeing the play in Cologne, one viewer articulated the critique more clearly: “It’s actually very shameful that the American playwright Martin Sherman, who is unknown over here, had to come and bring the horrible persecution and extermination of homosexuals during the Nazi time to our stages.”55 As was the case in the United States, the play was about more than en­ tertainment. It represented a cultural event and a watershed moment in the wider acknowledgment of the Nazis’ gay victims. In March 1982, a group in Munich was only one among many gay organizations across the Federal Republic that organized outings for their members to see the play together.56 Schulz, the gay community center in Cologne, reserved an entire local the­ ater for a night. There was an introduction to the historical context of the play before its special performance for the Schulz members. Afterward, the cast, production team, and audience members engaged in lively discussion about this poignant chapter of German and gay history.57 The vast majority of the playbills and programs that accompanied the play in West Germany contained scholarly articles on the history of the pink triangle. In the program for Bent’s 1980–1981 run at the Schiller Schlosspark Werkstatt Theater in Berlin, audience members could find twelve pages of information, constituting half the program, on the Nazi campaign against homosexuality. These pages included extensive excerpts from Heger’s The

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Men with the Pink Triangle, but also a contribution on “Homophobia and Fascism” from Rüdiger Lautmann, who was already becoming the world’s leading expert on the topic.58 A 1981 program from Hamburg’s Theater im Zimmer only mentioned the cast and crew of the play on the back page. The rest of the playbill was dedicated entirely to historical material, including excerpts from Heger’s memoir, an extensive history of Paragraph 175, and a broader analysis of homophobia in German history.59 The play was meant to be a truly educational experience for audiences. And with no access to, or support from, the history departments in West German universities, the gay press and these Bent playbills were often the only place that researchers could hope to publish information and reach an audience. In addition to exploring a history ignored by mainstream academia, sev­ eral of these fictional accounts also urged audiences to come out and ac­ cept their gay identity, which was a central tenet of modern gay politics. In Bent, Max eventually comes to terms with his homosexuality, although his coming out is emotional and ultimately fatal. He removes the uniform jacket from the corpse of his murdered lover, the jacket with the pink tri­ angle badge. Max then puts on the jacket, literally donning his gay identity, and commits suicide by running into the electric fence. One of the play’s central messages becomes clear: if you are gay, you must come out, no matter the cost. This message was not lost on viewers. “The play invites the spectator’s imagination to leap from the historically specific situation of Nazi-persecuted gays to the brutality of any society against gays,” wrote one commentator.60 Two years later, a critic in Toronto asserted that “Bent dramatizes a new urgency for putting on our pink triangles for all the world to see.”61 Fiction writer Lesléa Newman explores the intersection of Jewish and queer identities in her work. In 1986, Newman wrote her award-winning short story “A Letter to Harvey Milk,” which is about Harry Weinberg, an elderly Holocaust survivor in San Francisco who befriended the gay Jewish activist and politician Harvey Milk. Years after Milk is assassinated, Harry writes a letter to his deceased friend as an assignment for a creative writing course. Harry’s teacher is a young Jewish lesbian who has been ostracized by her family for being gay. “I tried to explain I couldn’t help being gay, like I couldn’t help being Jewish,” she tells Harry. But her parents have not spoken to her in eight years. She has found a sense of belonging in the queer com­ munity but feels disconnected from her Jewish heritage. She implores Harry to tell her stories from his childhood and to help her learn Yiddish. Harry tells her, “You shouldn’t think about the old days so much, let the dead rest in peace. What’s done is done.”62

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One day, Harry notices the teacher has a pink triangle sewn to her back­ pack. At first, he wonders if the teacher knows what the symbol is. But then Harry becomes livid. “What right does she have to walk in here with that, that thing on her bag, to remind us of what we been through? Haven’t we seen enough?” Seeing the patch on the backpack suddenly sparks a memory of an incident from many years before. Harry’s friend Izzie, also a Holo­ caust survivor, told Harry about something that happened to him on the streets of San Francisco. “I had a little lunch at the Center, and then I come outside, I see a young man, maybe twenty-five, a good looking guy, walking toward me,” Izzie tells Harry. “He’s wearing black pants, a white shirt, and on his shirt he’s got a pink triangle.” Harry seems incredulous, so Izzie con­ tinues, stating “Don’t you understand? The gays are wearing pink triangles just like the war, just like in the camps.” Izzie is distraught. “His body was shaking so, I thought his bones would crack from knocking against each other,” Harry recalled.63 Izzie then divulges a secret he had never told anyone. One morning dur­ ing the selection process in the concentration camp, Izzie’s best friend Yussl was selected for murder. Izzie jumped out of line and told the SS officer that there had been some mistake and that Yussl was going to stay. Remarkably, the guard let them both live. Yussl and Izzie were bunkmates in the barrack, and that night they shared an intimate encounter spurred on by Izzie’s act of bravery and compassion. It was “just too much for me,” Izzie tells Harry. “Hannah was dead already and we would soon be dead too, probably, so what did it matter?” They continued their encounters for a couple of months until one night Yussl did not return after his work detail. Three days later, the guards assembled the prisoners and brought Yussl in front of them. “His face was swollen so, you couldn’t even see his eyes. His clothes were stained with blood. And on his uniform they had sewn a pink triangle, big, twice the size of our yellow stars.” The guards tried to force Yussl to turn in whomever he had been sleeping with, but he refused to comply. After beating him uncon­ scious, the guards shoot Yussl. “He died for me, Harry,” Izzie tells his friend. “They killed him for that, was it such a terrible thing? Oy, I haven’t thought about Yussl for twenty-five years maybe, but when I saw that kid on the street today, it was too much.”64 Lesléa Newman drew from her own experiences growing up as both Jew­ ish and lesbian to write “A Letter to Harvey Milk.” “The voice of Harry Weinberg is loosely based on my maternal grandmother,” Newman said. “She came from Eastern Europe when she was ten years old in 1900. I always wanted her to tell me stories about her childhood, but she never would. . . . So, as a fiction writer, I took all of that information and my longing to hear

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that voice, and turned it into a story.”65 Coming of age in the Jewish commu­ nity in the wake of the Holocaust, as well as in the lesbian community, which was fighting against marginalization in the 1970s, Newman was aware of the underlying tension between shining a light on the past to achieve social justice and the detrimental effects of remembering traumatic experiences. Growing up near Holocaust survivors, she sensed that these memories of trauma were palpable and ever present. The story of Izzie saving Yussl’s life, for example, was based on a true story in which a man had saved the life of Newman’s father’s friend in a concentration camp. “I always remembered that,” recalled Newman. “That’s the kind of thing that is embedded in my DNA. The stories from my childhood. And they come out when I need them, like in this particular story.” As she thought about those childhood stories and witnessed as the gay rights movement adopted the pink triangle, she imagined what would happen if the traumatic memories and calls for justice, both of which were embodied in the same triangle, collided. “That’s where I got the idea of Izzie, a traumatized Holocaust survivor, walking down the street and seeing somebody wearing a pink triangle and then having this flashback.”66 The pages of Newman’s short story demonstrate not only how memories of the past can be grafted into new contexts and imbued with new mean­ ing by different communities. The story of Izzie seeing a young gay man in San Francisco willingly wearing the pink triangle also depicts what could happen when different versions of pink triangle memories collided. For the young man walking down the street in the late 1970s, the pink triangle was a political claiming of a gay identity. The personal pain and trauma Izzie had experienced meant that he could only see the pink triangle’s origins. “A Letter to Harvey Milk” was first published in 1986 and was then in­ cluded in a collection of Newman’s short stories in a 1988 book of the same name. It won critical acclaim in queer circles. “I wasn’t embraced by the Jew­ ish community back then as a Jewish writer. I was embraced by the LGBT community—which we just called the gay community back then—as a les­ bian writer. It took me a long time to work my way into being seen as a Jew­ ish writer.” Jewish identity is a central theme of Newman’s work, and she also credits her Jewishness as being an important impetus for why she writes. “There’s this Hebrew phrase, tikkun olam, which means ‘repairing the world,’ and every Jew is charged with that mission at birth. It’s your responsibility to figure out what your role in tikkun olam is. Maybe you’re really good at pro­ testing or writing letters to politicians or volunteering at a battered women’s shelter.” Newman reflected on her own role: “For me, it’s writing literature of witness, which I hope will inspire people to take action to make the world

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a better place.” Newman’s sense of tikkun olam rests at the intersection of her multiple identities and her connection to the past. “When you think of being a Jew and a queer person, I carry this history of dual oppression, as many other communities do. . . . There’s a lot of hatred in this world that we carry on our shoulders. It’s my responsibility to combat that hate in the best way I know. The pen is mightier than the sword.”67

“Treated like a Stepchild”: Pink Triangle Scholarship Scholars came late to the increasingly public discussion of the pink triangle past. Even as professional historians produced scholarship on the Nazi re­ gime and the Holocaust, they excluded the fate of queer people from the scholarship. This left a historical void that the gay community itself had to fill through activism, journalism, and fiction. Thus, when scholars did join the public discussion, theirs was just one voice among many. In 1967 Wolfgang Harthauser offered the first extensive historical account with his chapter “The Mass Murder of Homosexuals in the Third Reich.”68 Although it appeared in a psychology book meant to explore the “problem of homosexuality,” it was important to gay Germans nonetheless because it shed some light on this history. “Every gay man should have this book on his bookshelf,” wrote one reader.69 In 1969, the West German journalist Harry Wilde published the first book-length study, which framed the Nazis’ antihomosexual policies as a “Final Solution.”70 The next account would not appear for nearly a decade. In 1977, sociologist Rüdiger Lautmann became the first scholar to make use of archival Nazi records to provide a detailed study of the fate of gay men in the concentration camps.71 Most significantly, Lautmann and his team were the first to offer an estimate of the number of the Nazis’ gay male victims based on archival evidence. They concluded that during Hitler’s twelve-year reign, Germans locked away approximately five thousand to fifteen thousand gay men in concentration camps. During the 1980s, a growing number of researchers in West Germany be­ gan to conduct scholarly studies of the topic. In 1981, Hans-Georg Stümke, an author and gay rights activist, and the Hamburg journalist Rudi Finkler published a book that would become standard reading for anyone interested in the topic. Pink Triangles, Pink Lists: Homosexuals and “Healthy Public Opin­ ion” from Auschwitz to Today provided not only an overview of queer history in Germany since the founding of the German empire, but also a detailed exploration of queer communities under National Socialism, including in­ terviews with anonymized survivors. The five-hundred-page book purpose­ fully drew comparisons and connections between the persecution of gay

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Figure 5.1. Dr. Rüdiger Lautmann in his Hamburg office in 2008. Lautmann’s research paved the way for subsequent generations of scholarship on the Nazi persecution of queer people. Courtesy of Wikicommons user James Steakley.

men during the Third Reich and the ongoing legal and social discrimination faced in the Federal Republic. One hundred pages of appendixes made avail­ able primary sources on a wide range of related topics to anyone interested in further research.72 In 1983, a group of four German researchers published Gays and Fascism, which contained a brief interview with a gay concentration camp survivor. It was the first publication to include a discussion of the situation of lesbians under the Nazi regime.73 At the end of the decade, Hans-Georg Stümke pub­ lished Gays in Germany: A Political History, a work that put the persecution of gay men and women in Germany in a much larger context stretching back to the Middle Ages. His final chapter, on the situation of gays and lesbians in East and West Germany, also included information about the refusal of the Federal Republic to issue reparations to gay victims of the Nazi regime.74 Apart from Stümke, none of the aforementioned researchers were trained as historians. “All of the early works came from outside the historical disci­ pline,” Stefan Micheler and Jakob Michelsen later observed.75 Homosexuality remained a taboo topic in the historical discipline in the Western world, and

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certainly in West Germany. Writing in 1989, the scholar-activists Andreas Salmen and Albert Eckert observed that beginning in the 1970s, gays and lesbians in the Federal Republic concluded that they would have to write their own history, whether they possessed a degree in history or not.76 This remained the case for decades, and as late as 1994, Micheler and Michelsen stated that while gay history was established in countries like the United States and the Netherlands, this was not the case in Germany. “There aren’t funds or institutional support,” such as conferences and journals dedicated to the research of gay history.77 Gay activism initiated a grassroots wave of historical scholarship on the gay past. In 1973, Berliner Bernd Schälicke did not wait on professional schol­ ars to do their job. He wrote to the editors of Die Wahrheit newspaper to place an ad asking for help researching the fate of gay Germans during the Nazi dictatorship. The archive does not reveal if he ever received a response or if the ad was published at all, but Schälicke’s letter demonstrates that when faced with a lacuna of scholarship, some gay people took action to research that history themselves. Similarly, members of an American gay or­ ganization asserted that if gays did not write their own history, mainstream authors would either continue ignoring it or simply get it wrong. In a 1987 pamphlet distributed among gay communities in New England, a gay or­ ganization referenced a recent article in the Boston Globe that stated, “The pink triangle was worn by gays under duress in Nazi Germany.”78 Clearly outraged, the authors of the gay pamphlet retorted, “The pink triangle was a little more than a sign of ‘duress’ in the Nazi concentration camps.”79 James Steakley reflected that the emergence of gay history during the 1970s was a profoundly personal and important development. “For a lot of gay individu­ als, when they became aware that they were gay, they would feel isolated. They weren’t aware that there were others out there like them. They weren’t aware of any sense of community, or of any historical antecedents for what they were feeling.”80 The push to research and write the history of gay men and women was a vital part of giving a historical grounding to their identi­ ties as individuals and as a group in the present. The increased research on this topic often created controversial debates that were no longer confined to gay publications. In May 1981, representa­ tives of the German Society for Sexual Research called for further study of the topic of homosexuality, writing in the Frankfurter Rundschau that “thou­ sands of prisoners with the pink triangle were tormented and exterminated in the concentration camps.” One week later, Heinz Junge, the secretary of the Sachsenhausen Concentration Camp Memorial, responded angrily, “Where do these gigantic numbers come from? Why the exaggeration?” He

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went on to (falsely) claim that only one hundred gay prisoners had ever been in Sachsenhausen, and most of them, he added, were not “real” homosexu­ als; the majority had been apprehended for simply fooling around with an­ other man. Junge went on to say that “175ers” were not politically active individuals, and most did nothing to oppose the fascist regime. He made sure to add at the end: “more than a few were actually in the ranks of the SS and SA.”81 Junge’s letter sparked outrage among the handful of researchers who were knowledgeable of the history. In an article titled “What Is a ‘175er’ Worth?” Hans-Georg Stümke accused Junge of parroting old Stalinist accu­ sations that the Nazi Party had been founded and run by violent gay men.82 Lautmann responded in his own letter to the editor, criticizing Junge for getting hung up on numbers and overlooking the fact that this history had been swept under the rug since the Nazis’ defeat. Lautmann concluded that continuing to engage in honest research on the topic could act as a memorial to the “otherwise ignored abuses and . . . continuing social suppression” of gays and lesbians.83 Well into the 1990s, researchers were still striving to convince those in government and in the historical discipline that Germany’s gay history needed to be supported, researched, and preserved. In 1995, Jens Dobler, one of the leading experts on modern gay German history, was horrified to learn that the State Archive in Hamburg had been destroying case files of men convicted under Paragraph 175 during the Hitler and Adenauer regimes.84 In an article titled “This Is Not a Case for the Shredder,” the Tageszeitung reported that “files concerning the Nazis’ persecution of gays are allegedly being destroyed in Hamburg. Unique sources for future research are lost.”85 In March 1996, the scandal continued with the Hamburg archive denying that it singled out information on “forgotten victims” for disposal. Norbert Finzsch, a historian in Hamburg, called the loss of the files an “academic catastrophe.”86 Continued investigation revealed that the Hamburg archive was running out of room, so the city-state’s senate had ordered the archive to get rid of the information on gays to make space for more “archive worthy” material.87 In the United States, too, researchers became interested in uncovering information about the Nazi treatment of queer people beyond what they read in the gay press. Already in 1974, Charles Shively, a professor of history at Boston State College, proposed a course for the fall semester titled “Ho­ mosexuality in World History.” His lecture on the Nazi regime was called “The Final Solution for Homosexuals,” and as sources, he cited Hans Bleuel’s Sex and Society in Nazi Germany and James Steakley’s 1974 article in the Body

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Politic.88 The archives do not reveal if the course was ever approved or if Shively taught it. But it does demonstrate that already in the early 1970s there was an interest in teaching gay history and an effort to inform American uni­ versity students about the Nazis’ gay victims. Two decades later, a symbol from the Nazi past that educators like Shively were seeking to piece together came to represent gay and lesbian history more broadly. In April 1991, the Department of English and Comparative Literature at the University of Wis­ consin–Milwaukee hosted “Flaunting It,” the first national graduate student conference on lesbian and gay studies. The call for applications featured a silhouette of a graduate in robes and tam, holding a diploma. In the back­ ground and starkly contrasting the black-and-white text was a pink triangle.89 Other individuals, too, took it upon themselves to research the topic. In the summer of 1979, Jok Church, who had recently accepted his own identity as a gay man, committed to use his skills as a journalist to research the fate of gay men in Nazi Germany. He placed ads in various gay press outlets that would reach readers in New York, Florida, California, and many places in be­ tween.90 One such ad read, “Mr. Church [is] interested in contacting survivors of Nazi persecution to be interviewed.”91 One person responded to Church’s ads. Horst Reimer had been born in Berlin to an aristocratic family. He was arrested by the Nazis under Paragraph 175 and learned while in prison that he had been scheduled for transport to Buchenwald. He sent word to his family, and his mother and aunt bribed the prison officials. Reimer was able to flee to Switzerland, eventually traveling on to the United States in the 1950s. He was eighty-eight years old when he answered Church’s ad in 1979, and the two spent three days together in Los Angeles discussing Reimer’s life story. Church recorded the interview with plans of producing a report for ra­ dio, but he ultimately never did anything with it. Reimer had stipulated that his interview could only be published if other gay survivors stepped forward to break the silence together. None ever did.92 Collecting and preserving artifacts to piece together and tell queer his­ tories was an important component of the broader queer liberation move­ ment in the late 1960s and into the 1970s. Because of differences between and intersections of race, gender, class, ability, and sexuality, some queer communities recognized the need to pioneer their own politics and history. Lesbians involved in the Gay Academic Union (GAU), for example, found that the New York-based organization focused disproportionately on the ex­ periences of white gay men. Issues like sexism in the gay movement were often overlooked or marginalized. In some cases, gay men actively discrimi­ nated against the GAU’s lesbian members. Lesbians in the GAU realized that lesbian history was “disappearing as quickly as it was being made.”93 In 1974,

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Joan Nestle, Deborah Edel, Sahli Cavallaro, Pamela Oline, and others left the GAU and set out to establish a grassroots lesbian archive. The following year, they founded the Lesbian Herstory Archives, which for fifteen years was housed in Nestle’s Manhattan apartment. While the New York-based Lesbian Herstory Archives (LHA) sought pri­ marily to document and preserve American lesbian history, the founders situ­ ated their endeavors in a global context from the start. To the extent possible, they tried to collect information about lesbians from multiple nations and time periods, including Nazi Germany. As early as 1976, just three months after they opened to the public, the LHA asked for volunteers to translate German material they had acquired.94 In an article in the LHA’s June 1991 newsletter, LHA coordinator Lucinda Zoe mentioned that the archives had been “flooded with questions” about the black triangle within the previous year. The full-page article provided an overview of the historical information at the time and ended with a request for anyone with more information to come forward.95 Sometimes the Nazi past found the LHA coordinators, and in surprising ways. Joan Nestle recalls one day in the mid-1970s when an older woman with an Eastern European accent came into the Lesbian Herstory Archives. That was when the archives were in Nestle’s apartment, and the woman stayed for hours. “As the night wore on, she sat sharing a cup of tea with me. All other visitors had left.” As they were talking about how books can provide a sense of community for marginalized individuals across time and space, the woman told Nestle, “I am so glad I had a chance to read a Polish translation of [Radclyffe Hall’s] The Well of Loneliness before I was taken into the camps. Reading that book saved my life. I wanted to live long enough to kiss a woman.”96 The visitor never gave her name, but Nestle still viv­ idly remembered the encounter forty-five years later. The two women with vastly different experiences—one a pioneering lesbian activist in the United States, and the other a woman who survived a Nazi concentration camp in Europe—found kinship among history’s embrace in a grassroots archive. The following decade, the Lesbian Herstory Archives began selling T-shirts and buttons to promote awareness of the archives. The design prominently featured a triangle. Morgan Gwenwald, an LHA coordinator and designer of the original T-shirt, recalled her inspiration for the design. “I wanted some­ thing that would promote our visibility. I wanted it to be clearly lesbian. . . . It was also really important that I find a design that was inclusive. I didn’t want to use one image of a woman or group of women to represent all les­ bians.”97 An idea for the design came from the LHA’s protests and marches. “In the mid-1980s, we started creating signs that were about three feet across

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and just had, in bold, one word on it. Each word was a slang expression for a lesbian: dyke, muff diver, butch, femme. Anything you could think of. We’d show up for a march with this pile of signs and would create a huge contin­ gent with a never-ending parade of words for lesbians.” Those word signs gave Gwenwald the idea to create a design with as many words for lesbian as she could identify. “But rather than use slang, I concen­ trated strictly on words for ‘lesbian’ in other languages. All of us coordinators and archivettes were constantly asking people if they knew ‘lesbian’ in other languages.” And then it came time to decide how to frame the words on the button. “I wanted something that was bold.” She chose a triangle. “Tri­ angles had become pretty common in the mid-1980s in the gay community. I was designing the button in 1985 or 1986, and ACT UP came up with their poster in 1987, so this was all around the same time.” Gwenwald created the

Figure 5.2. This design created for the Lesbian Herstory Archives in New York City from the mid­ 1980s harked back to a lesbian past through its use of the triangles, while also foregrounding the visibility of a global lesbian community in the present through the use of multiple languages. Designed by Morgan Gwenwald, ca. 1985–1986. Courtesy of the Lesbian Herstory Archives.

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design in black and white, which was necessary for silk screening. She drew the triangle with the peak facing down to reflect the original direction of the concentration camp badges. The downward triangle also represented the ancient Yoni, a symbol of feminine generative power.98 Heinz Heger’s The Men with the Pink Triangle became available in English for the first time when Boston’s Alyson Publications released it in 1980.99 The book included an extensive introduction by the English translator that pro­ vided remarkably accurate historical information about the Nazi campaign against homosexuality. For unknown reasons, the 1980 edition does not men­ tion that Heinz Heger was a pseudonym or that Heger was not the author. During the same period, some of the relevant work by German scholars was translated into English and appeared in academic journals. Rüdiger Laut­ mann and Erwin Haeberle both contributed articles to the 1981 issue of the Journal of Homosexuality, and Haeberle wrote a separate article for the Journal of Sex Research the same year.100 In 1986, the Jewish German author Richard Plant, whose parents fled Nazi Germany in 1933, published The Pink Triangle: The Nazi War against Homosexuals. It was the first book-length historical study in English dedicated solely to the Nazis’ campaign against homosexuality.101 Plant’s work drew from research that was available only in German at the time. He also relied heavily on James Steakley’s research from the previous decade. Thanks to Plant’s use of a wider range of sources, his book provided a more nuanced history than those accounts presented in previous articles in the American gay press. For example, The Pink Triangle stated that between ten and fifteen thousand gay men had been imprisoned in concentration camps, and the book also dedicated space to the postwar situation of gay victims. Plant’s work received some criticism after it was published, but it has remained the English standard-bearer on the topic for decades.102 Beginning in the late 1970s, individuals and groups in West Germany sought to inform the public of the fate of Hitler’s gay victims through ex­ hibits and events. In December 1979, the General Homosexual Committee (Allgemeine Homosexuelle Arbeitsgemeinschaft) in Berlin hosted a public lecture on the lives of gay men in concentration camps. Around 120 people came to hear the lecture, held at the Haus der Kirche, a religious commu­ nity center in Berlin’s Charlottenburg borough. Several teachers asked for further information so that they could integrate the material into their les­ sons on the Holocaust, and the Association of the Persecuted of the Nazi Regime (Vereinigung der Verfolgten des Naziregimes) wished to include in­ formation from the lecture in its newsletter.103 In January 1983, gay groups in Bonn put together “Homosexuals during Fascism and Today” as part of

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an “Anti-Fascist Event Week” in the capital city.104 For two days in June 1986, the Educational Organization for Democracy and Environmental Protection cohosted a seminar in West Berlin on “Homosexuality and Fascism.” The purpose of the seminar—which was free and open to the public—was to encourage new research on the persecution of, resistance by, and survival of gay men in the Third Reich. Speakers scheduled for the seminar included German scholars such as Burkhard Jellonnek and Manfred Bruns, as well as Richard Plant from New York City.105 In the mid-1980s, the historian of medicine Walter Wuttke put together a traveling exhibit called “Homosexuals in National Socialism.” The exhibit toured high schools and evening schools throughout southern Germany dur­ ing the summer of 1986, including locations in Ulm and Biberach an der Riss.106 The Südwest Presse reported that the exhibit “illustrates the racial and political basis for the persecution of homosexuals in the Third Reich, but also shows the connections to the discrimination of this minority group in post­ war Germany.”107 The exhibit was the result of collaboration on the part of numerous individuals and organizations, including Hans-Georg Stümke, Rü­ diger Lautmann, Claudia Schoppmann, the Rosa Winkel Verlag, the Federal Archives of Koblenz, the State Archives of Stuttgart, the Dachau Concen­ tration Camp Memorial Archives, as well as the Greens, a new, left-leaning, environmental political party.108 Owing to the nature of historical scholarship, exhibits and events in the 1990s reflected research that was conducted in the previous decade, which meant that they often provided only broad-stroke introductions to the topic. As time went on, new research made it possible to provide more details, nuance, and personal stories. By the end of the decade, regional studies provided attendees the opportunity to learn what happened to queer com­ munities in a particular locale. Increasingly, these events included more in­ formation on the fate of lesbians in the Third Reich, but details about bi and trans people largely remained absent. In the 1980s and 1990s, virtually all research on the experiences of lesbians in Nazi Germany was conducted by two women. Since the mid-1970s, the educator, social worker, and activist Ilse Kokula had published research on lesbian German history in the twentieth century. In 1989, Kokula began work­ ing for the Office of Gender Equality in the Berlin Senate in West Berlin. She conducted and presented research on how the Nazis’ gay and lesbian victims should be commemorated, as well as how West Berlin authorities could enact greater legal equality for LGBTQ+ Germans. In 2007, Kokula was awarded the Order of Merit of the Federal Republic of Germany (the country’s highest civilian award) for her contributions to LGBTQ+ rights and history.

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Claudia Schoppmann completed her PhD in history and German at the University of Münster in 1990. Her dissertation, “National Socialist Sexual Politics and Female Homosexuality,” was groundbreaking. Schoppmann went on to publish multiple pioneering books on lesbian history in Ger­ many, including a collection of interviews she conducted with lesbians who survived the Nazi period. In 1996, the book was translated as Days of Mas­ querade, and it remains the only book in English on the topic.109 Over her dis­ tinguished career, Schoppmann has written countless articles and chapters on lesbians in Weimar and Nazi Germany, contributed to numerous exhibits and projects, and presented at conferences across the globe. She remains the world’s preeminent scholar on the topic and continues to advocate for the inclusion of lesbian experiences in the history of the Third Reich.110 In 1991, Richard Plant’s book was translated and released in German. He started an international book tour to promote it, which garnered atten­ tion in German mainstream press outlets, including the Tageszeitung and the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung.111 The publishing of Plant’s book in German highlighted what had become one of the major research questions in the scholarship on the Third Reich’s policies, namely, did the Nazis aim to mur­ der all gay men or to cure them of their alleged sexual perversion? Plant’s work presented the Nazis’ efforts largely as an attempted genocide of gay men. A year earlier, however, a German historian had published his doctoral dissertation on the topic as a monograph. In his book Homosexuals under the Swastika, Burkhard Jellonnek challenged many of the prevailing under­ standings of the Nazis’ policies toward homosexuality.112 After Plant went on his book tour in West Germany, Jellonnek undertook his own, partially to correct what he saw as flaws in Plant’s conclusions. Primarily, he refuted the narrative of gay genocide that had, to that point, dominated the under­ standing of queer experiences in the Third Reich. Jellonnek concluded that the “National Socialists’ homosexual policy did not culminate in notions of extermination, nor did it aspire to the radical obliteration of all homosexuals in the sense of a ‘Final Solution.’ ”113 In his book, Jellonnek noted that in comparison to the historical research on other victims of the Nazi regime, gay men and lesbians “had been treated like a stepchild.”114 The amount of scholarship on the topic had increased dramatically by the time of a groundbreaking international conference held in the city of Saarbrücken in 1996, however. Jellonnek, who had since be­ come the director of the Saarland State Office for Civic Education, organized “Against Oblivion: The Persecution of Homosexuals in the Third Reich and the Incomplete Atonement for Homosexual Victims in the Federal Republic,” the largest conference ever dedicated to the topic. Over thirty researchers,

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Figure 5.3. Dr. Claudia Schoppmann speaking at a commemoration ceremony for lesbian women at the national Memorial to the Homosexuals Persecuted under National Socialism. Berlin, May 7, 2014. Photo: Magnus-Hirschfeld- Gesellschaft e.V., Ralf Dose.

politicians, and journalists from five different countries made presentations on different aspects of this history, ranging from thoughts on the “Homo­ caust” debate and the fate of lesbians to the delayed commemoration of the victims and the continued lack of exoneration of or compensation for survivors. Pierre Seel, a gay French concentration camp survivor, and Gad Beck, a gay Jewish man who survived the Holocaust in Berlin, provided eye­ witness accounts. Several years later, the papers presented at the conference were published as an edited collection, and National Socialist Terror against

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Homosexuals: Suppressed and Unatoned remains one of the most comprehen­ sive publications on the topic in any language.115 The event was advertised as a “historical and political conference” dedi­ cated to studying both the persecution of gay people in the Third Reich and the unresolved compensation of gay victims in the Federal Republic of Germany.116 The presence at the conference of a number of governmen­ tal agencies, including the Saarland Ministry for Women’s Affairs, Labor, Health, and Social Affairs and Germany’s Federal Agency for Civic Educa­ tion, indicated the willingness of state and federal governments to uncover details surrounding this hitherto largely ignored past and acknowledge the importance of the topic.117 In her greeting at the conference’s commence­ ment, Rita Süssmuth, then president of the German Federal Parliament, em­ phasized that the history of Hitler’s gay victims provided “both an occasion and a duty to contemplate the relationship of our own present society with its minorities.”118 Yet again, the history of the Nazis’ gay victims played a role in shaping rhetoric of the contemporary civil rights of minorities in a democratic society. Not everyone found the conference to be as groundbreaking as the hosts asserted. Conference organizers, for example, had invited Ilse Kokula to act as a moderator on a panel. She rejected the organizer’s invitation, stating, “It’s a pity that over the course of a three-day conference, only one panel is dedicated to ‘Woman-Love in the Third Reich,’ even though I do believe that the number of gay men in existence is quite similar to the number of lesbian women, and indeed that this was the case in the Nazi era, too.” She pointedly concluded, “This is no history conference with real political con­ sequences. Rather, it’s just a presentation of male suffering, male desires to research themselves, and male grandstanding. All in all, it’s a very conven­ tional concept.”119 As scholars explored more source material, the histories they wrote be­ came less a litany of police records and generalized horror stories and began offering a more human face to the victims of persecution. Two additional autobiographies by gay survivors have been released since Heinz Heger’s in 1972, and scholars have published collections of interviews with survivors.120 For decades, Rainer Hoffschildt, a researcher in Hanover, has dedicated his work to identifying as many gay prisoners and victims as possible. So far, he has discovered the names and life stories of over twenty thousand male gay victims of Nazi persecution.121 The scholarship on gay men in the Third Reich is now quite extensive, particularly in German. There are numerous researchers in Germany who, over the past forty years, have collectively published hundreds of books and articles on the Nazi persecution of gay

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men. These researchers include Manfred Bruns, Jens Dobler, Rudi Finkler, Günther Grau, Rainer Hoffschildt, Michael Holy, Jörg Hutter, Burkhard Jel­ lonnek, Albert Knoll, Rüdiger Lautmann, Stefan Micheler, Joachim Müller, Jürgen Müller, Susanne zur Nieden, Andreas Pretzel, Thomas Rahe, Andreas Sternweiler, Hans-Georg Stümke, Lutz van Dijk, and Alexander Zinn. Their work has allowed us to understand the Nazi ideologies concerning homo­ sexuality and the way those ideologies impacted gay men in the Third Reich. By the 1990s, scholars increasingly worked to make their research avail­ able in English as well. Some of the work by German scholars, such as Gün­ ther Grau, Rüdiger Lautmann, and Claudia Schoppmann, was translated into English during this time. The proliferation of works in English is due in large part to the work of Geoffrey J. Giles, who completed his doctoral studies at the University of Cambridge in England and then went on to a have a long and successful career at the University of Florida in the United States. His research in the 1990s and early 2000s provided detailed analyses of how the Nazis used the law to enforce their understanding of (homo) sexuality. Giles remained the preeminent expert on the topic in English for nearly twenty years. Other researchers who helped bring historical scholar­ ship on the Nazis’ gay male victims to an English-speaking audience include Elizabeth Heineman, Klaus Mueller, Richard Plant, and Ken Setterington. By the 2010s, other scholars began publishing new research on a wide range of themes related to homosexuality in Nazi Germany. Robert Beachy wrote about Berlin as the birthplace of a modern gay identity, Laurie Marhoefer explored the role of sexuality in the collapse of the Weimar Republic, and Andrew Wackerfuss examined homosexuality within the SA.122 At least two documentaries, including the successful 2000 film Paragraph 175, have been released in an effort to inform a wider audience.123 In the twenty-first century, a new generation of (mostly) queer scholars has produced innovative research that is broadening our understanding of queer life in Nazi Germany beyond the scope of gay men. Schoppmann’s pioneering research in the 1990s and early 2000s on the fate of lesbians in the Third Reich helped pave the way for this new wave of scholarship. Anna Hájková, a historian at the University of Warwick, studies the intersection­ ality of the Nazi persecution of queer Jewish people and interrogates why and how stories about queer sexualities have been erased from what has become the Holocaust canon.124 Dagmar Herzog, Samuel Huneke, Erik Jensen, Sébastien Tremblay, and Christiane Wilke are among the scholars who have written about the ways in which memories of sexuality under the swastika influenced morality, politics, and social movements after the Holocaust.125 Other researchers, including Laurie Marhoefer, Jennifer Evans,

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Elissa Mailänder, Rainer Herrn, and Katie Sutton, are currently researching and telling the stories of trans and gender-nonconforming people in Nazi Germany. Their work is finally providing details about the lives of individuals and communities that have hitherto been excluded from the history.126 There still exists virtually no published scholarship on the fate of bisexual people during the Holocaust. These scholars have faced intense backlash and opposition, sometimes from gay men. Many of the same gay scholars who fought for decades to incorporate gay male victims into the scholarship on the Third Reich now claim that the experience of lesbian, bi, and trans people cannot be consid­ ered “persecution” since the Nazis did not target them with a specific law as they did gay men. But the work of queer and feminist scholars forces us to interrogate how our predominant understanding of persecution erases the ways the Nazis’ gender and sex policies made living as a queer person dangerous or impossible, even if there was not a specific law against or con­ centration camp badge category for each queer identity. Therefore, the new generation of scholars is not only shedding light on the everyday experiences of people whose sexual practices or identities and gender expressions did not conform to the norms of the time. Their work also fundamentally changes the way we understand everyday life in the Third Reich. By the twenty-first century, the Nazi persecution of queer people was increasingly a topic that was not of interest solely for queer communities. The topic had become, and continues to be, increasingly integrated into the larger historiography of the Third Reich as part of the expanding focus on the social history of the Nazi state. The study of the Nazis’ gay victims both reflects and contributes to a scholarly shift away from primarily studying the systems and mechanics of state-sanctioned persecution and genocide; instead, more scholars seek to understand the everyday realities of the Third Reich. As a part of this trend, scholars also pay greater attention to groups that had been marginalized. The inclusion of non-Jewish victims in this trend has changed how schol­ ars, and eventually those outside academia, have understood National Social­ ism by demonstrating how many groups of people the Nazis targeted. The study of (homo)sexuality in Nazi Germany also reveals that the Third Reich was not simply an antisemitic dictatorship but was rather driven by broader racial and biological concerns. The continued study of the persecution, ha­ rassment, torture, and even murder of queer people has helped us to better understand the era of the Holocaust by demonstrating the lengths to which the Nazis went in order to forge a “master race.”

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By the closing decade of the twentieth century, gay activists, artists, and re­ searchers succeeded in pulling the pink triangle past from obscurity and set­ ting it along the path into the wider public consciousness. Through novels, stage plays, and the gay press, queer communities in West Germany and North America sought to uncover, document, and understand the fate of LGBTQ+ people during the era of Holocaust, as well as the meaning of that past for queer people presently living across the world. But this increasing visibility was not enjoyed equally by all segments of the queer community. The discourses primarily centered gay men, resulting in the continued exclu­ sion of lesbian, bi, trans, and gender-nonconforming people. The sudden proliferation of pink triangle memories beginning in the 1980s demonstrates how communities make use of multiple ways of relat­ ing to and telling their histories. Professional histories are just one narrative among many. In this particular case, it was not the historical profession, but rather grassroots efforts, that led the way in writing history. This historical work by gay communities on both sides of the Atlantic eventually fostered a growing acceptance among the wider public that gay people should be ac­ knowledged as victims of Nazi injustice, which in turn promoted a greater willingness among more people to further explore the pink triangle past. As the writing of this history continued, a question emerged: if the men with the pink triangle were acknowledged as victims, should they be commemo­ rated as such? If so, what was the best way to memorialize them? By the mid-1990s, these debates spilled into the public. Mainstream press outlets began providing coverage, and academic institutions slowly supported research into the history of the Nazis’ campaign against homo­ sexuality. The fate of gay victims was even acknowledged in the permanent exhibition of the new United States Holocaust Memorial Museum, which opened in 1993 on the National Mall in Washington, DC. The title of an article in Boston’s leading gay periodical, Bay Windows, eloquently described the inclusion of pink triangle prisoners in the new museum’s exhibit “Re­ membrances of Things Once Hidden.”127 After years doing the work of re­ search and education, gay survivors, activists, and scholars now turned their attention to shaping the physical landscape of cities across Germany and the world by building monuments to the Nazis’ gay victims, making sure that their history would never be hidden again.

Ch a p ter 6

“We Died There, Too” Commemoration and the Construction of a Transatlantic Gay Identity

In April 2021, members of the Ravensbrück Camp Community and Friends Circle (Lagergemeinschaft Ravensbrück Freundeskreis e.V), in solidarity with the Initiative of Autonomous Feminist Women and Lesbians from Germany and Austria, hosted a ceremony on the grounds of the former Ravensbrück concentration camp to commemorate the lesbian women who had been imprisoned, tortured, and murdered there. Ravensbrück was the largest concentration camp exclusively for women in the Third Reich. Through the duration of its six-year existence, an estimated 132,000 women were imprisoned in the camp. An unknown number of those women were lesbians. A group of feminists and lesbians had organized an in-person ceremony for lesbian victims annually since 2014. But, the global COVID-19 pandemic impacted the ceremonies in 2020 and 2021. Whereas the event normally drew a large crowd, only a handful of individuals were present to place wreaths and a memorial sphere (Gedenkkugel) at the former concentration camp and observe a moment of silence. During the years of the pandemic, organizers facilitated a virtual ceremony online so that people from around the world could join in the act of commemoration. “I really miss the per­ sonal exchanges of the past ceremonies,” posted one participant on the event’s Facebook page. “All of the courageous women, lesbians, and activists who continue to fight for the commemoration of lesbians, for their own 168

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history, have inspired me to become a part of this struggle myself. . . . The atmosphere of support, comfort, and a strong anti-fascist and feminist force cannot be fully replicated in a virtual ceremony. But, I am confident that the memorial sphere will soon be ‘officially’ recognized as a worthy tribute.”1 Upon the completion of the ceremony, the representatives of the Ravens­ brück Camp Community and Friends Circle removed the memorial sphere and exited the camp grounds. The removal of the memorial sphere had noth­ ing to do with the COVID-19 pandemic, however. Despite the tireless efforts of organizers and activists, the governing body of the Ravensbrück Memo­ rial had repeatedly denied the application to permanently house the monu­ ment on the memorial grounds since the application was first filed in 2016. The efforts to memorialize the lesbians who died at Ravensbrück stretched back nearly forty years. Already in the days of the German Democratic Re­ public, an East Berlin group called Lesbians in the Church became the first to publicly commemorate the Nazis’ lesbian victims when they traveled to the Ravensbrück Memorial on International Women’s Day on March 8, 1984. They laid a wreath “in memory of the women of the former concentration camp Ravensbrück, especially our lesbian sisters.”2 Members of the group returned a few days later only to discover that their wreath and the message they had written in the memorial’s guest book had been removed.3 A year later, on the fortieth anniversary of the defeat of Nazi Germany and the liberation of the camps, the Lesbians in the Church traveled back to Ravensbrück to honor the lesbian victims. They stopped to pick up the wreath they had ordered and learned that the florist had refused to print the inscription on the wreath’s ribbon because it commemorated lesbians. When the women got off the train to make their way to the memorial site, the State Security apprehended them. They were released only after the of­ ficial commemoration ceremony was finished.4 Since the mid-1990s, feminist and lesbian groups have traveled to Ravens­ brück annually not only to take part in the liberation ceremonies but also to participate in various demonstrations and activities. Irmes Schwager, an activist and women’s shelter worker who was present at all these events, explained that raising awareness was a first step in commemorating the les­ bian women who died at Ravensbrück.5 In 2010, the Ravensbrück Memorial sought to both raise awareness and foster a greater understanding of the historical reality by organizing a workshop titled “Homophobia, Deviance, and Female Homosexuality under National Socialism: History and Remem­ brance.” As a result of the workshop, a plaque dedicated to gay male prison­ ers was placed on the Ravensbrück grounds. A similar plaque for lesbians was rejected. In the denial of a subsequent application to memorialize lesbian

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victims, the International Advisory Board of the Brandenburg Memorials Foundation, which governs the Ravensbrück Memorial, stated that “the per­ secution of lesbians is not supported by historical evidence.”6 It was a stance that the advisory board would maintain for over a decade. In 2014, a group of women, including Susanne Kuntz, Irmes Schwager, and Wiebke Haß, held a private commemoration of lesbian prisoners at Ra­ vensbrück. They laid flowers in the lake and observed a minute of silence. This was followed by a public meeting in the visitor center, during which they read quotes from lesbian victims that historian Claudia Schoppmann had collected during her research. Upon the completion of the day, the group concluded that they would create a physical memorial and organize a commemoration ceremony that would be open to the public. The following year, the group organized a public commemoration ser­ vice on the seventieth anniversary of the liberation of Ravensbrück. They brought with them a memorial sphere to commemorate the lesbian women and girls who were murdered at Ravensbrück and Uckermark. Susanne Kuntz and artist Petra Abel designed the sphere, and Abel constructed it us­ ing red clay. Reflecting back on that day, Lisa Steiniger recalled, “That com­ memoration ceremony was a milestone for me. . . . I was deeply moved and just thought: Finally.”7 In May 2016, the group resolved to submit a request to permanently place the memorial sphere on the Ravensbrück grounds, thus memorializing the lesbian prisoners at the site in perpetuity. That year, the International Ra­ vensbrück Committee, an association that represents the interests of former Ravensbrück prisoners, met in Vienna to discuss a number of issues relating to the preservation of historical memory at the site. When the proposal for a permanent commemoration of lesbian victims was brought to the floor, the majority of the voting members were in favor, although the representatives from Poland, Russia, and one from Germany voted against it. Subsequently, the organizers of the memorial sphere, with the knowledge that they would have the backing of the International Ravensbrück Committee, officially es­ tablished themselves as the Initiative of Autonomous Feminist Women and Lesbians from Germany and Austria and submitted an official request to permanently place the sphere at the Ravensbrück Memorial. The application included a list of 644 supporting international groups, organizations, and individuals from thirty different countries.8 The inscription that the Initiative proposed for the memorial sphere read, “In memory of all the lesbian women and girls in Ravensbrück and Uck­ ermarck women’s concentration camps. Lesbian women were regarded as ‘degenerate’ and as ‘antisocial,’ as resistant and insane, and persecuted and

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Figure 6.1. The “Memorial Sphere” (Gedenkkugel) for the lesbians killed at Ravensbrück concen­ tration camp, used by the Initiative of Autonomous Feminist Women and Lesbians from Germany and Austria during commemoration ceremonies between 2015 and 2021. Photo: April 20, 2015, courtesy of Initiative Autonome Feministische Frauen und Lesben aus Deutschland und Österreich.

murdered for other reasons. You are not forgotten!”9 Lisa Steininger, one of the organizers, later commented on the inscription. “What’s special for me is that it highlights the various structures of persecution that lesbians were—and are—exposed to. It also stimulates critical reflection and further thinking.”10 The International Advisory Board of the Brandenburg Memorials Foun­ dation rejected the application in December 2016. In its official response to the Initiative, the advisory board stated that there had been “very contro­ versial discussions” during its review of the application. Among the most ardent opponents of the application was historian Alexander Zinn, a for­ mer spokesperson of the Lesbian and Gay Union of Germany (Lesben- und Schwulenverband Deutschland, LSVD) and the International Advisory Board’s representative for gay victims. He claimed that lesbians were not persecuted by the Nazi regime, since Paragraph 175 applied only to men. Furthermore, he asserted that the attempts to portray lesbians as victims amounted to the creation of a “legend of lesbian persecution” and a “fal­ sification of history” for the achievement of present-day political interests.

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Referring to the Initiative’s commemoration ceremony from the previous year, Zinn dismissed their work as laying some “random memorial” during a “wild ceremony.” He concluded by stating that the fact that the Initiative had now submitted an official application was an affront to the advisory board.11 The following year, the Ravensbrück Memorial and the Brandenburg Me­ morials Foundation hosted a symposium titled “Identity Politics and Com­ memoration: Lesbian and Gay Commemorative Cultures under Discussion,” which brought together researchers and activists from different perspectives. Through a series of educational events, including an exhibit and a lecture by Initiative member Wiebke Haß, the symposium was intended to foster productive discussion on the fate of lesbian victims. Unfortunately, most of the representatives of the advisory board did not take the opportunity to participate in the discussions. After its first application in 2016, the Initiative submitted applications to every subsequent advisory board meeting (twice per year). Over the course of five years, the board denied each application, insisting that historical research did not corroborate the claim that the Nazis persecuted lesbians. Holocaust researcher Anna Hájková asserted that the advisory board had not done its homework. “There is ignorance of the decades of feminist and lesbian research, through which an incredible amount has been achieved,” stated Hájková.12 “It’s actually disastrous how much interest and research there was in the late 1980s and early 1990s, and now we’re sitting here thirty years later and fighting the same battles.”13 It was only in July 2021 that the advisory board of the Brandenburg Memorials Foundation approved the placement of the monument at the Ravensbrück Memorial. For the successful application, the Initiative had ap­ plied collectively with several organizations, including the Federal Magnus Hirschfeld Foundation, the Lesbian and Gay Union of Germany, and oth­ ers. The approved memorial will have a slightly modified inscription: “In memory of all lesbian women and girls in the Ravensbrück and Uckermark women’s concentration camps. They were persecuted, imprisoned, and even murdered. You are not forgotten.” The dedication of the monument is scheduled for April 2022 on the seventy-seventh anniversary of the liberation of Ravensbrück.14 As the case of the lesbian memorial sphere demonstrates, public com­ memoration ceremonies and the construction of physical memorials are moments in which citizens, activists, scholars, and politicians most explic­ itly and directly talk about how the past should be remembered, the best way to represent history in a public space, and the lasting legacies of the past on the present. The fight over the Ravensbrück memorial sphere is also

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evidence that the successes in the campaign to acknowledge some queer victims—namely gay men—were not equally enjoyed by all in the LGBTQ+ community. While the Ravensbrück debate centers on the experiences of a specific group, it brings to the foreground of national consciousness many of the discussions that had taken place in various venues since the end of the Second World War: How should West Germans understand the Nazi regime? What constitutes “persecution”? What did it mean to be a victim of National Socialism, and who had the authority to decide who would be con­ sidered a victim? What responsibilities or obligations did the West German government—and the general public—have toward the diverse survivors of Nazi terror?

Public Commemoration Ceremonies in the federal Republic Years before the first efforts for physical memorials, individuals and organi­ zations had honored the memory of gay victims during commemoration ceremonies across West Germany. In November 1975, Munich’s new Society for Sexual Equality (Verein für sexuelle Gleichberechtigung, VSG) organized one of the earliest documented initiatives in this vein. The VSG and mem­ bers of gay communities throughout southern West Germany gathered on a snowy Sunday to place a wreath at the Dachau Memorial to commemorate the men with the pink triangle. Like the countless annual ceremonies that would come after it, the VSG’s wreath-laying played a dual role. While it commemorated the Nazis’ gay victims, it also sought to educate West Ger­ mans. In a press release that was distributed to newspapers across the Federal Republic, the VSG organizers explained that the ceremony was never meant to be solely about the past. From its inception, the ceremony was intended to raise awareness that gay survivors had been denied restitution and that West Germany had continued to use Paragraph 175 after the defeat of the Nazis. “It’s difficult for the public to grasp that Nazi injustice has been legally justi­ fied and rationalized [in the Federal Republic] because we commemorate and honor Nazi victims all year round,” stated the 1975 VSG press release. “But who’s missing?” the author asked. “There is no coverage of gay victims in the mainstream press.”15 The connection between commemoration, education, and calls for resti­ tution became a standard characteristic of nearly all the ceremonies in West Germany honoring the Nazis’ gay victims. In May 1980, the Munich chapter of Homosexuals and the Church (Homosexuelle und Kirche, HuK) held a commemoration event at the Protestant Church of Reconciliation (Versöh­ nungskirche) on the former Dachau camp grounds. It included a worship

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service, a lecture on the history of homosexuality under the swastika, and the laying of a wreath in honor of those who were killed.16 The Süddeutsche Zeitung, a leading mainstream newspaper, reported that the worship service was meant to be a first step in making the fate of gay Germans during the Third Reich known to the public. Protestant pastor Hans Philippi, who led the event, proclaimed that “the churches have to play a special role in the discussion with these disadvantaged groups” since “supposed Christian mor­ als” were at least partially responsible for Germany sending gay men to their deaths in the camps.17 In the decades to come, nondenominational religious groups, especially the HuK, contributed to the push to acknowledge, me­ morialize, and ultimately compensate the gay men who were persecuted by the Nazi regime. Beginning in 1984, gay groups in East Germany began laying a wreath at the main memorial at the former Sachsenhausen camp north of Berlin; they demanded that a plaque to gay prisoners be installed on the camp grounds.18 As part of the annual gay pride celebrations the following year, gay groups in West Berlin traveled to East Germany, where one of their representatives gave a commemorative speech at Sachsenhausen. Upon returning to the Fed­ eral Republic, the historian and activist Hans-Joachim Müller wrote in a press release that the remembrance of gay victims had suddenly become “official,” since East Germany had granted permission for the commemoration.19 By the 1990s, gay organizations staged annual commemoration ceremonies at nearly all concentration camp memorial sites in Germany. In fact, a trip to the Dachau Memorial to commemorate gay victims had become a standard component of gay pride events in Munich by the end of the decade. Public acts of commemoration were another way in which the Nazi past and con­ temporary gay rights became bound together. At the same time that East German officials signaled a shift in their ap­ proach to the past by allowing citizens to honor gay victims, a West German politician at the highest position also made waves with his articulation of Germany’s Nazi past. On May 8, 1985, during the ceremony commemorat­ ing the fortieth anniversary of the defeat of Nazism, West German president Richard von Weizsäcker stood at the podium of the national parliament and became the first federal official to acknowledge that gay men were among the victims killed during the Nazi regime. He stated, Today we mourn all the dead of the war and the tyranny. In particular, we commemorate the six million Jews who were murdered in Ger­ man concentration camps. We commemorate all nations who suffered in the war, especially the countless citizens of the Soviet Union and

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Poland who lost their lives. As Germans, we mourn our own compa­ triots who perished as soldiers, during air raids at home, in captivity or during expulsion. We commemorate the Sinti and Romany gypsies, the homosexuals and the mentally ill who were killed, as well as the people who had to die for their religious or political beliefs. We commemo­ rate the hostages who were executed. We recall the victims of the re­ sistance movements in all the countries occupied by us. As Germans, we pay homage to the victims of the German resistance—among the public, the military, the churches, the workers and trade unions, and the communists. We commemorate those who did not actively resist, but preferred to die instead of violating their consciences.20 For gay advocates or anyone seeking substantive information on the nature of the injustice against the gay community during the era of the Holocaust, Weizsäcker’s statement left much to be desired. He mentioned homosexuals only after mourning the German soldiers who were killed during the war. Moreover, he named homosexuals in passing as one of the “other” groups who were killed alongside the Roma and Sinti, people with disabilities, and people who “had to die” because of their political or religious beliefs. The use of the passive formulation “were killed” gave listeners no indication as to how or why these groups were killed or who killed them. Their deaths were, one could be forgiven for thinking, perhaps the unfortunate consequence of war, rather than the result of intentional and murderous policies. And yet, in including homosexuals alongside groups—such as Jews—that were acknowl­ edged as victims, Weizsäcker’s comments at least rhetorically brought gay men into the national understanding of Nazi victims. While the president’s speech did not lead to any concrete policy changes in regard to the Federal Republic’s stance toward gay victims, it had broken with decades of national discourse, policy, and memory politics that defined gay men as criminals. In the summer of 1989, a different type of commemorative act took place that again brought pink triangle memories to the attention of the West Ger­ man public. After decades of never speaking publicly about his experience, a gay concentration camp survivor decided to break his personal silence. Nineteen members of a Bremen gay organization traveled with the survivor, “Karl B.” (pseudonym for Karl Gorath), on a commemorative trip to Aus­ chwitz, where he had been imprisoned. According to one source, the twenty men resolved to make the journey to Auschwitz partially to honor all the people who died in the death camps, but also to “confront the correlations between the past and present in Germany,” where the government had yet to compensate the suffering of men like Karl B. The Bremen Gay Help and

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Advice Center released a statement indicating that “part of the mission [of the center] is to explore and discover which historical roots fuel present-day violence against gays. The trip to Auschwitz was an attempt to trace these causes.”21 The trip of an openly gay concentration camp survivor to Auschwitz gained extensive coverage in the mainstream West German press, and Karl B. became somewhat of a celebrity through a series of interviews in major newspapers.22 This is partially because he personalized a chapter of history that had remained rather abstract in the public sphere. The news­ paper articles that brought up the Nazi persecution of gay men at all did so in generalizations and tended to focus on the recitation of statistics. Now, with Karl B., the public could see the face of a man who the West Ger­ man state had denied for decades was a victim of Nazi injustice. Suddenly, the issues of acknowledgment, commemoration, and compensation of gay victims became more personal. The Bremen Gay Help and Advice Center acknowledged that Karl B. had been awarded a meager onetime payment in 1987 from the city-state of Bremen, but then pointedly asked readers: “Does 5,000 Deutsche Marks come close to truly making amends for six years in a concentration camp?”23 The Bremen center published a pamphlet documenting the landmark trip that included information about Karl B., photographs from the trip, and short articles written by scholars. One of the main goals of the pamphlet was to urge readers not to be complacent with the advancements in legal rights and social tolerance that gays and lesbians had fought for in the previous decade of activism. The past—represented here by the poignant emblem of Auschwitz—acted as a reminder that there still remained much work to be done before everyone was treated equally. If West Germans were to claim to treat gays and lesbians equally in the present, they also had to make amends for past injustices.

The Construction of Pink Triangle memorials Beginning in the mid-1980s, similar issues were at stake in the push to include gay victims in the construction of physical memorials and monuments. As was the case with the various commemorative ceremonies in previous years, queer activists and scholars themselves drove the movement to memorialize gay victims with monuments. In October 1979, city officials in Amsterdam announced plans to construct a memorial to the gay people persecuted by the Nazi regime.24 Gay West Germans were dismayed to learn that the gov­ ernment of another country was memorializing the victims of a German

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regime before either German state had even acknowledged the suffering of gay victims as legitimate. “The Dutch are shaming the Germans,” wrote a reporter in Gay News Germany.25 One West German citizen wrote a letter to the editor of the Tageszeitung expressing both his support for the proposed memorial in Amsterdam and his outrage that the Federal Republic was not yet planning to build one in Bonn.26 When the monument in the Netherlands was completed nearly a decade later, there were mixed sentiments from the West German gay community. On the one hand, many expressed relief and a sense of success derived from the fact that these victims had finally received recognition, even though it was not from the West German government. The West German gay press covered in detail the dedication ceremony of the Amsterdam monument on September 5, 1987. In a speech to two hundred attendees, the mayor of Amsterdam declared, “The pink triangle represents persecution during the Second World War, but also for the individual suffering that continues today.” Indeed, while the monument’s symbolism alluded to the Holocaust specifically, the monument was ultimately dedicated to “all women and men who have ever been persecuted because of their homosexuality.”27 On the day of the dedication, the mayor continued by highlighting the ambitions of the monument to both commemorate the past and call for a better time ahead. “This monument should become a symbol that points to the future, to a coexisting community in which homosexuality is an integrated part of life.” Recognizing that this monument was the first of its kind to be funded and supported by a government, the mayor highlighted its significance not just for gay people in Amsterdam, but also for gay communities worldwide. “I hope that this monument has a radiance that shines across all differences and boundaries.”28 One commentator in southern Germany later wrote that “we can only hope. But that’s not true here in Bavaria.”29 While it was a time to celebrate, it also highlighted the continued absence of a memorial in Germany. In the fall of 1984, West German gay groups learned of plans for another memorial to the Nazis’ gay victims. Yet again, it would not be in Germany. A collective of gay organizations in neighboring Austria had received permis­ sion to install a commemorative plaque at the Mauthausen Concentration Camp Memorial. On December 9, 1984, the Homosexual Initiative of Vienna dedicated the world’s first memorial to the gay victims of Nazi persecution (while plans for the Amsterdam memorial were announced in 1979, it was not completed until 1987). An estimated 150 people attended the dedication ceremony at Mauthausen, during which organizers unveiled the plaque: a large, pink granite stone in the shape of a triangle. The inscription “Beaten

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to Death, Silenced to Death” called attention both to the historical persecu­ tion of the Nazis’ gay victims and the subsequent silencing of their suffering. The speech by the representative of the Homosexual Initiative of Vienna was both a commemoration and a warning. “As we gather here to dedicate this plaque, it may be easy to think that the terrors of the Third Reich could not possibly happen again. That is a dangerous fallacy. . . . Just because there is a bit more tolerance in the 1970s and 1980s, gays shouldn’t be lulled into thinking that something so horrible couldn’t happen again. Their gay broth­ ers and sisters in Weimar would never have imagined the horrors that were coming either.” The representative ended his speech by connecting local his­ tory to global human rights. “Whoever still doubts the necessity to fight for the human rights of the gay community, to be engaged with the movement, should take a tour around this former concentration camp. Hopefully, it will occur to this person why it’s still necessary, especially when he or she experi­ ences the indescribable cold down in the gas chamber.”30 Soon, West German gay groups coordinated their efforts to establish pink triangle memorials on German soil. The earliest campaign for a monument in West Germany was directed at the Dachau Concentration Camp Memo­ rial. In February 1985, the Munich chapter of the HuK submitted a petition in the name of several Munich gay groups to the International Dachau Com­ mittee (Comite International de Dachau, CID), an organization of former prisoners that helped run the Dachau Concentration Camp Memorial. The proposed monument was a large triangle made of pink marble with an in­ scription that read, “Beaten to Death / Silenced to Death / To the Homo­ sexual Victims of National Socialism / From the Homosexual Initiatives of Munich / 1985.” When the CID rejected the application multiple times, it sparked a public debate that lasted ten years. This was not the first time there had been opposition to memorializing Dachau’s gay inmates. Twenty-five years earlier, Hans Zauner, then mayor of the town of Dachau, told a reporter, “You must remember that many criminals and homosexuals were in Dachau. Do you want a memorial for such people?”31 By the end of 1986, countless letters of protest had flooded in from abroad, especially from the United States.32 Despite international pres­ sure, the CID stood steadfast in its rejection of the pink triangle monument. Some concluded that the CID was “not any better than the Nazis.”33 In the summer of 1988, federal politicians, including the leader of the German Social Democratic Party, Hans-Jochen Vogel, wrote letters to the CID expressing their support of the pink triangle monument.34 That same year, when it became apparent that the CID would not revisit its decision, the HuK turned to the Protestant Church of Reconciliation for support. As

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an autonomous religious institution on the Dachau memorial grounds, the church did not require the CID’s approval for what it could or could not memorialize. In 1988, the church agreed to house the pink triangle memo­ rial in its courtyard. That is where it remained until June 1995, when, after a decade of struggle and years of growing international pressure, new CID leadership allowed it into the camp museum’s memorial hall. Gay men were finally included in the official memory presented by the Dachau Concentra­ tion Camp Memorial.35 Dachau was not the only concentration camp memorial at which gay groups encountered resistance. The efforts to honor gay victims at the BergenBelsen Memorial offers insight into the elaborate and often clandestine

Figure 6.2. This monument, made of pink marble, was created by the Homosexual Initiatives of Munich, to be dedicated to the Nazis’ gay victims and installed at the Dachau Concentration Camp Memorial for the fortieth anniversary of liberation in 1985. The inscription translates to “Beaten to Death / Silenced to Death.” It was not allowed to be placed in Dachau’s memorial hall until 1995. Courtesy of Wikicommons user Dedd.

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negotiations between researchers, activists, and politicians over how best to interpret, preserve, and present the history of the Nazi past to the pub­ lic. When the first permanent memorial at Bergen-Belsen was dedicated in 1952, the inscription wall, which was a primary component of the memorial, excluded gays from the list of victims. In the 1980s, local gay activists and scholars coordinated their efforts to pressure the Bergen-Belsen Memorial administration to include gay victims on the inscription wall or elsewhere on the memorial grounds. Amid these efforts, the state government of Lower Saxony announced in April 1985 that it would oversee and fund a renovation of the Bergen-Belsen Concentration Camp Memorial. Included in this reno­ vation would be an expanded documentation center and new permanent exhibition to present the history of the camp to visitors. Gay organizations saw this as a perfect opportunity to incorporate the his­ tory of the Nazis’ gay victims into the narrative presented by the memorial site. The Hanover Action Group on Homosexuality (Aktionsgruppe HomoSexualität Hannover, HSH) began contacting local and state politicians to garner support for the inclusion of information on pink triangle prisoners at the renovated Bergen-Belsen Memorial. HSH correspondence often cited the May 1985 speech by Federal Republic president Weizsäcker as a prec­ edent and clear signal that it was time for West Germany to finally acknowl­ edge gay people as victims of the Nazi regime.36 And yet, the Bergen-Belsen administration stalled. As Hanover gay groups focused on the Bergen-Belsen Memorial, news broke that the Dachau Memorial administration had re­ jected the pink triangle monument for a second time. Both Bergen-Belsen and Dachau, two state-funded memorial sites located 425 miles apart, had decided, yet again, to omit the gay community from the official history. For the new National Association on Homosexuality (Bundesverband Homosex­ ualität, BVH), this required a nationwide response. They coordinated a series of protests in Lower Saxony and Bavaria to take place in January 1987 against the concerted and deliberate exclusion of gay people and other groups from the national memory.37 The call to include gay victims in the new information center at BergenBelsen generally had broad support among politically progressive organiza­ tions, as well as other Nazi-victim groups that had also been ignored. For example, when Hanover gay groups held a ceremony in January 1987 to commemorate Bergen-Belsen’s pink triangle prisoners, it was attended by representatives from multiple groups that supported the inclusion of gay victims in the larger understanding of Germany’s Nazi past: the Roma and Sinti communities, the women’s movement, the Social Democrats, and the Green Party.38

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Despite this broad support, gay groups discovered the following month that the first planning sessions for the renovation of the memorial site had already occurred. Representatives from several victims’ organizations, in­ cluding Jews, Roma, Protestants, and Catholics, had provided input. Yet the state’s office had not invited anyone from gay organizations. Furthermore, the planning sessions were closed to the public and had not been advertised.39 The BVH wrote to Lower Saxony’s state minister on federal and European affairs, Heinrich Jürgens, whose office was heading the renovation project. “Why weren’t the gays invited?” the BVH demanded to know. “If we are going to look back on and reexamine the Nazi past today, we have to break with the tradition of silencing the persecution of the so-called ‘unpleasant’ victim groups. The history of gay persecution must be included.”40 The Green Party in the Lower Saxony parliament also wrote to Jürgens to express their dismay at his decisions to keep the renovation discussions closed to the public—especially since the project was funded with taxpayer dollars—and to invite representatives from some victim groups while excluding others.41 The Hanover Action Group on Homosexuality wrote to Jürgens and bluntly asked, “Why have you been ignoring our letters?”42 Jürgens continued to ignore the local and national gay organizations, but his undersecretary Stefan Diekwisch proved to be a better ally. Diekwisch admitted that he was not knowledgeable about the history of the men with the pink triangle. To remedy this, he invited local experts to his office so that he could learn more about this chapter of Holocaust history. The group who met with Diekwisch on May 4, 1987, included Rüdiger Lautmann, a profes­ sor of sociology at the nearby University of Bremen whose 1977 publication was the first archival study of the Nazis’ gay victims; Hans-Georg Stümke, a researcher and gay rights activist whose groundbreaking book Pink Triangles, Pink Lists provided insight into Nazi anti-gay ideology and shared testimony from gay survivors; Helmut Kentler, a professor of psychology and sexual scientist at the University of Hanover; and Werner Koch, a pastor who lived during the Third Reich and witnessed the persecution of gay Germans and had since become an advocate for the gay community. Noticeably absent was anyone whose expertise was the fate of LGBTQ+ people beyond gay men, although Ilse Kokula and Claudia Schoppmann had already begun research­ ing the fate of lesbians in the Third Reich by that time. Diekwisch shared with his guests that planning for the new exhibit had been difficult because while there was a desire to represent the diversity of experiences of Bergen-Belsen prisoners, some stakeholders asserted that in­ cluding the various “other” victims would establish a “comparison of suffer­ ing.” After learning more about the history of the pink triangle, including

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personal stories of individual gay victims, Diekwisch assured the men that those arguing against the inclusion of gay victims would not get in the way of telling the truth.43 Several months later, Diekwisch announced publicly that gay male victims would be included in the new exhibit and information center.44 While it was a cause for celebration, it was only a partial victory. The state government left it up to gay organizers themselves to collect and pres­ ent the information on pink triangle prisoners. The Bergen-Belsen Memo­ rial’s newly appointed chief of research, Thomas Rahe, worked with local experts, such as Rainer Hoffschildt, and gay organizations to call for help in identifying and collecting artifacts and stories. They asked people to talk to their family members, go through their attics, and rummage through their closets to find any information that would be useful in telling this history in the new exhibit. They ran wanted ads in local and national gay press outlets and reached out to international organizations for support.45 The groundbreaking ceremony for the new documentation center at the Bergen-Belsen Concentration Camp Memorial took place on December 2, 1988, and the Hanover Action Group on Homosexuality was present as an of­ ficial guest of the Lower Saxony Ministry on Federal and European Affairs.46 When the new exhibit was opened to the public on April 22, 1990, it included the most up-to-date research available on the men with the pink triangle. The inscription wall, which acted as the primary monument at the memorial site, continued to omit any mention of gay victims. Yet activists knew that physical monuments were not the only way to memorialize victims. Education could also be a form of memorialization, and in that way, inclusion in the new infor­ mation center finally memorialized Bergen-Belsen’s pink triangle prisoners. Initiators of pink triangle memorials did not always face such bitter resis­ tance. In the early 1990s, when Jörg Lenk campaigned to construct a memo­ rial in Cologne, the entire process went relatively smoothly. This had much to do with local politics and demographics. Cologne has historically been known as among the most gay-friendly cities in Germany. Lenk later recalled that gays and lesbians occupied important positions in the city administra­ tion and local businesses, so getting the necessary permits and funding to build a memorial in the heart of the city was only a matter of time.47 This “gay conspiracy,” as Lenk jokingly called it, certainly contributed to the lack of opposition to the memorial, but just as important was Cologne’s position as a forerunner in the development of Alltagsgeschichte, or “everyday history.” Proponents of Alltagsgeschichte had already begun efforts to approach the study of the Third Reich from the perspective of the different victim groups.

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At the public dedication of the monument on June 24, 1995, Cologne’s mayor Norbert Burger indicated that the “everyday history” and acknowl­ edgment of non-Jewish victims may not have spread far beyond the ivory tower. “Fifty years after the end of the Nazi regime, the memory of the persecution against gay people in the Third Reich isn’t widely accepted,” he told the crowd. “For too long, gays have been excluded from the collective memory. Today, it can’t be questioned that the Nazi state persecuted gay people. Historical facts don’t lie.” Building on trends set during commemo­ ration ceremonies of the previous decade, Burger stated that Cologne’s new memorial bound together the past and present. “How necessary is it to re­ member and contemplate the Nazi persecution of homosexuals?” he asked the crowd. “Recent events pull our attention back to this history. Minorities in Germany are becoming victims of right-wing extremist violence again.”48 The history of the men with the pink triangle was presented as a reminder to Germans about the dangers of unchecked violence. By the summer of 1995, memorials to the Nazis’ gay victims had been established in six locations throughout Germany: the Neuengamme Con­ centration Camp Memorial in Hamburg (1985), the Nollendorfplatz in West Berlin (1989), the Sachsenhausen Concentration Camp Memorial in Oran­ ienburg (1992), in Frankfurt am Main (1994), in Cologne (1995), and finally the Dachau Concentration Camp Memorial (1995). Soon thereafter, German artist Gunter Demnig installed fifty commemo­ rative plaques along the sidewalks of Berlin. Each is ten centimeters (ap­ proximately four inches) square, and the brass plate on the surface lists the name and life dates of someone persecuted by the Nazis. Known as Stolper­ steine (stumbling stones), these small memorials mark the last known address where an individual lived before being deported, killed, or forced to flee by the Nazi regime or its supporters. In placing the Stolpersteine directly into the ground, Demnig hoped that when pedestrians stumbled upon them, it would prompt them to pause and think about the person memorialized on the plaque. By commemorating a particular person with each Stolperstein, Demnig sought to move beyond the anonymity of memorials that com­ memorated entire groups and to “return individual names to places where people once lived.” Passersby encounter the Stolpersteine unexpectedly on busy streets and cozy residential neighborhoods, thus localizing the Holo­ caust by demonstrating that Nazi persecution began in the heart of everyday life, not in a far-off ghetto or concentration camp. When asked by a journal­ ist to comment on the Stolpersteine, a schoolchild replied, “You don’t trip on a Stolperstein; you stumble with your head and your heart.”49

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When Demnig installed the first Stolperstein, in May 1996, they were il­ legal since he did not seek permission or permits. The memorials were well received by the victims’ relatives, and soon the project received widespread support. Individuals and organizations can apply to sponsor the installment of a Stolperstein, but Demnig still installs most of them himself. As of Decem­ ber 2019, there had been seventy-five thousand Stolpersteine laid throughout Europe, making it the largest decentralized memorial in the world.50 Stolp­ ersteine commemorate a wide range of the Nazis’ victims, including Jews, Roma and Sinti, people with disabilities, Jehovah’s Witnesses, Black people, political opponents, and homeless people, among others. Since the early 2000s, over eighty Stolpersteine have been dedicated to gay men victimized by the Nazi regime,51 and in November 2015, the first Stolperstein dedicated to a lesbian victim was installed in Berlin.52 The proliferation of the Stolpersteine project by the twenty-first century demonstrates a widespread, grassroots interest in and commitment to uncovering, documenting, and commemo­ rating the diversity of those targeted by the Nazi regime. Amid this atmosphere of commemorating the Nazis’ so-called forgotten victims in unified Germany, LGBTQ+ organizations established six more memorials to queer people persecuted during the Third Reich: at the Buch­ enwald Concentration Camp in Weimar (2006), the Tiergarten Park in Ber­ lin (2008), in Nuremberg (2013), Lübeck (2016), and Munich (2017), and at the Ravensbrück Concentration Camp in Fürstenberg (2022). There are cur­ rently twelve memorials in Germany dedicated to the Nazis’ queer victims. In many respects, the construction of these memorials and the Stolpersteine represented the achievement of what gay activists and scholars had striven toward for decades: the acknowledgment of the injustice, persecution, and murder of gay men by the Nazi regime. But while this was cause enough for celebration, activists and organizers saw it as but one necessary next step on a long road ahead. Most of the monuments were dedicated specifically to gay men. There was still much work to be done to research and raise awareness of the fate of lesbians in Nazi Germany. And even by the mid-1990s, there was essentially no research on what happened to bisexual or trans people during the Third Reich. Moreover, gay activists—and increasingly, heterosexual members of society—asserted that the construction of memorials came with an obliga­ tion to do more than acknowledge past injustices. During the dedication cer­ emony of the city’s pink triangle monument in 1995, the mayor of Cologne said, “A memorial is important, but it doesn’t lessen the need for official com­ pensation. The shameful, hesitant, and inadequate apology for those who,

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until recently, weren’t even considered Nazi victims, must be translated into effective and timely aid so that it can actually help those who were affected.”53

American memorialization of Pink Triangle Victims The construction of memorials also contributed to forging transatlantic gay histories and identities. The American gay press followed closely the process of memorialization in West Germany. When the pink granite triangle plaque was installed at Neuengamme in May 1985, San Francisco’s Advocate reported on it.54 Readers of the gay press in North America could also follow the bit­ ter struggle over the proposed memorial at Dachau. In October 1986, the Body Politic reported that “Dachau lives on in committee’s rejection of pink triangle monument.”55 When the memorial was finally installed in Dachau’s memorial hall, the West German organizers acknowledged that pressure from activists, politicians, and philanthropists abroad—especially from the United States—played a large part in the successful outcome.56 The transnational activism of the 1960s and 1970s had forged lasting bonds and a sense of shared fate among gay communities in Europe and North America. American gay communities felt invested in acknowledging and honoring gay Holocaust victims even though it was not a part of their own national past. They claimed it as their history because their identity as gay tied them into a community that transcended national boundaries. Moreover, the process of supporting these memorialization efforts—signing petitions, writing letters, publishing articles—furthered the sense of camara­ derie and strengthened the shared identity across national lines. Americans not only reported on German memorialization of Hitler’s gay victims. They themselves also memorialized the men with the pink triangle. Thanks to the work of gay rights activists, fictional accounts such as Bent, and the growing literature of historical scholarship, there was an increasing awareness in America that Germany had murdered thousands of gay men during the Third Reich. Consequently, there was much anticipation to see how the new United States Holocaust Memorial Museum (USHMM) would address the Nazi campaign against homosexuality when plans for the mu­ seum were announced. A gay newspaper in Munich excitedly shared with its readers the news that a national Holocaust museum would be built in the heart of Washington, DC. “The neglect of gay victims will finally be recti­ fied,” the announcement stated. “Scholars are already preparing information to include in the museum.”57 Additionally, as the nation’s official voice on the Holocaust, the way that the museum handled the gay victims would

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also be understood as the US government’s stance on gays and their place in contemporary society. This point was not lost on museum administrators. An internal memo addressed the inclusion of information on gay victims: “There will be hell to pay if we do not, and rightfully so.”58 It was not always taken for granted that the men with the pink triangle would be included as victims in the nation’s Holocaust museum. The de­ bate centered primarily on whether the Holocaust referred specifically to the genocide of the Jews, or if the term was broader and encompassed the Nazis’ terrorization, persecution, and murder of other groups as well. Mem­ bers of the Gay Activists Alliance (GAA) of Washington advocated for the inclusion of gay victims, as well as the other non-Jewish victims.59 When the President’s Commission on the Holocaust—created by US president Jimmy Carter to compile a report on the establishment and maintenance of an ap­ propriate national memorial to those who perished in the Holocaust—was released in September 1979, it made no mention of the Nazis’ gay victims.60 Four months later, the GAA wrote directly to President Carter urging that the proposed museum include “appropriate exhibits relating to the Nazi campaign against homosexuals.” Moreover, the group asked Carter “to ap­ point at least one openly gay man or woman to the United States Holocaust Memorial Council” so that the gay community would have a voice.61 The group found support from Elie Wiesel, the famed Holocaust survivor and chairman of the President’s Commission on the Holocaust. Wiesel advo­ cated for an inclusive understanding of the Nazis’ multiple victims. There should be “no omission, absolutely not, but no equation,” Wiesel stated.62 The White House settled on the broader designation, stating that the mu­ seum would cover “the systematic, state-sponsored extermination of 6 mil­ lion Jews and the murder of millions of other victims.”63 Another ally was Monroe Freedman, the first executive director of the US Holocaust Memorial Council (USHMC), which replaced the President’s Commission in 1980. Within weeks of the GAA’s letter to President Carter in January 1980, Freedman replied to the group, stating, “You can rest as­ sured that the memorial will appropriately honor the memory of all those who were the victims of Nazi oppression. . . . Any documented materials you may be able to supply the Council relating to the homosexual experi­ ence during the Holocaust would be most helpful.”64 The GAA answered Freedman’s call and in May 1981 presented the USHMC members with an unpublished English translation of scholar Rüdiger Lautmann’s 1977 book, which remained the latest and most up-to-date archival research on the Nazi campaign against homosexuality. Later that year, before stepping down as

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the council’s director, Freedman wrote to the GAA, “I think you are wise, as well as morally right, in insisting upon scrupulous historical accuracy.”65 After two years of back-and-forth between the USHMC and gay advocates such as the GAA, the council decided in April 1983 that the museum would make explicit reference to the fate of gay men and lesbians.66 Ultimately, international gay advocacy networks played a vital role in this decision. Clint Hockenberry, the American liaison of the International Gay Association, for­ warded Monroe Freedman’s call for information on the Nazis’ gay victims to his colleagues in Europe. It was through this network of local, national, and international organizations that the Washington-based GAA received the English translation of Rüdiger Lautmann’s book. In the end, the transna­ tional connections, which pink triangle memories helped forge in the 1960s and 1970s, were instrumental in sharing information that would shape na­ tional memories of the Holocaust in the United States. Once the council decided that gay victims would be included, the mu­ seum administrators were faced with the lack of physical material relating to the Nazis’ anti-gay policies. Additionally, the scholarship on the topic re­ mained broad and general; there was essentially nothing, except for the au­ tobiography by Heinz Heger, about specific individuals available in English. So, the museum turned to researchers and everyday citizens for help. Ads were placed in American gay periodicals, asking for readers to come forward if they had any physical material, such as documents, letters, or pictures, pertaining to gay life in Nazi Germany.67 The USHMM also hired Klaus Muel­ ler, a historian at the University of Amsterdam, to help lead the research on gay victims. Using his connections throughout Europe, Mueller was able to provide vital information for the museum’s permanent exhibit, such as con­ centration camp intake photographs of gay prisoners at Auschwitz, arrest records from German police stations, and even interviews with survivors. One of the major projects that Mueller spearheaded while working at the museum was the inclusion of biographies of gay men and lesbians for the personal identity cards that visitors receive at the beginning of the perma­ nent exhibition.68 Mueller also served as the museum’s contact person for scholars, gay and lesbian media, and the queer community. The dedication ceremonies and the official opening of the museum in the nation’s capital in April 1993 happened to coincide with a massive March on Washington for Lesbian, Gay, and Bi Equal Rights and Liberation. Steps away from the new US Holocaust Memorial Museum, hundreds of thousands of gay Americans carried rainbow flags and pink triangles as they demanded legal equality.69 That also meant that hundreds of thousands of energized

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and politically minded gay activists were present for the opening of the mu­ seum and would be scrutinizing how it dealt with this chapter of Holocaust history. The simultaneity of the events garnered attention in gay and main­ stream press outlets. In anticipation of the event, the Detroit News published an article titled “The Pink Triangle Tells Another Side of the Holocaust,” and gay newspapers such as the Washington Blade released a series of articles with titles like “Forgotten Victims: New Museum Documents the Lives of Gay Holocaust Victims.”70 On April 23, 1993, on the eve of the gay rights march, Klaus Mueller told a crowd gathered on the museum’s plaza that the inclusion of the men with the pink triangle in the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum, located on the National Mall in America’s capital, repre­ sented the breaking of “an unholy tradition of silence.”71 One of the gay men who was in Washington that weekend was Corbin Lyday. Originally from Illinois, Lyday was living in Oakland, California, while attending graduate school in the early 1990s. “I traveled to the na­ tion’s capital for the gay rights march, but it was important for me to go to the new Holocaust museum that was opening the same weekend.” Lyday had always been interested in history and was researching the nature of au­ thoritarianism for his degrees in political science. Therefore, it was academic interest that drew him to Holocaust history rather than familial or cultural connections. “There had been a fund-raising campaign for what became the USHMM that went through different universities back in the late 1980s or early 1990s. It’s not like I gave a lot of money. I was a poor grad student, but I felt it was important for our country to have a Holocaust museum, so I gave what I could.”72 At the time of the museum’s opening in 1993, Lyday was thirty-eight and did not know much at all about what happened to gay people during the Holocaust. “I knew that they were probably persecuted, but I didn’t know any details. I couldn’t name a single book about it.” By the late 1970s, he had become aware of the pink triangle as a gay symbol and its connection to Nazi history. “It was my understanding at the time that Harvey Milk was the one who took that image and popularized it to remind people what happened to German gays when they didn’t say anything. He was gay and Jewish, so it seemed like a natural fit.”73 As he stood in line with his father to enter the museum on opening day, Lyday hoped to learn more about the Nazis’ gay victims. The Los Angeles Times reported that “the first wave of public visitors included many homo­ sexuals, one of the targets of the Nazis. They wore clothing indicating they took part in the march for gay rights on Sunday.”74 Lyday also recalled that “countless” gay men and lesbians were among the first in the museum.

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“Something happened that I’ll never forget,” Lyday stated during an in­ terview over twenty-five years later. Inside the USHMM is a room called the Hall of Remembrance, a “solemn space designed for public ceremonies and individual reflection.”75 Within the six-sided room is an eternal flame, and the walls are inscribed with the names of concentration camp killing centers. As Lyday recalled, The Hall of Remembrance was set up a little differently than it is today. You couldn’t walk in the middle. Visitors had these little cards. The mu­ seum must have handed them out as comment cards; I don’t remember exactly. But we all had them. There were a lot of gay and lesbian folks there from the march the day before, and some of them must have had markers with them. People started drawing pink triangles—and some yellow stars—on these cards and then threw them into the middle of the Hall of Remembrance. There wasn’t a sound; it was so quiet and the whole floor was covered in pink triangles and yellow stars. I can still vividly picture it today if I close my eyes.76 It was not the only thing that stuck with Lyday from that day. Upon enter­ ing the USHMM’s main exhibit, visitors receive a “passport ID card” with the true story of an individual who lived during the Holocaust. Visitors can then follow the story in the passport pamphlet as they proceed through the exhibit. “The card I got was Willem Arondeus. Can you believe that? Out of all the possible cards in that mounding stack, I got the story of a gay man. What are the chances? I was profoundly moved by that and remem­ bered thinking, ‘I’m meant to be here today, to be a part of this.’ ” Now, over twenty-five years later, Lyday volunteers at the USHMM and even served for two years as chair of the museum’s Volunteer Advisory Board, a body that liaises with museum leadership on issues related to its team of volunteers. Lyday is no longer on the advisory board but continues to volunteer his time and knowledge by giving tours. “On my docent’s jacket, I always wear the pink triangle—the rosa Winkel—on my lapel.”77 Many gay men and women who were in DC for the national gay rights march praised the museum for its efforts to include information on gay vic­ tims. After all, it was the first national memorial or museum to include infor­ mation on the men with the pink triangle at all. “Thank you for not letting the world forget we died there, too,” read one visitor comment card.78 Seeing information on pink triangle prisoners in this national museum reinforced this visitor’s feeling of kinship to gay communities across time and space. He conceptualized himself as belonging to the community of “we” that died in the Holocaust.

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Ultimately, the museum received criticism from visitors and gay organiza­ tions for not dedicating adequate space to the fate of gay Germans during the Holocaust. One visitor commented, “What about the half million gays killed?”79 Scholarship now shows that the number of victims that the visitor used was vastly inflated, but the comment also demonstrates the lack of— and need for—accurate historical information at the time. Another visitor wrote, “As a gay man, I am dismayed at the paucity of information on the Nazi persecution of homosexuals. . . . I trust this museum is not guilty of pas­ sive homophobia.”80 To remedy this lack of information, the museum com­ menced a large-scale fund-raising campaign to finance further research on the topic. By October 1996, the museum’s Gay and Lesbian Campaign had raised $1 million to fund research and outreach projects.81 In 2000, the mu­ seum’s Center for Advanced Holocaust Studies brought together eight of the world’s leading experts on the topic from across Europe and North America. It was the first conference dedicated to the topic in the United States.82 While museum administrators sought to better integrate the story of gay men and lesbians into the main exhibition, in 1999 the museum also ap­ pointed Edward “Ted” Phillips to design a separate, yet permanent, traveling exhibit titled “The Nazi Persecution of Homosexuals, 1933–1945.” In Phil­ lips’s two years of research, he worked closely with American and German scholars, traveling often to Berlin to meet with curators who had worked on similar projects. The museum also consulted with James Steakley, whose research had been so influential in bringing the pink triangle past to Englishspeaking audiences in the 1970s.83 The exhibit was unveiled in Washington in 2002 and began traveling around the country in 2003. Since then, it has been on display in over fifty cities and has predictably garnered both support and criticism.84 The US Holocaust Memorial Museum’s inclusion of gay victims in its ex­ hibits was not the only commemoration in the United States of the men with the pink triangle. Every year since 1996, Patrick Carney, a gay community organizer, and around one hundred volunteers have assembled a temporary, one-acre-large pink triangle installation on the side of Twin Peaks, overlook­ ing San Francisco, for the annual Gay Pride weekend. At first, the display was meant to “add a little extra color” to the San Francisco valley during the Pride festivities.85 Soon, however, Carney realized that the majority of people attending the parade had no understanding of the pink triangle’s origins. Subsequently, he added informative plaques at the viewing platform atop Twin Peaks and organized a commemoration ceremony in which local and state politicians, gay community leaders, and the public gather to hear the history of the iconic symbol.

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According to Carney, the main purpose of the display is to educate people about the hate of the past. But the annual commemoration ceremonies also celebrate the LGBTQ+ community’s achievements. Celebrity guests read a script of the pink triangle’s history, and there is a pink champagne shower. The speeches usually acknowledge the specific German context of the ori­ gin of the pink triangle and then globalize the persecution of queer people. These commemorative acts have transformed the pink triangle from a sym­ bol representing a particular point in history into an emblem that teaches a lesson not just for gays and lesbians, but more broadly about the importance of safeguarding human rights and an appreciation for diversity in a global­ ized world. Located within eyesight of the temporary, annual pink triangle display is the Pink Triangle Memorial Park. Dedicated in 2001, it is the first permanent, freestanding memorial in the United States devoted to gay victims of Nazi persecution. The park is made up of fifteen triangular posts among a garden of roses to represent the estimated fifteen thousand gay men imprisoned in concentration camps. The park’s designers wanted it to be a contempla­ tive site of remembrance, and although the park is dedicated to victims of a specific episode in history, the message is meant to transcend both time and space. It was the designers’ hope that visitors would “think about how persecution of any individual or single group of people damages all human­ ity.”86 The text on this memorial reflects shifts in discourse that frame the Nazi persecution of queer people as not only a gay issue, but one of human rights more broadly. Indeed, the park was dedicated on international Human Rights Day in December 2001.87 Other commemorations in the United States made use of the symbol of the pink triangle, although they were not dedicated to the Nazis’ gay victims specifically. In 1991, for example, Jim Darby established a Chicago chapter of the Gay, Lesbian, and Bisexual Veterans of America (GLBVA, now known as American Veterans for Equal Rights). Darby himself was a gay veteran who served four years in the US Navy during the Korean War. On Memorial Day in 1991, Darby and the Chicago GLBVA laid a wreath of pink flowers arranged in the shape of a triangle to honor the gay, lesbian, and bisexual service members who had died fighting for America.88 The pink triangle also became tied to the issue of gay people in the US military through the experiences of Technical Sergeant Leonard Matlovich of the US Air Force. In 1975, with the guidance of gay activist Frank Ka­ meny, Matlovich purposefully outed himself to bring national attention to the military’s ban on gay and lesbian service members. The Air Force imme­ diately discharged Matlovich, despite his twelve years of exemplary service

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and multiple medals. After a five-year legal fight, a court ruled in Matlovich’s favor, but he accepted a financial settlement from the Air Force rather than being reinstated. When Matlovich passed away in June 1988, he was buried in the Congressional Cemetery in Washington, DC. The headstone that he designed himself was made of the same reflective black granite used for the Vietnam Veterans Memorial. It includes two pink triangles, one each over his dates of birth and death. Matlovich’s name does not appear on the face of the stone, because he wanted it to act as a memorial to all gay veterans. Where the name should be, it simply says “A Gay Vietnam Veteran.” Underneath, an inscription reads, “When I was in the military, they gave me a medal for killing two men and a discharge for loving one.”89 Also within the Congressional Cemetery and within walking distance of Matlovich’s grave is the final resting place of pioneering lesbian activ­ ists Barbara Gittings and Kay Tobin Lahusen. Between their two names is a solid black triangle. The inscription on top of the marker states, “Gay Pioneers who spoke truth to power: Gay Is Good.” These examples again demonstrate that the pink and black triangles had taken on new lives in the American context. They always remained connected to the Nazi past; indeed, that is what imbued the symbols with poignancy. But they no longer referred only to that specific chapter of history. By the late 1980s and into the 1990s, the pink and black triangles had become signifiers of historical and contemporary homophobia, across time and space, while simultaneously being shining as emblems of resilience. They stood for victimization and pride at the same time.

Commemoration and Compensation in west germany In West Germany, the increased exposure of the public to the history of gay persecution came amid and contributed to a continued effort to confront the legacies of the Nazi regime in German history more broadly. This increased publicity, largely garnered from commemoration ceremonies and discus­ sions about memorials, reignited debates over victimhood and compensa­ tion. If gay men were finally being acknowledged as victims—as President Weizsäcker had done in his 1985 speech—did that not also mean that the federal government had an obligation to include them, even retrospectively, in the processes of restitution and compensation? A 1989 letter to the editor of a Munich gay newspaper succinctly summarized the stance of gay com­ munities throughout West Germany: “To learn from history means more than laying wreaths.”90

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By the 1980s, gay activists and advocates had found political allies in West Germany’s Social Democratic Party and the new Green Party. A renewed debate ensued over the compensation of gay men and other Nazi victims, which garnered much attention in the mainstream media across the Fed­ eral Republic. In June 1986, the Tagesspiegel reported that the government was prepared to improve the Wiedergutmachung (“making good again,” or restitution) of all Nazi victims.91 Thanks to pressure from some members of the federal parliament, especially Christian Ströbele of the Green Party, the Bundestag agreed to reopen the issue of compensation payments for victims who had not been allowed to apply under the 1956 Federal Com­ pensation Law. On June 24, 1987, men and women representing the so-called “forgotten victim groups” went before a hearing of the Bundestag Committee on Inter­ nal Affairs to plead the case for victims the West German government had previously excluded from the process of Wiedergutmachung. The committee agreed to add an amendment to the 1957 General Consequences of War Law (Allgemeine Kriegsfolgengesetz, AKG) that would create a “Hardship Fund” for those who had been left out of the compensation processes. Ar­ ticle 5 of the AKG Hardship Fund regulations clearly asserted, however, that “the Hardship Benefits were not compensation [Entschädigung] or a redress [Wiedergutmachung] for Nazi injustice, but instead represented financial aid that was granted to victims only under certain conditions.” As if to make the point clearer, the article stated that “the Hardship Fund is a non-statutory regulation; a legal entitlement to payment does not exist.”92 When Representative Ströbele of the Green Party learned that Bundestag president Philipp Jenniger had decided to offer financial aid but not official Wiedergutmachung, he called the act a “third-class funeral service” for these victims.93 The press seemed to echo these sentiments. The Tageszeitung re­ ported that the federal government had reached a halfhearted agreement: “Money without Atonement.”94 An article in Die Zeit declared that the deci­ sion was “No Great Gesture,” lamenting that “for the Nazis’ forgotten vic­ tims, all there will be is a ‘Hardship Fund.’ ”95 One commenter writing in a West German gay magazine framed his criticism of the government’s deci­ sion more pointedly: “It seems like the guys in Bonn are just waiting until the last gay concentration camp survivor dies so that they can say to themselves that the issue has resolved itself through natural means.”96 In using the term “hardship” and attaching it to the preexisting General Consequences of War Law, the AKG Hardship Fund rhetorically framed what had happened to the “forgotten victims” simply as difficulties resulting

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from the course of normal warfare. It did not define the Nazi persecution of these groups as injustice or even include “National Socialist” anywhere in the name of the stipulation. In doing so, the Bundestag not only relinquished guilt from the Nazi regime, but also relieved the Federal Republic of any responsibility to provide compensation for these forgotten victims as it had for Jews and German POWs. The requirements set forth by the AKG regulations forty years after the war’s end made it all but impossible for applicants, all of whom were in their sixties and seventies by that point, to receive an affirmation of their suffering. Historian Jörg Hutter states that “at first glance, all of these different rules and requirements reveal an eternally confusing picture.”97 Proving that one had been treated in an “excessively unjust” manner by the Nazi regime was not enough to qualify for benefits. Applicants also had to document that they were “currently in dire straits.” The AKG guidelines laid out specific income barriers that established what qualified as “dire straits” in 1980s West Ger­ many.98 Applicants also had to prove with medical certificates that they had suffered considerable damage to their health.99 As they related to gay survivors, the guidelines focused on individuals who had been sent to a concentration camp for violating Paragraph 175 or solely because of their homosexuality. In other words, only men had a chance to navigate the stipulations. This rationale not only perpetuated Nazi un­ derstandings of sexuality. It also rendered lesbians and trans people ineli­ gible. For gay men who decided to apply for aid, a Paragraph 175 conviction alone—even under the Nazi version of the law—was not enough to meet the eligibility requirements. They also had to prove that their persecution was an example of an “exceedingly specific case of Nazi injustice.” This, ac­ cording to the Hardship Fund reviewers, meant detention in a concentration camp. Spending time behind the barbed wire, though, did not automatically represent adequately “excessive” injustice. To qualify for recurring hardship benefit payments, applicants had to prove (the onus was on the applicant to provide adequate documentation) that they had served “at least nine consec­ utive months in a concentration camp, an arbitrary or excessive deprivation of liberty in other detention centers, or had to live in hiding under inhumane conditions for at least thirty months.” Almost as if to exclude as many people as possible, the regulations noted, “The latter is only eligible if it caused a permanent damage to one’s health resulting in a 50% disability.”100 As a result of the impenetrable maze of bureaucratic red tape, docu­ mentation, time, and effort required, only seventeen gay men applied to the AKG Hardship Fund central office in Cologne. Two were granted recur­ ring payments; six were issued a onetime benefit payment.101 One applicant

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died before the board reached a decision. The application of one man was rejected because he had served “only” seven months in a concentration camp.102 Seven more applications were rejected for various reasons. One could argue that the regulations for the 1987 AKG Hardship Fund were pur­ posefully designed to be so stringent and convoluted as to further exclude these unwanted victims, whom the Bundestag only reluctantly agreed to “offer aid to” in the first place. Amid growing pressure from groups assert­ ing that all of the Nazis’ victims deserved aid from the FRG, these hardship benefits were a way for the West German federal government to save face without having to grant official compensation, which would have amounted to an admission of responsibility. In a 1987 report assessing the federal government’s performance on issu­ ing compensation to the Nazis’ victims, the Bundestag asserted that it was “not probable” that the low number of gay applicants could be attributed to the government’s continued use of Paragraph 175. Instead, the report con­ tinued, in light of the low numbers, “One assumes that those affected had other reasons, reasons having nothing to do with the law, for why they never applied, or that the circle of homosexuals affected by concentration camp internment is simply much smaller than previously thought.”103 Even fortyfive years after the Nazis’ defeat, the Federal Republic of Germany found it easier to blame gay victims for not coming forward—or to simply assume that there were never that many gay men persecuted in the first place—than to acknowledge them as legitimate victims of Nazi injustice. Because the federal government in Bonn yet again proved reluctant to help these survivors, several of the West German states stepped in to of­ fer support. The states of Berlin, Bremen, Hamburg, Lower Saxony, and Schleswig-Holstein implemented their own hardship provisions between 1987 and 1990. Again, as the federal AKG Hardship Fund was in theory, these state funds were open to all Nazi victims who had not received recognition, compensation, or legal rehabilitation from the federal government to that point. Generally, these state funds had more inclusive regulations, though some implemented further conditions. For example, in addition to the mini­ mum of nine months’ internment in a concentration camp stipulated by the federal AKG Hardship Fund, Berlin’s foundation asserted that no one who had served more than three years (total) in prison or in a camp could receive a payment.104 Because many of the pink triangle prisoners were resentenced in the decades after World War II, their total time spent in imprisonment rendered them ineligible for Berlin’s hardship benefits. In the five states that implemented hardship funds, a total of twenty-one gay men applied for aid; eleven received payments of some kind. The only man to apply in Berlin was

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rejected because he was not living in poverty at the time of application. As of a 1996 report, the states of Lower Saxony and Schleswig-Holstein had yet to receive a single application from a gay survivor.105 The unification of the two German states in 1990 forced Germans to reevaluate their position on the legality of sex between men. Would, for example, West Germany’s Paragraph 175 (liberalized in 1969 and 1973) be extended to the former East German states where homosexuality had been decriminalized completely in 1988? After years of deliberation and in the face of growing public pressure and changing social attitudes, German lawmak­ ers fully struck Paragraph 175 from the criminal code on March 10, 1994. The Bundestag of the newly unified Germany also stipulated that gay concentra­ tion camp survivors living in the new states that constituted the former East Germany would not be eligible for reparation payments of any kind.106

Building a National memorial in unified germany In unified Germany, many gay groups felt that the issue of commemoration had not yet been adequately settled. Beginning in the early 1990s, several gay organizations called for a national memorial dedicated to the Nazis’ gay victims. In January 1994, the Gay Monument Initiative hosted a discussion in Berlin, and the primary question was “Pink Granite in front of the Chan­ cellery? Do we need a memorial for the gay Nazi victims?”107 The following year, the Lesbian and Gay Union of Germany (LSVD) published a memoran­ dum, “Remember the Homosexual Victims of National Socialism,” which laid out their reasoning for Germany’s need of a national memorial. Not sur­ prisingly, the planning of such a monument was surrounded by controversy from the very beginning. Some opposed the memorial altogether, while oth­ ers opposed building the memorial in Berlin. The governing mayor of Berlin, Eberhard Diepgen, for example, lamented the establishment of a “memorial mile” in the capital of the newly unified Germany.108 Ekkehard Klausa, the manager of concentration camp memorial sites in Berlin and Brandenburg, also expressed reservations about building “too many” Holocaust memorials in Germany. “We must not devalue our commemoration through an infla­ tion of memorials,” he stated in 1999.109 Despite these reservations and con­ certed opposition, when the Bundestag authorized in 1999 the construction of a national Holocaust memorial in honor of the murdered Jews of Europe, it contained a clause obliging the Federal Republic to “commemorate the other victims of National Socialism in appropriate ways.” This helped lay the legal groundwork for gay organizations to push for a national memorial to gay victims of the Third Reich.110

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The discussions about a national memorial to gay victims primarily cen­ tered on whom exactly the memorial should commemorate. The debate over whether to include lesbians in the national monument spilled over into the public sphere, especially since taxpayer money would fund any poten­ tial national memorial. In December 1996, the Tageszeitung reported that “a planned memorial for homosexual Nazi victims in the capital city is pitting gays and lesbians against each other. They’re contesting whom the Nazis persecuted worst.” Ultimately, the article asks, “Whom does the HomoMonument commemorate?”111 Debate over the place of lesbians in the memory of Nazi persecution was not new. The committee that organized Cologne’s pink triangle monument, for example, had discussed it and ultimately chose to commemorate lesbi­ ans with their memorial. During the dedication ceremony in the summer of 1995, Cologne’s mayor stated, “The persecution of homosexuals in Nazi Germany altered the lives of all gay people, not only the thousands of men convicted and sent to concentration camps.”112 The LSVD and the Remembering the Homosexual Victims of National Socialism Initiative filed the petition for the national memorial on May 3, 2001. Over two years later, on December 12, 2003, the German Bundestag passed a resolution to fund the monument’s construction in Berlin. Debate about the monument died down until the design was announced in Janu­ ary 2006. Submitted by Danish artists Michael Elmgreen and Ingar Dragset, the plans for the memorial contained a glass window through which visitors would peer inside to see a black and white video loop of two men kissing. The design reignited the heated debate about who should be commemorated by the monument. In August 2006, Alice Schwarzer, editor of the feminist magazine EMMA, mounted what historian Jennifer Evans calls a “full-scaled media attack” against the proposed design.113 In an article titled “Women Are Being Forgotten Once Again,” Schwarzer pointed out that the endless loop of two men kissing was not only a political scandal. It also violated the original mission of the monument announced by the German parliament three years earlier, which stated that “the memorial should honor the perse­ cuted and murdered victims, keep the memory of injustice alive, and set a constant signal against intolerance, hostility, and exclusion toward gays and lesbians.”114 Later that same week, the actress and singer Maren Kroymann published a scathing article in the taz newspaper calling attention to the fact that the monument erased lesbians from the history. “The planned memorial site for the homosexuals persecuted in the Nazi period places its emphasis on gay men,” she wrote. “And in doing so, it plays into the Nazis’ hands, who pursued the eradication of the identity of lesbians as a minority.”115 Lesbian

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activists and their supporters collected signatures for a petition to oppose the erasure of lesbian victims. Among the initial signatories were a number of local and national politicians, including the openly gay mayor of Berlin, Klaus Wowereit.116 A handful of historians—primarily gay men—spoke out vehemently against the inclusion of lesbians. For nearly a decade, historian Joachim Müller had called the inclusion of lesbians in memorials dedicated to gay victims a revision of history for the sake of “a policy of feminist political correctness.”117 In essence, Müller and those who opposed including lesbians in the monument argued that because lesbians had not been persecuted in the same way that gay men had been, they had not really been persecuted at all. In the face of allegations of misogyny and discrimination, those who opposed including lesbians in the Berlin memorial asserted that they were simply adhering to the historical evidence. These gay male scholars and ac­ tivists used a definition of persecution that focused exclusively on Paragraph 175 and incarceration in concentration camps. This narrow focus prioritized the experiences of gay men and ignored the myriad other ways that Nazi policies persecuted other queer communities during the Holocaust. In ex­ cluding lesbians and other queer people from their definitions of victimhood and persecution, these gay men were using arguments that were disturbingly similar to those mainstream society had used to deny the victimhood of gay men on the grounds that what gay men allegedly experienced was neither “typical Nazi injustice” nor really persecution at all. The dedication of the monument had been planned for 2007, but the de­ bates forced a delay. Lesbian and feminist activism created space in public discourse for a lively examination of the historical experiences of lesbians in the Third Reich. These debates garnered extensive coverage in the local, na­ tional, and even international press. Ultimately, a compromise was reached: every two years, the video in the monument would alternate between one of men kissing and one of women kissing. Construction for the project began in the summer of 2007, and the Memorial to the Homosexuals Persecuted under National Socialism was dedicated in Berlin on May 27, 2008. Multiple governmental agencies were represented by dignitaries such as the govern­ ing mayor of Berlin Klaus Wowereit and the state minister for culture Bernd Neumann, who regretted in his speech that the commemoration of the Na­ zis’ gay victims had come “very late.”118 The memorial’s design is vastly different from the monuments that had been dedicated to the Nazis’ gay victims over the previous twenty years. There is not a pink triangle in sight. Instead, the monument is a large, smooth con­ crete cuboid approximately fifteen feet tall. Resembling a cube but lacking

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Figure 6.3. The Memorial to the Homosexuals Persecuted under National Socialism, dedicated in Berlin in 2008. Here, the monument is shown with candles. Photo: Marko Priske. Copyright Stiftung Denkmal.

uniformity, it leans to one side, and the dimensions are asymmetrical, per­ haps suggesting to visitors that those whom the monument honors—like the monument itself—are not straight. When the monument is viewed in isolation, its connection to the Nazi past may be unclear. However, when experienced in a larger context, the design makes more sense. Located on the edge of Berlin’s Tiergarten Park, the monument stands across the street from the Memorial to the Murdered Jews of Europe, which is composed of 2,711 rectangular concrete slabs arranged in a grid pattern. The monument to gay victims is made from the same material and is roughly the same shape as the massive blocks that compose the Jewish memorial, which is often re­ ferred to colloquially as Germany’s “national Holocaust memorial.” Stand­ ing between the two monuments, one gets the impression that one of the columns has been plucked from the Holocaust memorial and dropped across the street, out of sight and out of mind, much in the same way the history of gay victims was separated from the history of the Holocaust for decades. The plaque that accompanies the monument directly links past and pres­ ent issues of social tolerance and acceptance of human diversity in unified Germany. “With this memorial, the Federal Republic of Germany intends to honor the victims of persecution and murder, to keep alive the mem­ ory of this injustice, and to create a lasting symbol of opposition to enmity,

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intolerance, and the exclusion of gay men and lesbians.” The presence of the memorial, then, is meant to deploy a memory of the past as a shield against contemporary discrimination. The legacy of the Nazi campaign against ho­ mosexuality, which is memorialized within eyesight of Germany’s national parliament building, explicitly ties the politics of memory together with the manifestation of sexual identity and citizenship in the Federal Republic. As the plaque states, “Because of its history, Germany has a special responsibil­ ity to actively oppose the violation of gay men and lesbians’ human rights.”119 In 2010, the first exchange of the video of men kissing to one of lesbians kissing sparked opposition yet again. In an open letter to the German state minister for culture, Bernd Neumann, a group of twenty-five gay activists, scholars, and leaders of the Buchenwald, Dachau, and Ravensbrück Concen­ tration Camp Memorials wrote that the inclusion of lesbians in the Berlin memorial would “lead to a distortion and falsification of history.”120 In the open letter to Minister Neumann, Alexander Zinn explained that although there were certainly lesbians in the concentration camps, they were either Jews, Jehovah’s Witnesses, or imprisoned on some other grounds.121 Despite this opposition, the video continues to be alternated every two years. Many of the same individuals who signed the 2010 letter, primarily Alexander Zinn, would later lead the ardent opposition to the memorial sphere for lesbians at the Ravensbrück Memorial. The establishment of the Berlin memorial not only reflects complicated notations at work in finding a consensual politics of memory, but also repre­ sents a significant shift in the relationship between the German government and the pink triangle past. Amid discussions of funding the national monu­ ment, the Bundestag officially apologized to all of the Nazis’ gay victims and nullified their Paragraph 175 convictions. The exonerations went into effect on the symbolically significant day of May 17 (17.5), 2002. Finally, almost sixty years after the defeat of National Socialism, the German government changed its stance on the persecution of gay men, thus allowing pink triangle victims into the officially sanctioned German memory of the Nazi past. In addition to exonerating survivors legally, granting a sense of official acknowledgment of their victimization, and establishing a more inclusive national memory, the Bundestag’s decisions also made any pink triangle survivors who were still alive eligible for full restitution, including financial compensation. Unfortunately, the government’s apology and pardon came so late that most survivors had already passed away. Because the Bundestag’s decision was tied to Paragraph 175, neither the apology nor legal annulment of convictions applied to other members of the LGBTQ+ community per­ secuted during the Third Reich.

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Interestingly, but perhaps not surprisingly, the Bundestag’s 2002 pardon was only for men convicted under Paragraph 175 during the Nazi regime, not those whom West Germany convicted with the same law between 1949 and 1969. Two years earlier, the Bundestag voted only to express its regret for, rather than pardon, the gay men it continued to criminalize for decades after the end of the war.122 Such an action again highlights the nuances of memory politics. The Bundestag’s 2002 apology represents a dubious sleight of hand in which it was able to cast the German state in a progressive light for pardoning the Nazis’ gay victims, while at the same time neglecting to ex­ punge the postwar Paragraph 175 convictions. Doing so would have required the government to admit that it had willingly upheld and actively enforced the Nazi version of a law. As a result, the convictions of the men who were sentenced under Paragraph 175 in West Germany after the Second World War remained on their records. Beginning in the 1970s, different and often competing narratives of the Nazi campaign against homosexuality emerged in West Germany and the United States. By the 1990s, these various memories began to gradually converge into a more cohesive, collective understanding of how the German state violently persecuted its queer communities during the Third Reich. In large part this was due to the emergence of solid historical scholarship by queer researchers who used archival evidence and survivor testimony to piece to­ gether a more accurate picture of the terrorization leveled against LGBTQ+ Germans during the era of the Holocaust. As gay and lesbian scholars worked to write a pink triangle past based on historical evidence, gay organizers ad­ monished West Germans—from the general public to government officials at all levels—that how they dealt with this chapter of history said more about their own values in the present than it did about (mis)understandings of the past. As the result of queer activism, scholarship, and memorial culture, the wider German public eventually began to acknowledge gay communities as victims of the Nazi regime. These successes should not overshadow the fact that while the experi­ ences of gay men became better documented, queer scholars faced relent­ less resistance when they sought to research and commemorate the lives of lesbian, bisexual, and trans people in Nazi Germany. The fierce opposition to the memorial sphere for lesbians at the Ravensbrück Memorial—which in­ cludes resistance from gay men—demonstrates that the politics of memory are still at play. “I’d find it really wonderful if I returned to Ravensbrück ten years from now and met young lesbians there who didn’t even know that there was this whole problem,” stated Ulrike Janz, who has researched the

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fate of lesbians in Nazi Germany and fought for their commemoration since the 1980s. “I hope they take it for granted and think it self-evident that there is a memorial, an exhibit, and extensive scholarly literature with references to all of the work that’s been done up to that point.”123 Clearly, there is still important work to do until we reach that point. These memorialization efforts occurred first in West and then unified Germany, but soon took place on a global scale thanks to the memorial­ ization efforts of gay groups around the world. To date, there are twelve separate memorials in Germany dedicated to the queer people persecuted under National Socialism. There are an additional eleven pink triangle mon­ uments spread out across the world, from Amsterdam to Anchorage, from Sydney to San Francisco. The construction of these pink triangle memorials in different countries demonstrates that the transatlantic gay identity that began in the context of gay rights activism in the 1970s has now taken on global dimensions. Communities across the world feel that the deadly con­ sequences of Nazi homophobia are not simply a chapter of German history and not something that only Germans should memorialize. What began in the 1970s as a grassroots quest to uncover the history of a particular victim group evolved over time into a transatlantic historical narrative with a much broader resonance. “How can I summarize what the pink triangle means to me?” Patrick Carney asked as we stood atop Twin Peaks overlooking San Francisco on a cold June morning. Two hundred volunteers were installing the last of the 175 pieces of pink cloth, which transformed one acre of the hillside into a colossal pink triangle that could be seen from miles around. The rhythmic pings of hammers hitting stakes were slowly replaced by laughs and con­ versation as the installation reached completion. The commemoration cer­ emony would start soon. “To many people, the pink triangle is just another fun, colorful symbol of gay rights. Even here in San Francisco, the capital of America’s LGBTQ community, there wasn’t an understanding of where the symbol came from. That’s why we started installing this gigantic pink triangle, for the entire bay area to see, back in 1996. Of course, I wanted to honor and commemorate the original men who had no choice but to wear the pink triangle in the concentration camps. But it was more than that. It’s about education,” Carney told me. “What is it that you hope that people think or learn when they look at this annual monument?” I asked. “I hope they learn some more about the history of the symbol. That’s why we put up the educational placards each year. But it’s amazing to me that a symbol rooted in hate now brings people together. Look around; all

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these people woke up early on their Saturday morning to contribute to this. They brought their friends, their parents, their children. It’s a community.” We paused for a moment, and then Carney continued. “But once it’s com­ plete, this pink triangle sends a message. This symbol started in Germany, but to me, it’s a reminder that today homosexual activity is still illegal in over seventy countries. The test of any democracy is how well it treats its minorities. The pink triangle celebrates how far we’ve come, but it is also a reminder that across the world, we’re still failing that test. As long as hate and bigotry are backed by law, there will be an ongoing need to bring the message of the pink triangle to the world.”124

Epilogue “Remembering Must Also Have Consequences”

The chatter and laughter that had filled the shuttle ride from downtown Washington were replaced by expressions of awe as our group stepped into the atrium of stone and glass. Sunlight from the October morning poured in through the floor-to-ceiling windows of the US Holocaust Memorial Museum’s state-of-the-art archival and preservation facility. The David and Fela Shapell Family Collections, Conservation, and Research Center had been dedicated a year earlier, but the smell of new con­ struction still permeated the air. In fact, construction crews were still putting final touches on the one-hundred-thousand-square-foot facility as our small group of researchers received a welcome and orientation. We were led into a workroom where curators and conservators were waiting to tell us about a series of artifacts they had pulled from the archive. At the far end of the room, a handful of concentration camp uniforms had been laid out on a work station, and I gravitated toward them. As I ap­ proached the table, I saw that in addition to the uniforms, there were also multiple concentration camp badges, each representing a tool of dehuman­ ization. I let my eyes scan across the patchwork of colored cloth, wondering about the story behind each one. That is when I saw it. It was a small strip of white cloth, barely two inches wide and less than an inch tall. A triangle was painted on the left side of the cloth, along with the numbers 1896. A curator

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noticed me studying the cloth. “That’s a very rare concentration camp pris­ oner badge,” he told me. “It was worn by—” “Josef Kohout,” I finished his sentence, bending down to get a closer look. The curator kept talking, but I no longer heard him. The world went mute around me as my heartbeat pounded in my ears. I knew this badge, and in a way, I felt that I knew Josef Kohout. His story had occupied such a central place in my thoughts and my work for the previous decade, which I had spent researching and writing about the pink triangle legacies that could, in many ways, all be traced back to this one man. I knew his story, had read and reread his book, and scanned through digital copies of his archival files. But nothing could have prepared me to serendipitously stumble upon his Flos­ senbürg prisoner badge. After years of reaching out to him through pages and electronic screens, here, lying before me, was a physical connection to him. Josef Kohout had worn this badge. This number—1896—had been his identity for five years behind the barbed wire. This triangle and its story had loomed large in my mind for so long that I was struck by how small and delicate it was. Despite its size, the effects of this badge—and the man forced to wear it—rippled throughout history. After all, it was his life story, published in 1972, that was the earliest book to tell the firsthand account of a gay concentration camp survivor. It was that book that inspired gay liberation activists in West Germany to adopt the pink triangle as the logo of their movement. It was that movement that sought to force mainstream society to acknowledge the injustices done to queer people during the era of the Holocaust. This helped create space for research on and the eventual memorialization of gay victims. After a decade of tracing its legacies, I was staring at the pink triangle. Except. . . “Why is it red?” I asked, finally looking up at the curator. As he shuffled through his notes, I began wondering: What did it mean if the pink triangle that sparked it all was, in fact, not pink? Had my expectations of the badges’ appearance been colored by the hues of the pink and fuchsia triangles from postwar activism and culture? More importantly, did it matter if Kohout’s badge was pink, red, or rose? Curious to find out more, I reached out to Klaus Mueller, the US Holocaust Memorial Museum staff member who had acquired some of Kohout’s belongings for preservation in the museum’s ar­ chive upon Kohout’s death in 1994. Mueller had traveled to Vienna to meet Wilhelm Kroepfl, Kohout’s partner of nearly fifty years. “It was a very timely visit,” Mueller remembered. “Mr. Kroepfl was quite astonished that I was so interested in these artifacts that he had stored away in a shoebox. There were letters, documents, and the badge. I understood

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that Kohout had never expected that any of this would be important to any­ one besides himself.” Looking at the box’s contents, Kroepfl told Mueller, “If I would have known that there is so much in there, I would have thrown some stuff away already.” But, as Mueller recalled, “We had a long conver­ sation about how these materials document Josef Kohout’s story, and he agreed to donate them to the Holocaust Museum to be safeguarded.”1 Mueller explained that US Holocaust Memorial Museum staff members had raised questions about the pale red color of the triangle badge and had subsequently conducted documentary research. The research verified that Josef Kohout was arrested and convicted for engaging in “indecency” with another man, as Kohout describes in his testimony. Mueller also asked Kro­ epfl about the color of the badge. “He testified again in a letter that Josef always referred to the badge as his pink triangle.”2 Mueller did additional research and discovered that the “pale red” appearance of Kohout’s pink triangle had already been raised by the SS camp commander of Flossenbürg himself. The commander—whom prisoners had started calling “Dustbag”— was known for targeting gay prisoners, and Kohout described one encounter in his testimony: “ ‘Dustbag’ gave me an ugly smile and stroked my pink triangle with his stick. ‘A very pale red, that one. Or is it really pink? What, a queer as Capo, that’s something we haven’t seen before.”3 Mueller told me that after the war, the committee of former Flossenbürg camp inmates rejected Kohout’s application for aid as a pink triangle prisoner. They asserted that if he would claim to be a political prisoner (which were marked by red triangles) and become a member of their political party, they would support his request for compensation. Kohout refused. He wanted to be recognized as a gay victim of the Nazi regime.4 I asked Mueller if the color of the badge could have changed over time, and he explained: “For us, it indeed raised the complex question as to how colors might change in time, and what we know about color consistency and the production of concentration camp badges especially in the last years of the overfilled camps.” We discussed the difficulty in ascertaining how the pigment could have changed, because the process and supplies used to pro­ duce it in the first place were not known for certain. “But we do have the documentation of his arrest and sentence, the camp records, his testimony,” Mueller continued. “We have no documentary evidence that Kohout was marked with a red triangle. I discuss this in a USHMM Curators Corner video featuring Kohout’s badge to introduce viewers to the complexities of analyzing and understanding historical artifacts.”5 The impact of Kohout’s testimony is monumental in allowing us to un­ derstand the fate of the Nazis’ gay victims. As Mueller pointed out, “His

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pink triangle, now pale red, is the only pink triangle we can connect to an individual prisoner. Isn’t it amazing that we can tell Kohout’s extraordinary story and lifelong struggle to be recognized as a man with a pink triangle, as a gay victim of the Nazi regime, through his own badge?”6 Mueller is right. Ultimately, whatever color the badge appears to us to­ day, it does not change the truth of what Kohout went through. He was arrested during the Nazi regime and shipped off to a concentration camp for expressing his love of another man. He wore this badge. The archival evidence confirms this. Years later, Kohout bravely made the choice to speak out and then told his story to an acquaintance, Hanns Neumann, who then published Kohout’s story under the pen name Heinz Heger in 1972. It is tell­ ing that Kohout felt the very real pressure to tell his story through someone else, who also had to use a pseudonym. A double layer of anonymity was required to chronicle this history within a society that had continued to per­ petuate homophobia and anti-gay laws for decades. As I rode back on the bus that afternoon, my thoughts lingered on that piece of cloth, on the life and story it represented. I also contemplated the fact that something so small was the anchor for repercussions that spanned con­ tinents and stretched through time. I could not help but wonder what Josef Kohout would say if he knew the badge that condemned him as a prisoner would one day become a tool of liberation for queer people across the world. If you were to ask today what the symbol of the LGBTQ+ community is, you would probably be hard-pressed to find anyone whose answer is the pink triangle. In the 1970s, activists used the pink triangle to harness history to mobilize a social movement, and the symbol was a call to action through gay liberation, subsequent decades of gay rights activism, and the AIDS crisis. But while the pink triangle directed people to fight for a more equitable fu­ ture, it was explicitly a historical symbol. Indeed, much of the pink triangle’s power stemmed from the fact that it was a historical artifact and a visual reminder of how the gay community had been treated in the past. Not everyone believed that the visual emblem of the community should be one that stemmed from historical oppression and death. In early 1978, San Francisco artist and gay activist Gilbert Baker set out to create a new symbol. “Up until that time, we had the pink triangle from the Nazis,” Baker later explained. But “it came from such a horrible place of murder and Ho­ locaust and Hitler.”7 City supervisor Harvey Milk agreed that Baker should use his artistic skill to design a new emblem of gay pride that they could use at the upcoming parade in June of that year. “We needed something joy­ ful, we needed something with soul, something that was living, something

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positive,” Baker recalled.8 His creation was a hand-sewn rainbow flag with eight vibrantly colored and hand-dyed stripes. In multiple ways, the rainbow flag was the antithesis of the pink triangle. First, rainbows are a product of nature. Baker himself stated that rainbows are a “natural flag in the sky,” providing beauty and a promise of better times after the storm.9 Second, rainbows are universal, whereas the pink triangle’s origin stemmed from the history of a specific nation. Finally, as LGBTQ+ author Cheryl Head later articulated, “The pink triangle was initiated by the oppressor. The rainbow is a symbol that was chosen by the people it represents.”10 The rainbow flag was used most prominently first on the West Coast. That began to change when New York’s Heritage of Pride organization ad­ opted the rainbow flag as the international symbol of gay pride in late 1985.11 For many years the pink triangle and rainbow existed side by side as emblems of queer communities. By the mid-1990s, the symbolism of the rainbow’s various colors united into one flag more aptly captured the diversity of the gay community. This diversity was also represented by a change in nomen­ clature, in which “gay” was increasingly replaced by the ever-evolving ab­ breviation LGB (and subsequently LGBTQ+) to signify the nuanced ways of expressing gender and sexual identity.12 As such, the rainbow flag—Baker’s original eight-striped version and multiple subsequent variations—has be­ come the most predominant symbol of pride and freedom for the LGBTQ+ community across the globe. Sharon Day, an Ojibwe woman, environmen­ talist, and activist for women’s, Native American, and LGBTQ+ rights, re­ called the day she became aware that the pink triangle no longer resonated with younger generations. She was at a high school production of Cabaret, and at the end, the MC rips off the flower from his lapel, revealing a Star of David and a pink triangle. Day leaned over and asked the people sitting next to her if they thought anyone in the audience understood what the pink tri­ angle meant. They admitted that they did not know anything about the pink triangle. “I was able to explain to them. We all knew what the pink triangle meant,” said Day, referring to her years of queer and HIV activism in Min­ nesota. “I think it’s just a testament to how things have changed so quickly over thirty to forty years.”13 Of course, as something that was so fundamental to gay liberation and community, the pink triangle was never entirely replaced. Many LGBTQ+ people, especially those who had come out between the 1970s and 1990s, saw the pink triangle and rainbow flag as existing in tandem, while each served a different purpose. Jose Gutierrez, a gay Latino activist in Washington, DC, reflected on the two symbols. “The rainbow is the flag of our community. It tells people we’re here.” He paused as his eyes teared up. “The pink triangle

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is more powerful. To be honest, the pink triangle makes me cry. It’s about pain and remembering all of the gay people who have been arrested, tor­ tured, molested, traumatized, and killed in history.” His characteristic smile came back. “But that’s why the pink triangle is also about love—loving those people in the past who died, and those who fought to make the world safer for us today. It’s about respect—respecting their memory and making sure that it never happens to another human being again.”14 The pink triangle remains a ubiquitous facet of LGBTQ+ culture, even if it has lost much of its meaning as an explicitly political symbol of activism. In some instances, the logo has been co-opted by companies as a marketing strategy for appealing to gay audiences.15 In 1993, for example, Dubuque Brewing and Bottling Company brewed a “Pink Triangle Premium Light La­ ger” in time for the pride parades that summer. A large pink triangle stood out prominently on the bottle’s black label.16 In 2018, the athletic clothing company Nike made headlines when it released a line of shoes, T-shirts, and socks featuring pink triangles on them. The slogan of Nike’s “BeTrue” col­ lection was “reclaiming the past, empowering the future,” and the aim was to highlight “colors and symbols that have been reclaimed and historically repurposed by the LGBTQ community.”17 A spokesperson for ACT UP, the organization that famously used the pink triangle in AIDS activism, publicly criticized Nike, stating on Twitter, “This is why the queer community has a murky relationship with corp[oration]s. They appropriate our messaging for profit.”18 The pink triangle also remains a staple in the LGBTQ+ community be­ yond marketing campaigns. It is not uncommon to see pink triangles as decorations in gay bars, for example. It is also present in LGBTQ+ pop cul­ ture, appearing, for example, in the 2011 music video for Lady Gaga’s “Born This Way,” which became a global anthem of LGBTQ+ acceptance. More recently, queer icon Todrick Hall featured the pink triangle prominently in the video for his 2019 song “Nails, Hair, Hips, Heels.”19 The evolution of the pink triangle from a concentration camp badge to gay rights logo and then more broadly a fixture in queer culture speaks to the polyvalent nature of symbols to embody multiple meanings. In recent years, there have been efforts to resurrect the political potency of the pink triangle as a symbol in the global fight against homophobia. In 2014, a gay group in Cologne, Germany, initiated the “No Future without Memory” campaign to advocate for full equality for Germany’s LGBTQ+ citizens. A necessary part of doing so, according to one group member, is honoring the hundreds of thousands of men who were legally persecuted by the German state in both the Hitler and Adenauer eras. In a campaign

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they called “The Comeback of the Pink Triangle,” members of the Cologne group advocated that the rainbow flag be replaced with the original gay rights logo. The group stated in a press release: “The pink triangle is being forgotten, both as a symbol of Nazi oppression and as a symbol of the inter­ national emancipation movement of the 1970s. In 1994, Paragraph 175 was repealed. Twenty years later, the memory is already fading.”20 The same year, the pink triangle appeared in Saint Petersburg, Russia, as gay rights activists sought to bring global attention to Russia’s anti-LGBTQ+ policies ahead of the 2014 Winter Olympics in Sochi. A public statement from the Russian Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, and Transgender Network asserted that although Russian president Vladimir Putin promised that there would be no discrimination against Olympic athletes on the basis of sexual orien­ tation, “the whole world knows that the Russian government is pursuing an openly homophobic policy.” The statement connected the current situ­ ation to the Nazi past. “Recall that the [1936] Olympics in Berlin took place three years after Hitler came to power. . . . During the Olympics, antisemitic slogans and tablets disappeared from German streets. But everyone knows what happened afterward.”21 Two days before the Sochi opening ceremo­ nies, demonstrators stood in front of the vast, electronic Olympic count­ down clock and held large pink triangle banners, each with the inscription “Berlin 1936 = Sochi 2014.”22 In April 2017, Chilean demonstrators in Santiago wore pink triangles to protest the Russian Chechen Republic’s violent persecution of gay men, which included the arrest, torture, and in some cases murder of queer men in secret detention facilities.23 The following year, the Austrian men’s magazine Vangardist partnered with the administration of the Mauthausen Concentra­ tion Camp Memorial to launch the Pink Triangle Campaign. The impos­ ing gates of Mauthausen, which occupy the background of the campaign’s marketing photos, in combination with the pink triangle itself are reminders of where homophobia can lead if left unchecked. The Vangardist released a special pink triangle issue in May 2018. Included with each issue was a cloth pink triangle badge, which the editors asked readers to wear on their upper left chest “as a proud mark against homophobia.”24 In the United States, the resurgence of the pink triangle has been largely in an explicitly intersectional context. When the Black Lives Matter move­ ment began in the United States, striving to eradicate white supremacy and combat police brutality against Black communities, many LGBTQ+ rights organizations joined in solidarity. On Christmas Eve 2014, a group of dem­ onstrators in San Francisco carried a large banner with “BLACK LIVES MAT­ TER” situated between two pink triangles.25 In September of the following

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year, a contingent of marchers in the North Carolina Pride parade carried a banner that read “No pride for some of us without liberation for all of us!” The words “Black Lives Matter” were painted within a pink triangle.26 In both instances, the combined imagery of the Black Lives Matter slogan and the pink triangle visually brought to the fore the intersectionality of race and sexuality that shapes people’s lived experiences. Pairing these two powerful symbols highlights the nexus of queer and antiracist activism. On June 12, 2016, a gunman k illed forty-nine people and wounded fiftythree others during Latin Night at Pulse, an LGBTQ+ nightclub in Orlando, Florida. The attack sent shock waves of grief and anger across the nation. In Sacramento, California, LGBTQ+ activists Tre Borden and Carlos Mar­ quez changed the way they organized. They poured their efforts into build­ ing solidarity between the LGBTQ+ and Black Lives Matter movements in their community, arguing that homophobia and racism could not be fought

Figure E.1. The BLM-QTPOC (Black Lives Matter—Queer and Trans People of Color) contingent marches in the North Carolina Pride parade in Durham on September 26, 2015. The group’s ban­ ner utilizes the queer symbolism of the pink triangle while also collectivizing the statement “I can’t breathe,” which became a slogan for racial justice in the wake of the police killing of Eric Garner in 2014. Photo by Zaina Alsous.

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separately. Borden and Marquez designed T-shirts with the phrase “Black Lives Matter,” but the letter “a” had been replaced with pink triangles. One observer stated that the T-shirts and actions that Borden and Marquez have organized represent “a confluence of all these social movements, and I see the need for solidarity.”27 Activist Eli Erlick also thinks the pink triangle has the potential to foster intersectional solidarity. She founded Trans Student Educational Resources (TSER) in 2011, an organization whose mission is to transform the educa­ tional environment for trans and gender-nonconforming students through advocacy and empowerment. “There’s a long held frustration at the white, cisgender-led nonprofits leaving trans people behind,” Erlick said. The work of TSER is aimed at making sure that the victories of the LGBTQ+ move­ ment are enjoyed by all in the community, not just those with the most money, power, and privilege.28 TSER recently released a series of buttons and stickers that feature a down-turned pink triangle over a black background. The bold white text reads, “Queer Justice, Not Gay Rights.” The phrase “is about making com­ munities think more critically about queer politics,” Erlick explained. “Who is left out of ‘gay rights’ and why?” Her inspiration by ACT UP’s politics and the iconic Silence = Death poster is clear in the visuals of TSER’s button. “The reclaimed pink triangle is a symbol of disrespectability: rejecting mor­ alistic appeals to authority by our own communities,” Erlick stated. “The pink triangle has been reissued as a call for radical transformation beyond the confines of our current system. Queer justice demands more than inclu­ sion in a country without adequate health care, economic safety nets, or fair opportunities. Queer justice is the demand for liberation.”29 Brian Howard is one of the original members of the Silence = Death collective that designed the now iconic poster. When he saw how TSER had repurposed their design, he stated that he was in awe of people who “extract new meaning from the pink triangle, pushing out confined definitions and making it their own.”30 I asked Mark Segal, a longtime gay activist and founder of Gay Philadelphia News, if he still thought it was important to remember the pink triangle to­ day. His answer was characteristically succinct and drew from his overlapping identities as gay and Jewish: “Would you want Jews to forget Auschwitz?” He pondered a moment and then explained further: “The Jewish commu­ nity realizes that they need to remember their history and that the world needs to remember it so that it doesn’t go back there again. The slogan is ‘Never Forget.’ But it seems like the gay community has already forgotten. The pink triangle is more important now than ever before.”31 Queer fiction writer Cheryl Head also thinks it may be time for a comeback of the pink

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triangle. “As soon as big corporations start using the rainbow in their logos and merchandise, it becomes less radical and less about the community it­ self. So, the rainbow just doesn’t mean as much to me as it used to. The pink triangle, on the other hand, still holds more of a poignancy. As a symbol, it is still startlingly acute.” She paused to contemplate, and then added, “I’d be okay with the pink triangle being my symbol.”32 Crystal Mason’s experiences as a Black, queer artist and activist informed their reflection on LGBTQ+ symbolism today. Contemporary social justice movements of today are different from the movements of the 1970s and may require new symbology. “Maybe we bring back the black triangle,” Mason sug­ gested, “and talk about its history as an example of how society once branded people as socially deviant.” Then their face lit up. “I would love it if someone created a triangle that was half pink and half black. That could make for some really inclusive symbolism that wouldn’t take away from what happened to gay men. We need intersectional symbolism today more than ever.”33 In his speech at the 2010 Day of Remembrance for the Victims of Nazism, Günter Dworek of the Lesbian and Gay Union of Germany proclaimed, “Re­ membering must also have consequences.”34 Dworek’s statement highlights the politics of memory by asserting that it is not sufficient to acknowledge the Nazis’ gay victims during annual ceremonies, or even with the construc­ tion of memorials. Remembering is an active process and can be restorative. The enterprise of remembrance can lead to meaningful action aimed at rec­ tifying past injustices. The Bundestag’s 2002 annulment of Paragraph 175 convictions issued under Nazi rule was certainly an example of memories leading to political consequences. Yet the pardon came too late to have much of an impact on the thousands of men for whom it would have meant the most. The vast ma­ jority of the men who managed to survive the atrocities of the Third Reich died knowing that their democratically elected government considered them “indecent” and a criminal. It is difficult to state with any certainty how many gay victims of the Nazis were alive in 2002 to have their record cleared by the Bundestag’s pardon. None of them stepped forward to claim the compensa­ tion payments that they were entitled to since becoming officially recognized as victims. After a lifetime of state-sanctioned persecution and discrimina­ tion, it is easy to assume that the dwindling number of survivors saw the Bundestag’s action as too little, too late. For many activists, politicians, and scholars, there remained another po­ litical arena in which the Federal Republic needed to reassert its dedication to the rights and civil liberties of its minorities by confronting the legacy of the

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Nazis’ campaign against homosexuality. The Bundestag’s 2002 pardon was only valid for those convicted under Paragraph 175 during the Third Reich. That meant that the 68,300 men sentenced after the war, in West and East Germany, still had those convictions on their record. After the Bundestag’s 2002 decision, activists continued their efforts to have the post-1945 convic­ tions overturned as well. Members of the Berlin Senate spearheaded the ef­ fort to overturn these convictions and offer some type of restitution with the hope that the federal government would follow suit. In 2012, Klaus Lederer, the chairman of the Left Party in Berlin’s Senate, asserted that the flurry of apologies, auspices, investitures, and the signing of agreements represented nothing but the “primacy of symbolic politics.” What was needed, Lederer said, is “engaged, courageous, and financial public action.”35 Memories must have consequences. In a 2016 interview, Fritz Schmehling, who was convicted under Para­ graph 175 as a teenager in 1957, stated that time was running out for the victims to see justice. “I don’t want to die with a criminal record.” Fortu­ nately, the seventy-four-year-old did not have to wait much longer.36 After continued pressure from LGBTQ+ rights groups, the Bundestag announced in May 2016 that it planned to annul the convictions of and issue compensa­ tion to the men sentenced under Paragraph 175 after May 1945. While many celebrated the decision, Justice Minister Heiko Maas admitted that it was a “belated act of justice.”37 The Act to Criminally Rehabilitate Persons Who Have Been Convicted of Performing Consensual Homosexual Acts after May 8, 1945, went into effect on July 22, 2017. The act automatically annulled the criminal convictions, and the prosecutor’s office issued certificates of annulment upon request by the victim. If the aggrieved was no longer alive, his registered life partner, spouse, fiancé, parents, children, or siblings could request a certificate.38 The act also made the men convicted after May 1945 eligible for compensation at the rate of €3,000 per conviction, plus €1,500 for each year spent in prison for the conviction. “This has been a very, very long fight for the rehabilitation of gay men who were convicted in this demo­ cratic German state—not in the National Socialist state, but in the demo­ cratic German state,” said Axel Hochrein, a board member of the Lesbian and Gay Union in Germany.39 In March 2019, German authorities extended compensation payments to gay men who were placed under investigation or taken into investigative custody after 1945 but never convicted. “Paragraph 175 destroyed lives, led to sham marriages, harassment, blackmail and sui­ cide,” stated Justice Minister Katarina Barley.40 As of March 2019, 133 men had applied for compensation under the 2017 legislation, equaling a total of €433,500 in payouts.

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Remembering must have consequences, and while financial reparations and justice for the victims are of paramount importance, the ramifications must also be more far-reaching. As this book has demonstrated, the project of creating a more inclusive and equitable national community in the present often drives a reckoning with the past. Every facet of society should be able to look back into the national history and see itself. Eventually, after decades of activism and research by LGBTQ+ communities, acknowledging and commemorating the fate of queer people during the Third Reich have become a part of Germany’s coming to terms with its past. In 1985, West Germany’s president Richard von Weizsäcker became the first German government official to acknowledge queer Germans as one of the many victims of Nazi terror. Since it opened in 1993, the US Holocaust Memorial Museum, an institution funded in part by the US federal government, has recognized gay people as victims of Nazi persecution. The state of Israel invited gays and lesbians to participate in Holocaust memorial services at Yad Vashem for the first time in 2006.41 These examples, coupled with the construction of pink triangle memorials in nine countries across the world, represent a growing willingness on an international scale to commemorate the victims of the Nazis’ violent campaign against homosexuality. The proliferation of these memorials and state-sanctioned commemorations should not over­ shadow the profound resistance and hostility that these same states levied against memorialization efforts for decades. This “pinkwashing” of history to focus on self-congratulatory narratives and the normalization of some identities can also serve an agenda to deflect attention from injustices against other identities that governments and societies deem beyond the realm of respectability.42 The inclusion in commemoration ceremonies, memorials, history books, and the broader collective consciousness was the result of tireless and inten­ tional advocacy by the LGBTQ+ community for decades. The politics of memory have been fraught as the convergence of race, gender, and sexuality has foregrounded the visibility of some within the LGBTQ+ community while further marginalizing others. Viewing this history through the lens of Paragraph 175, for example, produced scholarship, activism, memorializa­ tion, and compensation of gay men in the Third Reich. While we should celebrate that the queer men who suffered under Paragraph 175 have finally been officially acknowledged by the German government as victims of in­ justice, that should not detract our attention from the fact that scholars and activists today are still fighting for the acknowledgment of the Nazis’ perse­ cution of lesbian, bi, trans, and other queer people. The history of the pink triangle teaches us many things. First, it shows how single symbols can be embodied with multiple meanings that take on a life

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of their own in new contexts. It originated as a mark of dehumanization, a badge that damned its wearer to terror and torture. Immediately after the Holocaust, West German judges, politicians, scholars, and the public contin­ ued to treat the pink triangle as a badge of shame. They silenced the voices of gay survivors and kept their stories out of the history books. It became terrifyingly apparent that the silencing of history can have devastating and deadly consequences. And yet, through six decades of advocacy and activism, LGBTQ+ com­ munities in Germany and then the world broke this imposed silence. They transformed the symbol of oppression into one of liberation, resistance, and pride. And when they wore the pink triangle, they not only outed them­ selves; they outed a social movement and this chapter of Holocaust history. The pink triangle came to help individuals and whole communities make sense of their place in the world and in history. Perhaps the greatest legacy of the pink triangle is that memories have power. How we remember the past can and should make an impact on our lives today. The incorporation of marginalized histories into the mainstream understanding of the national past can contribute to a more inclusive ex­ perience of national belonging in the present. But there can be no justice without first acknowledging and remembering the injustice. While gay ac­ tivists, grassroots scholars, and community organizers fought for equality in the present, they made a promise to the generations before them: We Will Remember. They knew a simple truth, though. The act of remembering is insufficient. Words are not enough. Remembering must have consequences.

A p pen dix A

Timeline of Key Events Table A.1

Timeline of key events in Pink Triangle Legacies

1871

Unification of Germany; Prussia’s anti-sodomy law (Paragraph 143) becomes the new national Paragraph 175 across the German Empire (Kaiserreich)

1897

Creation of Scientific-Humanitarian Committee (Berlin)

1914

World War I begins

1918

World War I ends: defeat of the German Empire and establishment of the Weimar Republic

1919

Creation of the Institute of Sexual Science (Berlin)

1932

Nazi Party receives 38% of votes, becoming largest political party in Germany

Jan. 1933

Appointment of Adolf Hitler as chancellor of Germany; crackdown on queer organizations begins in Berlin

May 1933

Destruction of Institute for Sexual Science during book burnings in Berlin

1934

The Nazis kill at least eighty-five people, including openly gay leader of the SA Ernst Röhm, during the Night of the Long Knives

June 1935

Nazi jurists amend Paragraph 175, giving themselves unprecedented legal authority to prosecute gay men

Aug. 1935

Implementation of Nuremberg Race Laws

1936

Creation of Central Office for Combating Homosexuality and Abortion

1945

Defeat of Nazi Germany and beginning of Allied occupation

1949

Creation of the Federal Republic of Germany (“West Germany”) and the German Democratic Republic (“East Germany”); both nations keep the 1935 (Nazi) version of Paragraph 175

1950

East Germany reverts its Paragraph 175 to the original 1871 wording

April 1951

Federal High Court of West Germany rules that the 1935 version of Paragraph 175 did not constitute a “realization of national socialistic goals or thoughts”

June 1951

Federal High Court of West Germany rules that Paragraph 175 did not contradict the nation’s constitution (Basic Law) on the grounds of sexism, even though it applied only to men

April 1953

President Dwight Eisenhower issues Executive Order 10450, which charged US federal agencies to fire employees deemed “security risks,” thus clearing the way for purging queer people from the federal government

July 1953

West Germany enacts the Law against the Distribution of Written Material Endangering Youth, prohibiting the public sale of printed material that promoted “immorality,” which also banned homophile publications

1956

West Germany passes the Federal Compensation Law, which made only the individuals who had been persecuted for reasons of race, religion, or political belief eligible for compensation

May 1957

West German Federal Constitutional Court upholds the constitutionality of the Nazi version of Paragraph 175 (Continued)

217

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APPENdIx A

Table A.1

(Continued)

Nov. 1957

West Germany passes the General Consequences of War Law, which ostensibly rendered individuals who had been excluded from the Federal Compensation Law eligible for financial aid from the government if they had been imprisoned in a concentration camp; all gay men who applied under this law were denied

June 1969

Stonewall riots take place in New York City

June 1969

West German Parliament approves the amendment to Paragraph 175, legalizing sex between men twenty-one years of age or older

July 1971

Premiere of Rosa von Praunheim’s film It’s Not the Homosexual Who’s Perverse, but Rather the Situation in Which He Lives

Aug. 1971

Establishment of the Homosexuelle Aktion Westberlin (HAW)

1972

Merlin Verlag publishes The Men with the Pink Triangle by Heinz Heger

March 1972

The first documented use of the pink triangle as a symbol of gay liberation (by the group RotZSchwul in Frankfurt am Main)

June 1973

David Thorstad and John Lauritsen’s fourteen-page pamphlet on the early homosexual rights movement in Europe is distributed among the members of the Socialist Workers Party; the pamphlet includes information on the Nazis’ destruction of the homosexual movement in Germany and mentions that gay concentration camp prisoners were forced to wear the pink triangle

Oct. 1973

The HAW Feminist Group submits a twenty-five-page document arguing why the pink triangle should become the symbol of West Germany’s gay liberation movement

Nov. 1973

West Germany amends Paragraph 175; the age of consent for gay men is lowered to eighteen, and “indecency” is replaced with “sexual acts” in the wording of the law

Jan. 1974

James Steakley’s article “Homosexuals and the Third Reich” is published in the Body Politic

Aug. 1974

Activists in the Gay Activists Alliance in New York City wear the pink triangle, representing the first documented instance in which the pink triangle is used in political activism in the US

1974

John Lauritsen and David Thorstad’s The Early Homosexual Rights Movement (1864–1935) is published by Times Change Press

1975

Munich’s Society for Sexual Equality (VSG) hosts a wreath-laying commemoration ceremony for pink triangle prisoners at Dachau Concentration Camp Memorial Site

1976

Release of the documentary The Pink Triangle? But, That Was a Long Time Ago. . . in West Germany

1977

Rüdiger Lautmann publishes the first in-depth scholarship on the fate of gay concentration camp prisoners based on archival research

May 1979

Martin Sherman’s play Bent debuts in London

Oct. 1979

National March on Washington for Lesbian and Gay Rights; transgender activist Phyllis Randolph Frye marches with an American flag in front of a contingent carrying a pink triangle banner

Oct. 1979

Officials in Amsterdam invite submissions for a national “Homomonument”

March 1984

The East Berlin group “Lesbians in the Church” commemorates the lesbian prisoners of Ravensbrück Concentration Camp at the camp’s memorial

Dec. 1984

The Homosexual Initiatives of Vienna dedicate a plaque to the gay prisoners at the Mauthausen Concentration Camp Memorial

Feb. 1985

Ecumenical Working Group on Homosexuals and the Church (HuK) submits a petition to place a pink triangle memorial plaque at Dachau Concentration Camp Memorial, which is denied by the International Dachau Committee

May 1985

West German president Richard von Weizsäcker mentions homosexuals during a speech commemorating the Nazis’ victims

APPENdIx A

219

1985

Monument to gay victims dedicated at Neuengamme Concentration Camp Memorial

1986

Six designers and activists found the Silence = Death collective, which designs the iconic poster with an upward-facing fuchsia triangle over the motto Silence = Death

March 1987

Formation of AIDS Coalition to Unleash Power (ACT UP), which adopts the Silence = Death and fuchsia triangle as its logo

June 1987

West German parliament agrees to create a “Hardship Fund” for individuals who had been left out of the compensation process in the 1950s; the legislation articulated that any payments were not to be understood as compensation or redress for Nazi injustice. Of seventeen gay men who applied, two were granted recurring payments, six were issued a onetime payment, one applicant died before the board reached a decision, and eight men (47% of all applications) were denied.

Sept. 1987

Public dedication of the pink triangle Homomonument in Amsterdam

Oct. 1987

Second National March on Washington for Lesbian & Gay Rights

1987–1990

West German states of Berlin, Bremen, Hamburg, Lower Saxony, and Schleswig-Holstein implement their own hardship provisions. In total, twenty-one men apply for aid; only eleven receive a payment of any kind.

1989

Pink triangle plaque dedicated at Nollendorfplatz, Berlin

April 1990

Porta Saragozza Gate plaque dedicated in Bologna, Italy

Oct. 1990

Unification of Germany

1992

Plaque dedicated at Sachsenhausen Concentration Camp Memorial

April 25, 1993 National March on Washington for Lesbian, Gay, & Bi Equal Rights and Liberation April 26, 1993 Opening of the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum (Washington, DC), which included the Nazis’ gay victims in its permanent exhibition March 1994

The German parliament votes to fully repeal Paragraph 175; the repeal goes into effect in June 1994

Dec. 1994

“Frankfurter Engel” monument is dedicated in Frankfurt am Main

1995

Pink triangle memorial is dedicated in Cologne

1996

The Twin Peaks pink triangle is displayed above San Francisco for the first time; it becomes an annual tradition during the city’s Pride celebrations

1996

Over thirty researchers, politicians, and journalists from five countries gather for “Against Oblivion,” the largest conference dedicated to the study of the Nazi campaign against homosexuality and the continued persecution of queer people in the Federal Republic of Germany

2000

Eight researchers from the US and Germany gather at the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum for an international conference on “Persecution of Homosexuals under the Nazi Regime,” which included information about the lack of postwar commemoration of this victim group

2001

Gay activists in Sydney, Australia, dedicate the Gay and Lesbian Holocaust Memorial

2001

In conjunction with the City of San Francisco, gay organizations dedicate Pink Triangle Park in the Castro district to the lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender victims of the Nazi regime

2002

The German government apologizes to the Nazis’ gay victims and nullifies all Paragraph 175 convictions from the Nazi period; gay men survivors become eligible for compensation

2003

The German Bundestag passes a resolution to fund a national memorial to the Nazis’ gay victims

2005

Gay groups dedicate a memorial to gay victims of fascism at the Risiera di San Sabba Concentration Camp Memorial in Trieste, Italy

2006

The Evangelical Church of Central Germany dedicates a memorial plaque to gay victims at Buchenwald Concentration Camp Memorial Site (Continued)

220

APPENdIx A

Table A.1

(Continued)

2008

The Memorial to the Homosexuals Persecuted under National Socialism is publicly dedicated in Berlin

2013

In conjunction with the City of Nuremberg, a coalition of gay, historical, and political organizations dedicates a commemorative pillar informing the public about the Nazi campaign against homosexuality in Nuremberg

2014

The City of Tel Aviv, Israel, dedicates a pink triangle memorial

2015

A group of organizers, scholars, and activists host a public commemoration service for the lesbian prisoners at Ravensbrück and dedicate a “memorial sphere” (Gedenkkugel) in their honor. The sphere must be removed after the ceremony.

2016

The City of Lübeck, Germany, and a local gay organization dedicate a commemorative plaque

May 2016

The German Bundestag announces it planned to nullify the convictions and issue compensation to the men sentenced under Paragraph 175 after 1945

May 2016

The Initiative of Autonomous Feminist Women and Lesbians from Germany and Austria applies to permanently dedicate a memorial sphere to the lesbian prisoners at Ravensbrück. The application is denied.

June 2017

The Act to Criminally Exonerate Persons Who Have Been Convicted of Performing Consensual Homosexual Acts after May 8, 1945, goes into effect

2017

The City of Munich dedicates a memorial to the Nazis’ lesbian and gay victims

March 2019

German authorities extend compensation payments to gay men who were placed under investigation or taken into custody but never convicted

2021

After five years, the International Advisory Board of the Brandenburg Memorials Foundation approves the application to permanently memorialize the lesbians who were imprisoned in the Ravensbrück concentration camp

A p pen dix B

Memorials to Gay Victims of the Nazi Regime Table B.1

List of memorials dedicated to the gay victims of the Nazi regime

MEMORIAL

LOCATION

Mauthausen Concentration Camp Memorial

Mauthausen, Austria

Neuengamme Concentration Camp Memorial

YEAR DEDICATED

DEDICATED BY

INSCRIPTION

1984

Homosexuelle Initiativen Vienna (HOSI), on behalf of all HOSI chapters in Austria

Beaten to Death, Silenced to Death. To the homosexual victims of National Socialism. From the Homosexual Collective of Austria. 1984 (German)

Hamburg, Germany

1985

Unabhängige Homosexuelle Alternative Hamburg

To the homosexual victims of National Socialism, 1985 (German)

Dachau Concentration Camp Memorial

Dachau, Germany

1985 (first placed in Memorial Hall in 1995)

Homosexuelle Initiativen München

Beaten to Death, Silenced to Death. To the homosexual victims of National Socialism. From the Munich Homosexual Collective, 1985 (German)

Nollendorfplatz

Berlin, Germany

1989

Allgemeine Homosexuelle Arbeitsgemeinschaft and HuK Berlin

Beaten to Death, Silenced to Death. To the homosexual victims of National Socialism. (German)

Porta Saragozza Gate

Bologna, Italy

1990

Arcigay: Association To the homosexual of LGBTI+ Italians victims of Nazi fascism and racism. April 25, 1990, the 45th Anniversary of Liberation. (Italian) (Continued)

221

222

APPENdIx B

Table B.1

(Continued) YEAR DEDICATED

MEMORIAL

LOCATION

Sachsenhausen Concentration Camp Memorial

Oranienburg, Germany

Frankfurter Engel

Frankfurt am 1994 Main, Germany

1992

DEDICATED BY Evangelical Advent Church of Prenzlauer Berg’s Homosexuality Discussion Group, with support from the Bundesverband Homosexualität, HuK Berlin, the Schwulenverband Deutschland, the Sonntags-Club e.V., and individual donors

Beaten to Death, Silenced to Death. To the homosexual victims of National Socialism. (German)

Initiative for the Monument for Homosexual Persecution, supported by the city of Frankfurt, the Hesse Cultural Foundation, the HannchenMehrzweck Foundation, and individual donations

Homosexual men and women were persecuted and murdered in the time of National Socialism. The crimes were denied and the deaths were silenced. The survivors were despised and condemned. We remember to remain ever aware that men who love men and women who love women can always be persecuted again. Frankfurt am Main. December 1994. (German)

AK Homosexualität der Gewerkschaft OTV Köln

Beaten to Death, Silenced to Death. To the gay and lesbian victims of National Socialism. (German)

Hohenzollern Bridge Cologne, Park Germany

1995

Twin Peaks Pink Triangle

Annually since 1996 Friends of the Pink Triangle

San Francisco, USA

INSCRIPTION

(Because this is not a permanent memorial, there is no inscription.)

APPENdIx B

MEMORIAL

LOCATION

YEAR DEDICATED

223

DEDICATED BY

INSCRIPTION

Gay and Lesbian Sydney, Holocaust Memorial Australia

2001

Collective of gay activist groups

We remember you who have suffered or died at the hands of others. Women who have loved women, men who have loved men, and all of those who have refused the roles others have expected us to play. Nothing shall purge your deaths from our memories. (English)

Pink Triangle Park

San Francisco, USA

2001

Eureka Valley Promotion Association with support from the Department of Public Works and the San Francisco Arts Commission

In remembrance of the lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender victims of the Nazi regime (1933–1945) (English)

Risiera di San Sabba Concentration Camp Memorial

Trieste, Italy

2005

Il Circolo Arcobaleno, ArciGay & ArciLesbica Trieste

Against all discrimination. From the Rainbow Circle, ArciGay/ ArciLesbica Trieste, in remembrance of the homosexual victims of Nazi fascism. January 27, 2005. (Italian)

Buchenwald Concentration Camp Memorial

Weimar, Germany

2006

Evangelische Kirche In honor of the in Mitteldeutschland homosexual men who died here. From 1937 to 1945, 650 pink triangle prisoners were detained in Buchenwald. Many of them died. (German and English)

National Memorial for Homosexuals Persecuted under National Socialism

Tiergarten Park, Berlin, Germany

2008

“Der homosexuellen NS-Opfern gedenken” Initiative and the Lesben- und Schwulenverband Deutschland, with funds from the Federal Ministry of Culture

(Information plaque with a historical overview of the Nazis’ campaign against homosexuality. German and English.)

(Continued)

224

APPENdIx B

Table B.1 (Continued) YEAR DEDICATED

MEMORIAL

LOCATION

DEDICATED BY

INSCRIPTION

Commemoration column at the Sterntor

Nuremberg, Germany

2013

The City of Nuremberg at the request of the City Council Coalition of the Bündnis 90/ Die Grünen. The initiative evolved from the work by Fliederlich e.V. and “History for Everyone” e.V.

(Believing that education is a form of memorialization, the organizers chose to provide a history of the Nazis’ campaign against homosexuality as a way to honor the gay victims. German and English.)

Pink Triangle Memorial

Tel Aviv, Israel

2014

City of Tel Aviv

In memory of those persecuted by the Nazi regime for their sexual orientation and gender identity (English, Hebrew, and German)

Memorial sphere

Fürstenberg, Germany

Annually since 2015; a permanent memorial will be placed in Ravensbrück beginning in 2022

Initiative of Autonomous Feminist Women and Lesbians from Germany and Austria

In memory of all lesbian women and girls in the women’s concentration camp Ravensbrück and Uckermark. Lesbian women were considered “abnormal” and were persecuted and murdered for being “antisocial,” rebellious, crazy, & for other reasons. You are not forgotten! (German)

Commemorative plaque

Lübeck, Germany

2016

Lübeck Christopher Street Day e.V., the City of Lübeck, and private donations

In memory of the people who were persecuted and murdered during the time of National Socialism because of their homosexual identity (German)

APPENdIx B

MEMORIAL

LOCATION

Memorial to Nazis’ Lesbian & Gay Victims

Munich, Germany

225

YEAR DEDICATED

DEDICATED BY

INSCRIPTION

2017

City of Munich

This is a place to remember the persecution and murder of gays and lesbians under the Nazi regime. The monument takes a stand against intolerance and marginalization and represents an openminded civic society. (Information plaque also includes the history of the pink triangle. German and English)

A p pen dix C

Memorials with Pink Triangle for LGBTQ Victims of Violence Table C.1 List of memorials that use imagery of the pink triangle and honor LGBTQ victims of violence but are not dedicated to the Nazis’ victims specifically MEMORIAL

LOCATION

Homomonument

Amsterdam, Netherlands

Gay Memorial

YEAR DEDICATED

DEDICATED BY

INSCRIPTION

1987

Made possible through the collective action and funds from private donations, the mayor’s office, and various city and regional ministries

“Such an endless desire for friendship” (Dutch) (Adjoining plaque:) Commemorates all women and men who have ever been persecuted because of their homosexuality (Dutch and English)

Anchorage, USA

1999

Anchorage Gay Community, made possible by the support of Dan Cook (aka Empress XVIII Cherresse), H.I.M. Peggy Murphy, and Emperor VII

Your spirit lives on in love, peace, and pride (English)

Plaza of Sexual Diversity

Montevideo, Uruguay

2005

Collective of LGBT groups in Uruguay

Honoring diversity is honoring life: Montevideo for the respect of every gender, identity, and sexual orientation (Spanish)

Ciutadella Park

Barcelona, Spain

2011

226

In memory of the gays, lesbians and transsexual persons who have suffered persecution and repression throughout history, Barcelona 2011 (Catalan)

Notes

Introduction

1. Rüdiger Lautmann estimated that the number of men sent to concentration camps as “homosexuals” ranged from five thousand to fifteen thousand. That estima­ tion remained the standard statistic for decades. Lautmann wrote in 2019 that new research conducted by Rainer Hoffschildt narrows that window. See Rüdiger Laut­ mann, “Diversität und Einheit: Die NS-Homosexuellenrepression in der deutschen Errinerungskultur,” Invertito 21 (2019): 239. 2. Standing for Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Transgender, Queer (and/or Question­ ing). Some individuals and organizations choose to add additional letters to the ab­ breviation, such as I for intersex, or A for asexual. Additionally, a plus sign (+) is added to the end to represent additional gender and sexual identities that may not be represented in the abbreviation. 3. In 1995, a German researcher learned that the State Archive in Hamburg had been destroying files pertaining to the arrest of gay men in the Nazi and West Ger­ man periods to make room for more “archive worthy” materials. Jan Feddersen, “Kein Fall für den Reißwolf,” Die Tageszeitung, October 21–22, 1995. See chapter 5 of this book for more details. 4. Richtlinien der Bundesregierung über Härteleistungen (Anm. 35), §7, Abs. 2, Ziffer 1. 5. For the scholarship on homosexuality and the Third Reich see the works by the following authors in the bibliography: Geoffrey J. Giles, Günther Grau, Eliza­ beth Heineman, Rainer Hoffschildt, Burkhard Jellonnek, Rüdiger Lautmann, Laurie Marhoefer, Klaus Mueller, Andreas Pretzel, Claudia Schoppmann, James Steakley, Andreas Sternweiler, Hans-Georg Stümke, and Andrew Wackerfuss. 6. For the scholarship on specific manifestations of pink triangle memories see the works by the following authors in the bibliography: Jennifer V. Evans, Craig Griffiths, Dagmar Herzog, Samuel C. Huneke, Erik N. Jensen, Arnaud Kurze, Mar­ nie Rorholm and Kem Gambrell, Dorthe Seifert, Sébastien Tremblay, Christopher Vials, Angelika von Wahl, and Christiane Wilke. 7. “Cisgender” describes individuals whose gender identity matches that origi­ nally identified on their birth certificate (i.e., people who are not transgender). “Non­ binary” describes a person whose gender identity falls outside of the two-gender binary (man or woman). For a glossary of more LGBTQ-related terms, see https:// www.aecf.org/blog/lgbtq-definitions 8. Mark Segal, Zoom interview with the author, February 19, 2021. 9. Robbert-Jan Adriaansen, The Rhythm of Eternity: The German Youth Movement and the Experience of the Past, 1900–1933 (New York: Berghahn Books, 2015), 2–3.

227

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N OT E S TO PA g ES 7 – 1 1

10. Marianne Hirsch, The Generation of Postmemory: Writing and Visual Culture af­ ter the Holocaust (New York: Columbia University Press, 2012), 5. Craig Griffiths em­ ploys the concept of postmemory in his recent chapter on the pink triangle. See The Ambivalence of Gay Liberation: Male Homosexual Politics in 1970s West Germany (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2021). 11. Sébastien Tremblay, “ ‘Ich konnte ihren Schmerz körperlich spüren.’ Die His­ torisierung der NS-Verfolgung und die Wiederaneignung des Rosa Winkels in der westdeutschen Schwulenbewegung der 1970er Jahre,” Invertito 21 (2019): 180. 12. The concept of “grafted memories” was inspired by Alison Landsberg’s Pros­ thetic Memories: The Transformation of American Remembrance in the Age of Mass Culture (New York: Columbia University Press, 2004). 13. Michael Rothberg, Multidirectional Memory: Remembering the Holocaust in the Age of Decolonization (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 2019), 5. 14. Jose Gutierrez, Zoom interview with the author, February 24, 2021. 15. Josie McLellan, Love in the Time of Communism: Intimacy and Sexuality in the GDR (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2011), 128; Josie McLellan, “Lesbians, Gay Men and the Production of Scale in East Germany,” Cultural and Social History 14, no. 1 (2017): 97; Jennifer Evans, “Decriminalization, Seduction, and ‘Unnatural De­ sire’ in the German Democratic Republic,” Feminist Studies 36, no. 3 (October 2010): 553–77; Erik G. Huneke, “Morality, Law, and the Socialist Sexual Self in the German Democratic Republic, 1945–1972” (PhD diss., University of Michigan, 2013). 16. Josie McLellan, “Glad to Be Gay behind the Wall: Gay and Lesbian Activism in 1970s East Germany,” History Workshop Journal 74 (Autumn 2012): 107–8; Scott Harrison, “The State of Belonging: Gay and Lesbian Activism in the German Demo­ cratic Republic and Beyond, 1949–1989” (PhD diss., University of Illinois at UrbanaChampaign, 2019); Samuel Clowes Huneke, States of Liberation: Gay Men between Dictatorship and Democracy in Cold War Germany (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2022); Teresa Tammer, “Schwul bis über die Mauer: Die Westkontakte der Ost-Berliner Schwulenbewegung in den 1970er und 1980er Jahren,” in Konformitäten und Konfrontationen: Homosexuelle in der DDR, ed. Rainer Marbach and Volker Weiss (Hamburg: Männerschwarm Verlag, 2017), 70–90; Katharine White, “East Germa­ ny’s Red Woodstock: The 1973 Festival between the ‘Carnivalesque’ and the Every­ day,” Central European History 51 (2018): 608–10. 17. The literature on citizenship and its relationship to sexuality is robust. For a selection see Diane Richardson, Sexuality and Citizenship (Cambridge: Polity, 2018); Francesca Stella, Yvette Taylor, Tracey Reynolds, and Antoine Rogers, eds., Sexual­ ity, Citizenship and Belonging: Trans-national and Intersectional Perspectives (New York: Routledge, 2016); Margot Canaday, The Straight State: Sexuality and Citizenship in Twentieth-Century America (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2009). 18. Carole Fink, Philipp Gassert, and Detlef Junker, eds., 1968: The World Trans­ formed (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1998) contains seventeen chapters on different themes or geographical locations, but none of the studies mention the gay rights movement. Changing the World, Changing Oneself: Political Protest and Collec­ tive Identities in West Germany and the U.S. in the 1960s and 1970s, edited by Belinda Da­ vis, Wilfried Mausbach, Martin Klimke, and Carla MacDougall (New York: Berghahn Books, 2010), contains studies on the New Left, the African American civil rights movement, protests against the Vietnam War, Cold War politics, and terrorism, but does not have an entry for “homosexual” or “gay” in the index. Martin Klimke’s book

N OT ES TO PA g E S 1 2 – 2 7

229

The Other Alliance: Student Protest in West Germany and the United States in the Global Sixties (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2010) also ignores the existence of gays and lesbians in the transatlantic student movement. 19. Canaday, Straight State, 4. 20. HAW Sponti-Schwule, “Zum Rosa Winkel,” in Der Rosa Winkel, ed. by HAW (1975), 17–23, quoted in Griffiths, Ambivalence of Gay Liberation, 150. 21. Nancy Nangeroni, phone interview with the author, March 10, 2021. 22. Martha Shelley, phone interview with the author, February 26, 2021. 23. Crystal Mason, Zoom interview with the author, April 19, 2021. 24. Hazel V. Carby, foreword to Silencing the Past: Power and the Production of His­ tory, by Michel-Rolph Trouillot (Boston: Beacon, 2015), xiii. 25. Lesléa Newman, phone interview with the author, February 23, 2021. 26. Egmont Fassbinder, “Alte Schwule dringend gesucht,” Emanzipation 3 (1975): 10, quoted in Griffiths, Ambivalence of Gay Liberation, 157. 27. Morgan Gwenwald, phone interview with the author, April 5, 2021. 1. “They Are Enemies of the State!”

1. Krimineller Lebenslauf des Kaufmanns Ernst Pack, Essen, September 23, 1943.10965476_1 and 10965476_2/, Arolsen Digital Archive. I owe a special debt of gratitude to my friend Jo-Ellyn Decker at the US Holocaust Memorial Museum’s Holocaust Survivor and Victims Resource Center for helping me tell the story of gay concentration camp prisoners through the remarkable records of the Arolsen Archives. 2. The text in German read, “Die widernatürliche Unzucht, welche zwischen Personen männlichen Geschlechts oder von Menschen mit Tieren begangen wird, ist mit Gefängniß zu bestrafen; auch kann auf Verlust der bürgerlichen Ehrenrechte erkannt warden.” 3. Geoffrey J. Giles, “Legislating Homophobia in the Third Reich: The Radi­ calization of Prosecution against Homosexuality by the Legal Profession,” German History 23, no. 3 (2005): 339. 4. Rainer Hoffschildt, “140.000 Verurteilungen nach ‘§175,’ ” Invertito 4 (2002): 148–49. 5. Laurie Marhoefer, Sex and the Weimar Republic: German Homosexual Emancipa­ tion and the Rise of the Nazis (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2015), 120–28. 6. Robert Beachy, Gay Berlin: Birthplace of a Modern Identity (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 2014). 7. Gertrude Sandmann, “Anfang des lesbischen Zusammenschlusses: Die Clubs der zwanziger Jahre,” Unsere Kleine Zeitung 2, no. 7/8 (1976): 4. 8. Marhoefer, Sex and the Weimar Republic. 9. Hoffschildt, “140.000 Verurteilungen nach ‘§175,’ ” 148–49. 10. Verhandlungen des Reichstags, 3. Wahlperiode, 1924–1928, Berlin 1927, 393:10993. 11. Laurie Marhoefer, “Lesbianism, Transvestitism, and the Nazi State: A Microhistory of a Gestapo Investigation, 1939–1943,” American Historical Review 121, no. 4 (2016): 1176. 12. Henry Friedlander, The Origins of Nazi Genocide: From Euthanasia to the Final Solution (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1995).

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13. Heinrich Himmler, speech to SS-Gruppenführer, February 18, 1937, quoted in Michael Burleigh and Wolfgang Wippermann, The Racial State: Germany 1933–1945 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1991), 192–93. 14. Jill Stephenson, Women in Nazi Society (New York: Barnes & Noble, 1975), 38; Dagmar Herzog, Sexuality in Europe: A Twentieth-Century History (Cambridge: Cam­ bridge University Press, 2011), 70. 15. Dagmar Herzog, Sex after Fascism: Memory and Morality in Twentieth-Century Germany (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2007), 18. 16. Anna Hájková, “Queer History and the Holocaust,” Notches blog, January 22, 2019, https://notchesblog.com/2019/01/22/queer-history-and-the-holocaust/. 17. Hájková, “Queer History and the Holocaust.” 18. Quoted in Claudia Schoppmann, Days of Masquerade: Life Stories of Lesbian Women during the Third Reich (New York: Columbia University Press, 1996), 116–22. 19. Quoted in Schoppmann, 96. 20. Curators Corner: The Frieda Belinfante Collection, United States Holocaust Me­ morial Museum, https://www.ushmm.org/collections/the-museums-collections/ curators-corner/the-frieda-belinfante-collection. 21. “Willem Arondeus,” ID card, United States Holocaust Memorial Museum, https://encyclopedia.ushmm.org/content/en/id-card/willem-arondeus. 22. Gad Beck, Und Gad ging zu David: Die Erinnerungen des Gad Beck, 1923 bis 1945 (Berlin: Edition diá, 1995), 159. Beck also tells his story in the documentary Paragraph 175, dir. Rob Epstein and Jeffrey Friedman (Telling Pictures Production, 2000), DVD. 23. The author has heard two different educators raise this point as a concern during conversations at educational workshops in the United States between 2016 and 2020. 24. Adolf Hitler, Directive No. 1 of February 3, 1931, quoted in Stefan Micheler, “Homophobic Propaganda and the Denunciation of Same-Sex-Desiring Men under National Socialism,” Journal of the History of Sexuality 11, no. 1/2, Special Issue: Sexu­ ality and German Fascism ( January—April 2002): 105–6. 25. Richard Evans, The Third Reich in Power (New York: Penguin Group, 2005), 39; Ian Kershaw, Hitler: 1889–1936, Hubris (New York: W. W. Norton, 1999), 517; and Otto Gritschneder, “Der Führer hat Sie zum Tode verurteilt . . .” Hitlers “Röhm-Putsch”—Morde vor Gericht (Munich: Beck, 1993). 26. Andrew Wackerfuss, Stormtrooper Families: Homosexuality and Community in the Early Nazi Movement (New York: Harrington Park, 2015); Geoffrey J. Giles, “Männer­ bund mit Homo-Panik: Die Angst der Nazis vor der Rolle der Erotik,” in Nationalso­ zialistischer Terror gegen Homosexuelle: Verdrängt und ungesühnt, ed. Burkhard Jellonnek and Rüdiger Lautmann (Paderborn: Verlag Ferdinand Schöningh, 2002), 105–18. 27. Geoffrey J. Giles, “The Denial of Homosexuality: Same-Sex Incidents in Him­ mler’s SS and Police,” Journal of the History of Sexuality 11, no. 1/2, Special Issue: Sexuality and German Fascism ( January–April 2002): 257. 28. Heinrich Himmler, speech to SS-Gruppenführer, February 18, 1937, quoted in Burleigh and Wippermann, Racial State, 192–93. 29. Robert Beachy, “The Nazi Anti-sodomy Statute of 1935,” paper presented at the annual meeting of the German Studies Association, Washington, DC, Octo­ ber 2, 2015. See also Rainer Hoffschildt, Olivia: Die bisher geheime Geschichte des Tabus

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Homosexualität und der Verfolgung der Homosexuellen in Hannover (Hanover: Selbstver­ lag, 1992), 92; Albert Knoll, “Homosexuelle Häftlinge im KZ Dachau,” Invertito 4 (2002): 68–91. 30. Knoll, “Homosexuelle Häftlinge im KZ Dachau,” 70. 31. Micheler, “Homophobic Propaganda,” 96–98. 32. Jürgen Müller, Ausgrenzung der Homosexuellen aus der “Volksgemeinschaft”: Die Verfolgung von Homosexuellen in Köln 1933–45 (Cologne: Emons Verlag, 2003), 120. 33. Records for Wolfgang Lauinger, 12226898_0_1, Arolsen Archives. 34. “Gegen die Sittenentartung. Strafprozesse im Bereiche des §175,” Hamburger Fremdenblatt, August 26, 1936, evening edition. 35. “Es wird durchgegriffen . . . im Kampf gegen die Homosexualität,” Hamburger Anzeiger, August 26, 1936. 36. Paul von Groszheim, interviewed in We Were Marked with a Big A, directed by Elke Jeanrond and Joseph Weishaupt and produced by Mediengruppe Schwabing, United States Holocaust Memorial Museum, and Norddeutscher Rundfunk (VHS, 1994). 37. Robert Gellately, Backing Hitler: Consent and Coercion in Nazi Germany (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2001), vii–2. 38. Joachim Müller and Andreas Sternweiler, Homosexuelle Männer im KZ Sachsen­ hausen (Berlin: Verlag Rosa Winkel, 2000), 190–206. 39. Quoted in Hans-Georg Stümke and Rudi Finkler, Rosa Winkel, Rosa Listen: Homosexuelle und “Gesundes Volksempfinden” von Auschwitz bis heute (Hamburg: Ro­ wohlt, 1981), 250. 40. Hunsinger statement, September 27, 1939, Gestapo 16015, quoted in Mar­ hoefer, “Lesbianism, Transvestitism, and the Nazi State,” 1180. 41. Letter of May 2, 1941, Gestapo 16015, quoted in Marhoefer, “Lesbianism, Transvestitism, and the Nazi State,” 1183. 42. Marhoefer, “Lesbianism, Transvestitism, and the Nazi State,” 1188. 43. Thank you to all the “nasty women” who have persisted throughout history, fighting the patriarchy, breaking barriers, and shattering glass ceilings in the face of men who have tried—in vain—to silence and control them. Keep persisting. 44. Micheler, “Homophobic Propaganda,” 125–26. 45. Adolf Hitler, speech before the Reichstag, July 13, 1934, quoted in Joachim Fest, Hitler (New York: Harcourt, 1974), 469. 46. Giles, “Legislating Homophobia,” 352. 47. Adolf Hitler, Reichstagsrede, July 13, 1934, quoted in Max Domarus, Hitler. Reden und Proklamationen: Kommentiert von einem deutschen Zeitgenossen, Part 1: Triumph 1932–1938, 4th ed. (Leonberg, Germany: Pamminger and Partner, 1988), 410–24. 48. Giles, “Legislating Homophobia,” 341. 49. Protokoll Strafrechtskommission 45. Sitzung, 18 Sept. 1934, 2000.39/BAL R22/973, United States Holocaust Memorial Museum Archives. 50. Quoted in Stümke and Finkler, Rosa Winkel, Rosa Listen, 216. 51. Ernst Jenne, “Soll §175 des StGB auf Frauen ausgedehnt warden?,” quoted in Günther Grau, ed., Homosexualität in der NS-Zeit: Dokumente einer Diskriminierung und Verfolgung (Frankfurt am Main: Fischer, 1993), 108–10. 52. Schoppmann, Days of Masquerade, 18.

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53. Josef Meisinger, “Bekämpfung der Abtreibung und Homosexualität als poli­ tische Aufgabe,” Vortrag gehalten auf der Dienstversammlung der Medizinaldezern­ enten und—referenten am 5./6 (April 1937 in Berlin), quoted in Grau, Homosexualität in der NS-Zeit, 153. 54. Bundesarchiv Koblenz R/22/973, fol. 5. 55. Hájková, “Queer History and the Holocaust.” 56. Marhoefer, “Lesbianism, Transvestitism, and the Nazi State,” 1172. 57. Jennifer Evans and Elissa Mailänder, “Cross-Dressing, Male Intimacy and the Violence of Transgression in Third Reich Photography,” German History special online issue (2020), https://doi.org/10.1093/gerhis/ghaa031. Evans and Mailänder chose to use male pronouns when referring to Kitzing. Because Kitzing lived openly as both a man and a woman at different points in life, I have chosen to use they/them pronouns when referring to Kitzing. 58. Müller and Sternweiler, Homosexuelle Männer im KZ Sachsenhausen, 62. 59. Evans and Mailänder, “Cross-Dressing, Male Intimacy and the Violence of Transgression in Third Reich Photography.” 60. Müller and Sternweiler, Homosexuelle Männer im KZ Sachsenhausen, 62. 61. Müller and Sternweiler, 63. 62. Marhoefer, “Lesbianism, Transvestitism, and the Nazi State,” 1169. 63. Micheler, “Homophobic Propaganda,” 109. These “pink lists” only contained the names of men. 64. Radio address by Himmler on the occasion of the Tag der deutschen Polizei 1937 ( January 15, 1937), text in Von der Großmacht zur Weltmacht 1937, ed. Hans Volz (Dokumente der deutschen Politik, 5, Berlin, 1938), 235–40. 65. Lutz van Dijk, Einsam war ich nie, 24. 66. Hoffschildt, “140.000 Verurteilungen nach ‘§175,’ ” 148. These statistics are revealing but can also be somewhat misleading. Edward Dickenson notes that the ravages of war destroyed many of the records from the final years of the Third Reich, so conviction numbers from roughly 1942 to 1945 are the result of educated esti­ mates. Hoffschildt also notes that some men were convicted on multiple occasions, so the number of convictions is just that: a count of convictions, not necessarily a count of men who were convicted. And then there is the fact that an unknowable number of men were arrested by the Gestapo and detained indefinitely without a trial, so the fate of these men is not represented by the numbers above. 67. Müller and Sternweiler, Homosexuelle Männer im KZ Sachsenhausen, 196. 68. Josef Kohout later told his life story to an acquaintance who published it under the pseudonym Heinz Heger: The Men with the Pink Triangle: The True Life-andDeath Story of Homosexuals in the Nazi Death Camps, 2nd ed., trans. David Fernbach, introduction by Klaus Müller (New York: Alyson Books, 1994), 31. 69. Dominique Grisard, “Pink Prisons, Rosy Futures? The Prison Politics of the Pink Triangle,” in Queer Futures: Reconsidering Ethics, Activism, and the Political, ed. Elahe Haschemi Yekani, Eveline Kilian, and Beatrice Michaelis (Farnham, UK: Ashgate, 2013), 86. See also Jo Paoletti, “The Gendering of Infants’ and Toddlers’ Cloth­ ing in America,” in The Material Culture of Gender / The Gender of Material Culture, ed. K. Martinez and Kenneth L. Ames (Winterthur, DE: Winterthur Museum, 1997). 70. Dominique Grisard, “In the Pink of Things: Gender, Sexuality, and Race,” in Pink: The History of a Punk, Pretty, Powerful Color, ed. Valerie Steele (New York:

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Thames & Hudson, 2018), 151. In his dictionary of sexual slang, Ernest Borneman identified “Rosarote” as slang under “homosexual prostitution” (section 29.9) and again under “hustlers for male customers” (section 48.4): Sex im Volksmund: Der ob­ szöne Wortschatz der Deutschen (Hamburg: Rowholt, 1971). 71. Stümke and Finkler, Rosa Winkel, Rosa Listen, 305. 72. Olaf Mußmann, “Homosexuelle in Konzentrationslagern. Ein Tagungsberi­ cht,” in Gedenkstätternrundbrief 81 (1998): 37–41. See also Dominique Grisard, “Rosa. Zum Stellenwert der Farbe in der Schwulen- und Lesbenbewegung,” in Rosa Ra­ dikale: Die Schwulenbewegung der 1970er Jahre, ed. Andreas Pretzel and Volker Weiß (Hamburg: Männerschwarm, 2012), 177–98. 73. Pierre Seel, I, Pierre Seel, Deported Homosexual: A Memoir of Nazi Terror, trans. Joachim Neugroschel (New York: Basic Books, 1995), 30. 74. Deutschlandberichte SPD, 1936, pg 1005f, quoted in Stümke and Finkler, Rosa Winkel, Rosa Listen, 281. 75. Kurt von Ruffin, interviewed in Jeanrond and Weishaupt, We Were Marked with a Big A. 76. Benedikt Kautsky, Teufel und Verdammte. Erfahrungen und Erkenntnisse aus Sieben Jahren in deutschen Konzentrationslagern (Zurich: Büchergilde Gutenberg, 1946), 129, quoted in Grisard, “Rosa,” 179. 77. Raimund Wolfert, “ ‘Die ganze vertrackte Situation halt’: Karl Kipp (1896– 1959): Opersänger, Rosa-Winkel-Häftling und Auschwitz Überledender,” Invertito 18 (2016), 47, 57–58. 78. Grisard, “Rosa,” 180. 79. Schoppmann, Days of Masquerade, 1. 80. Hájková, “Queer History and the Holocaust.” 81. “Eve Adams Uses One-Way Ticket,” Daily News, December 8, 1927. 82. Jonathan Ned Katz, The Daring Life and Dangerous Times of Eve Adams (Chi­ cago: Chicago Review, 2021). Katz’s book also includes the text of Lesbian Love, the novel for which the US government accused Adams of obscenity. 83. Knoll, “Homosexuelle Häftlinge im KZ Dachau,” 68. 84. Herman Sachnowitz, Det angår også eg. (Oslo: Den Norske Bokklubben, 1978), 158, quoted in Wolfert, “ ‘Die ganze vertrackte Situation halt,’ ” 47. 85. Quoted in Stümke and Finkler, Rosa Winkel, Rosa Listen, 281. 86. Kurt von Ruffin used the term Transvestit to describe the victim, so it is un­ clear if the person was a trans woman, drag queen, or a male cross-dresser. In Jean­ rond and Weishaupt, We Were Marked with a Big A. 87. Heger, Men with the Pink Triangle, 34. 88. Eugen Kogon, Der SS-Staat. Das System der deutschen Konzentrationslager, rev. ed. (Munich: Karl Aber, 1977), 284. 89. Heger, Men with the Pink Triangle, 84–85. 90. Seel, I, Pierre Seel, 43. 91. Records for Johann Thomass, including Krankenblatt (3240460_0_1), death certificate, April 16, 1942 (3240462_0_1), and letter from Naztweiler Lagerarzt to Frau Thomas, April 29, 1942 (3240468_0_1), Arolsen Archives. 92. Records for Heinrich Lamm, including Buchenwald Inmate File (6435216_0_1) and Internal Notice to the Commandant of Buchenwald, March 20, 1942 (6435218_0_1), Arolsen Archives.

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93. Dijk, Einsam war ich nie, 58–59 94. Death certificate for Albert Latendorf, September 9, 1943 (10169360_0_1), Arolsen Archives. 95. Records for Johann Schöllhammer, 10996770_0_1, Arolsen Archives. 96. Giles, “Legislating Homophobia,” 352. 97. Heger, Men with the Pink Triangle, 98. 98. Befehl Himmlers an Reichsarzt-SS Dr. Grawatz, Aktenvermerk aus dem Wirtschafts- und Verwaltungshauptamt der SS vom 3. Dezember 1943; Aktennotiz zum Besuch Vaernets im KZ Buchenwald, 29. Juli 1944; Die Selektion von Häftlinge für die Versuche; Aufzeichnungen über die “operierten” Häftlinge; Schreiben der Deutschen Heilmittel GmbH, Prag vom 28. Februar 1945 an das Wirtschafts- und Verwaltungshauptamt der SS. All quoted in Grau, Homosexualität in der NS-Zeit, 347–58. 99. Heinz F., interview in Epstein and Friedman, Paragraph 175. 100. Heger, Men with the Pink Triangle, 41. 101. Andreas Sternweiler, introduction to Müller and Sternweiler, Homosexuelle Männer im KZ Sachsenhausen, 14. 102. Joachim Müller, “ ‘Unnatürliche Todesfälle,’ ” in Müller and Sternweiler, Ho­ mosexuelle Männer im KZ Sachsenhausen, 216. 103. Andreas Pretzel, “Vom Staatsfeind zum Volksfeind,” in Homosexualität und Staatsräson: Männlichkeit, Homophobie und Politik in Deutschland 1900–1945, ed. Su­ sanne zur Nieden (Frankfurt am Main: Campus Verlag, 2005), 250. 104. The United States Holocaust Memorial Museum’s encyclopedia article “Introduction to the Holocaust” (https://encyclopedia.ushmm.org/content/en/ article/introduction-to-the-holocaust) states that “Communists, Socialists, Jehovah’s Witnesses, and homosexuals” were “persecuted on political, ideological, and behav­ ioral grounds.” 105. Krimineller Lebenslauf: Ernst Pack, September 23, 1943, 10965478_1 and 10965478_2, Arolsen Archives. 106. Anordnung der polizeilichen Vorbeugungshaft. Kriminalpolizeistelle Essen, September 23, 1943, records for Ernst Pack, 10965476_1 and 10965476_2, Arolsen Archives. 107. Antrag—Entmannung, Flossenbürg, February 17, 1942, records for Ernst Pack, 10965486_1, Arolsen Archives. 108. Erklärung, September 25, 1944, records for Ernst Pack, 10965488_1, Arolsen Archives. 2. “for homosexuals, the Third Reich hasn’t Ended yet”

1. Bruno Bouchard, statement to the Landeskriminalpolizei, Kreiskrimi­ nalkommissariat Ndb. Bernau, Germany, February 27, 1947, C: Deutsches Reich, 1933–1945, C.6 (Nachwirkungen und Aufarbeitung), C.6.3 (Rehabilitierung/ Wiedergutmachung), Schwules Museum archives (hereafter cited as C.6.3, SM archives). 2. Bruno Bouchard, letter to the Hauptausschuss of the Opfer des Faschismus, no date, ca. March 1947, C.6.3, SM archives. 3. Einspruch von Bruno Bouchard an den Hauptausschuss “Opfer des Faschis­ mus” gegen die Einziehung seines Ausweises, C.6.3, SM archives.

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4. Bruno Bouchard, statement to the Landeskriminalpolizei, Kreiskriminal­ kommissariat Ndb. Bernau, Germany, February 27, 1947, C.6.3, SM archives. 5. Bruno Bouchard, A.nr 15801, C.6.3, SM archives. 6. Bruno Bouchard, letter to the Hauptausschuss of the Opfer des Faschismus, no date, ca. March 1947, C.6.3, SM archives. 7. Einspruch von Bruno Bouchard an den Hauptausschuss “Opfer des Faschis­ mus” gegen die Einziehung seines Ausweises, C.6.3, SM archives. 8. Beglaubigte—Abschrift Dr. Hermann Riffert, November 29, 1946, C.6.3, SM archives. 9. Letter from the SED Reinickendorf to the OdF Reinickendorf, February 28, 1947, C.6.3, SM archives. 10. Einspruch von Bruno Bouchard an den Hauptausschuss “Opfer des Faschis­ mus” gegen die Einziehung seines Ausweises, C.6.3, SM archives. 11. Bruno Bouchard, letter to the Hauptausschuss of the Opfer des Faschismus, no date, ca. March 1947, C.6.3, SM archives. 12. Einspruch von Bruno Bouchard an den Hauptausschuss “Opfer des Faschis­ mus” gegen die Einziehung seines Ausweises, C.6.3, SM archives. 13. C.6.3, SM archives. 14. Josef K./Wilhelm K. papers, 1939–1948, RG-33.002, Acc. 1994.A.0332, folder 10, United States Holocaust Memorial Museum (hereafter USHMM) archives. 15. David W. Dunlap, “Personalizing Nazis’ Homosexual Victims,” New York Times, June 26, 1996. 16. Dwight Eisenhower, cablegram to General George C. Marshall, April 20, 1945, quoted in “Atrocities and other Conditions in Concentration Camps in Ger­ many: Report of the Committee Requested by Gen. Dwight D. Eisenhower through the Chief of Staff, Gen. George C. Marshall to the Congress of the United States,” presented by Senator Alben Barkley to the Committee on Foreign Relations, May 15, 1945, 79th Congress, 1st Session, Document No. 47, http://www.ibiblio.org/pha/ policy/Atrocities-01.pdf. 17. Randolph W. Baxter, “ ‘Homo-Hunting’ in the Early Cold War: Senator Kenneth Wherry and the Homophobic Side of McCarthyism,” Nebraska History 84 (2003): 121. 18. Hermann R., quoted in Hans-Georg Stümke and Rudi Finkler, Rosa Winkel, Rosa Listen: Homosexuelle und “Gesundes Volksempfinden” von Auschwitz bis heute (Ham­ burg: Rowohlt, 1981), 329. 19. Supreme Headquarters, Allied Expeditionary Force, Office of the Chief of Staff, Handbook for Military Government in Germany prior to Defeat or Surrender (1944), paragraph 1. 20. Handbook for Military Government in Germany prior to Defeat or Surrender, para­ graph 482(c). 21. Allied Control Authority, Germany, Enactment and Approved Papers of the Con­ trol Council and Coordinating Committee (1945), vol. 1, p. 104, Library of Congress: Military Legal Resources, https://www.loc.gov/rr/frd/Military_Law/Enactments/ Volume-I.pdf. 22. “Law No. 11: Repealing of Certain Provisions of the German Criminal Law,” Allied Control Authority, Germany, Enactment and Approved Papers of the Control Coun­ cil and Coordinating Committee (1945), vol. 2, p. 71, Library of Congress: Military Legal Resources, https://www.loc.gov/rr/frd/Military_Law/Enactments/Volume-II.pdf.

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23. Ordner 86: Werres, I, Schwullesbisches Archive Hannover (hereafter SARCH). 24. Michele Weber, “ ‘When Does Our Liberation Come?’: The Policing of Ho­ mosexuality in the American Zone of Occupation, Germany, 1945–1949” (master’s thesis, Marquette University, 2013). 25. Ordner 86: Werres, I, SARCH archives. 26. Karl Gorath (alias Karl B.), interview with Jörg Hutter, http://www.joerg­ hutter.de/karl_b_.htm#The. 27. Rainer Hoffschildt, “140.000 Verurteilungen nach ‘§175,’ ” Invertito 4 (2002): 148–9. 28. Quoted in Claudia Schoppmann, Days of Masquerade: Life Stories of Lesbians during the Third Reich, trans. Allison Brown (New York: Columbia University Press, 1996), 31–40. 29. Hans-Georg Stümke, “Wiedergutmachung an homosexuellen NS-Opfern von 1945 bis heute,” in Nationalsozialistischer Terror gegen Homosexuell: Verdrängt und ungesühnt, ed. Burkhard Jellonnek and Rüdiger Lautmann (Paderborn: Ferdinand Schöningh, 2002), 329–38. 30. Pierre Seel, I, Pierre Seel, Deported Homosexual: A Memoir of Nazi Terror, trans. Joachim Neugroschel (New York: Basic Books, 1995), 88. 31. Devin O. Pendas, The Frankfurt Auschwitz Trial, 1963–1965: Genocide, History, and the Limits of Law (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2006), 9. 32. Clayton Whisnant, Male Homosexuality in West Germany: Between Persecution and Freedom, 1945–69 (Basingstoke, UK: Palgrave Macmillan, 2012), 26. 33. Robert G. Moeller, War Stories: The Search for a Usable Past in the Federal Repub­ lic of Germany (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2001), 88–122. 34. Robert G. Moeller, “Private Acts, Public Anxieties, and the Fight to Decrimi­ nalize Male Homosexuality in West Germany,” Feminist Studies 36, no. 3 (Fall 2010): 542. 35. Moeller, “Private Acts, Public Anxieties,” 542–43. 36. Moeller, 533. 37. Richard Gatzweiler, Das dritte Geschlecht: Um die Strafbarkeit der Homosexual­ ität (Cologne: Volkswartbund, 1951), 29. 38. Gatzweiler, 30. For information on the US government’s purge of queer em­ ployees see David K. Johnson, The Lavender Scare: The Cold War Persecution of Gays and Lesbians in the Federal Government (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2004). 39. Bernhard Rosenkranz and Gottfried Lorenz, Hamburg auf anderen Wegen: Die Geschichte des schwulen Lebens in der Hansestadt, rev. ed. (Hamburg: Lambda Edition, 2006), 115. 40. Peter M., interview with Clayton Whisnant, July 17, 1999, Hamburg, quoted in Whisnant, Male Homosexuality in West Germany, 15. 41. Juristenzeitung, no. 17, 1951, quoted in Stümke, “Wiedergutmachung an ho­ mosexuellen NS-Opfern,” 334. 42. Neue juristische Wochenschrift 4 (1951): 810, quoted in Stümke and Finkler, Rosa Winkel, Rosa Listen, 455–56. 43. Entscheidigungen des Bundesverfassungsgerichts, vol. 6 (Tübingen, 1957), 408– 9. For further discussion of this testimony and the 1957 case in general see Rob­ ert G. Moeller, “ ‘The Homosexual Man Is a “Man,” the Homosexual Woman Is a “Woman” ’: Sex, Society, and the Law in Postwar West Germany,” Journal of the History of Sexuality 4, no. 3 ( January 1994): 395–429; Whisnant, Male Homosexuality in West

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Germany, 108–10; Stümke and Finkler, Rosa Winkel, Rosa Listen, 356–65 (the authors also provide excerpts from the court’s decision on pp. 460–77); and Ralf Dose, “Der §175 in der Bundesrepublik Deutschland (1949 bis heute),” in Die Geschichte des §175: Strafrecht gegen Homosexuelle, ed. Freunde eines Schwulen Museums in Berlin e.V. in Zusammenarbeit mit Emanzipation e.V. Frankfurt am Main (Berlin, 1990), 125–33. 44. Federal Constitutional Court, quoted in Stümke and Finkler, Rosa Winkel, Rosa Listen, 360. 45. Stümke and Finkler, 471. 46. Stümke, “Wiedergutmachung an homosexuellen NS-Opfern,” 336. 47. Whisnant, Male Homosexuality in West Germany, 29. 48. The Higher Criminal Division (Große Strafkammer) of the Hamburg State Court, February 13, 1948, quoted in Bernhard Rosenkranz, Ulf Bollmann, and Gott­ fried Lorenz, Homosexuellen-Verfolgung in Hamburg, 1919–1969 (Hamburg: Lambda, 2009), 126. 49. Quoted in Stümke, “Wiedergutmachung an homosexuellen NS-Opfern,” 336. 50. Bundesverfassungsgericht 1957, quoted in Friedrich Naumann-Stiftung, ed. Dokumentation §175 (Bonn, 1981), (Anm. 17), 32. 51. Samuel Clowes Huneke, States of Liberation: Gay Men between Dictatorship and Democracy in Cold War Germany (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2022), esp. chap. 3. 52. Angelika von Wahl, “How Sexuality Changes Agency: Gay Men, Jews, and Transitional Justice,” in Gender in Transitional Justice, ed. Susanne Buckley-Zistel and Ruth Stanley (Basingstoke, UK: Palgrave Macmillan, 2011), 191–217. 53. Whisnant, Male Homosexuality in West Germany, 30. 54. Dieter Schiefelbein, “Wiederbeginn der juristischen Verfolgung homosex­ ueller Männer in der Bundesrepublik Deutschland: Die Homosexuellen-Prozesse in Frankfurt am Main 1950/51,” Zeitschrift für Sexualforschung 5, no. 1 (1992): 59. 55. “Verfassungsschutz: Wie bei Edgar Wallace,” Der Spiegel, November 4, 1953, 16–17; “Rückspiegel: Der Spiegel berichtete. . . ,” Der Spiegel, November 25, 1953, 41; and “Ein Prozeß in Wiesbaden. . . ,” Humanitas 4 (1953): 4–5. 56. Schiefelbein, “Wiederbeginn der juristischen Verfolgung homosexueller Männer in der Bundesrepublik Deutschland,” 64. 57. Hans Langemann, “Homosexualität und Staatsgefährdung,” Kriminalistik 9 (1955): 88–90. 58. “Homosexuelle: Eine Million Delikte,” Der Spiegel, November 29, 1950, 8. 59. Eugen Kogon, Der SS-Staat: Das System der deutschen Konzentrationslager (Mu­ nich: Karl Alber Verlag, 1946). The book has since gone through forty-four reprint­ ings. Kogon’s work was first translated into English as The Theory and Practice of Hell: The German Concentration Camps and the System behind Them, trans. Heinz Norden (New York: Farrar, Straus and Cudahy, 1950). The quotations provided above are taken from page 44 of the 1968 edition published by Berkeley Books. 60. Rudolf Höss’s autobiography, written while in prison in Poland in 1946–1947, was first made available in German in as “Kommandant in Auschwitz: Autobiogra­ phische Aufzeichnungen von Rudolf Höss,” vol. 5 of the series Quellen und Darstel­ lungen zur Zeitgeschichte (Stuttgart: Deutsche Verlags-Anstalt, 1958). The first English translation was Commandant of Auschwitz: The Autobiography of Rudolf Hoess, trans. Constantine FitzGibbon (London: Weidenfeld & Nicolson, 1959).

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61. Ota Kraus and Erich Kulka, The Death Factory: Document on Auschwitz, trans. Stephen Jolly (Oxford: Pergamon, 1966), quoted in Anna Hájková, “Queer History and the Holocaust,” Notches blog, January 22, 2019, https://notchesblog. com/2019/01/22/queer-history-and-the-holocaust. 62. Raimund Schnabel, Die Frommen in der Hölle (Frankfurt am Main: Roederberg, 1966), 53. 63. William L. Shirer, The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich (New York: Fawcett, 1960), quotes from the 1985 edition, 172–73. 64. Karl D. Bracher, Die deutsche Diktatur: Entstehung, Struktur, Folgen des National­ sozialismus (Cologne: Kiepenheuer & Witsch, 1969). 65. “Letter aus Deutschland,” Der Kreis 18, August 1950, 23–24. 66. Andreas Sternweiler, ed., Und alles wegen der Jungs: Pfadfinderführer und KZHäftling Heinz Dörmer, Lebensgeschichten (Berlin: Rosa Winkel, 1994), 150. 67. Quoted in Whisnant, Male Homosexuality in West Germany, 47. 68. Weltbund für Menschenrechte angeschlossen an die international Freunds­ loge Bremen, “Wir rufen Euch,” Die Insel: Monatsblätter für Freundschaft und Toleranz 2, no. 2 (February 1952): 24–25. 69. D.B., open letter to the Präsidium des 2. Internationalen Kongresses für sex­ uelle Gleichberechtigung, Frankfurt am Main, in Der Weg zur Freundschaft und Toler­ anz 2, no. 9 (1952): 3. 70. P. Gerhard Dippel, “Tilgung von Strafen aus der NS-Zeit,” Der Weg, no. 4 (1961): 87. 71. L. D. Classen von Neudegg, “Ecce homo—oder Tore zur Hölle: Aus meinem KZ-Tagesbuch,” Humanitas 12 (1954): 359. 72. Neudegg, “Aus meinem Tagebuch 1939–1945: KZ Oranienburg,” Humanitas 5 (1954): 163. 73. Neudegg, “Schicksale: Ein Blick zurück,” Humanitas 3 (1954): 85. 74. Neudegg, “Ecce homo—oder Tore zur Hölle,” 360. 75. Dagmar Herzog, Sex after Fascism: Memory and Morality in Twentieth-Century Germany (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2007), 109. See also Rainer Herrn, Anders bewegt: 100 Jahre Schwulenbewegung in Deutschland (Hamburg: Männer­ schwarmSkript, 1999), 46. 76. Johannes Werres, “1945–1980: Homosexuellen-Bewegung in Deutschland,” unpublished essay, no date, Ordner 86: Werres, I, SARCH archives. 77. Copies of the Swiss homophile publication Der Kreis continued to be smug­ gled into West Germany after the “trash and smut” law went into effect in 1953. For more information on West German homophile magazines see Volker Janssen, ed., Der Weg zu Freundschaft und Toleranz: Männliche Homosexualität in den 50er Jahren (Ber­ lin: Rosa Winkel Verlag, 1984). 78. Susanna Schrafstetter, “The Diplomacy of Wiedergutmachung: Memory, the Cold War, and the Western European Victims of Nazism, 1956–64,” Holocaust and Genocide Studies 17, no. 3 (Winter 2003): 459–60. 79. Schrafstetter, 459. 80. Wahl, “How Sexuality Changes Agency,” 191–217. 81. Stümke, “Wiedergutmachung an homosexuellen NS-Opfern,” 330. 82. Moeller, War Stories, 35. The Bundesministerium für Vertriebene, Flüchtlinge, und Kriegsgeschädigte existed from 1949 until it was placed under the Ministry of the In­ terior in 1969.

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83. Stümke, “Wiedergutmachung on homosexuellen NS-Opfern,” 330. 84. Schrafstetter, “Diplomacy of Wiedergutmachung,” 462. See also Ulrich Her­ bert, “Nicht entschädigungsfähig? Die Wiedergutmachungsansprüche der Auslän­ der,” in Wiedergutmachung in der Bundesrepublik Deutschland, ed. Ludolf Herbst and Constantin Goschler (Munich: Oldenbourg, 1989), 273–302. 85. Schrafstetter, “Diplomacy of Wiedergutmachung,” 463–65. 86. Correspondence to Helmut Höppner, June 9, 1947, C.6.3, SM archives. 87. Schoppmann, Days of Masquerade, 145–58. 88. Wahl, “How Sexuality Changes Agency,” 206. For a study on homosexual resistance fighters see Manfred Herzer, “Schwule Widerstandskämpfer gegen den Nationalsozialismus. Neue Studien zu Wolfgang Cordan, Wilifried Israel, Theodor Haubach und Otto John,” in Nationalsozialistischer Terror gegen Homosexuelle, ed. Jel­ lonnek and Lautmann, 127–46. 89. Sternweiler, Und alles wegen der Jungs, 153–54. 90. Hans-Joachim Schoeps, ed., Der homosexuelle Nächste: Ein Symposium (Ham­ burg: Furche-Verlag, 1963), 86. 91. Stümke, “Wiedergutmachung an homosexuellen NS-Opfern,” 331. 92. Stümke, 334. 93. Susanne Höll, “Der Richter und das Opfer,” Süddeutsche Zeitung, July 18, 2012, 3. 94. Höll, 3. 95. L. D. Classen von Neudegg, “Aus meinem Tagebuch 1939–1945: KZ Oranien­ burg,” Humanitas 5 (1954): 163. 3. “The Only Acceptable gay liberation logo”

1. There is uncertainty about which law was used to convict Josef Kohout, the man who is the subject of Heinz Heger’s The Men with the Pink Triangle. In the book, the author states it was Germany’s Paragraph 175, which is plausible, since Kohout was arrested after the Nazi annexation of Austria. Records from the Dokumenta­ tionsarchiv des österreichischen Widerstandes (Archive for the Documentation of the Austrian Resistance) suggest that Kohout was convicted under Austria’s Para­ graph 129, the national statute criminalizing same-sex acts between men and be­ tween women, which had been in effect since 1852. See https://ausstellung.de.doew. at/m21sm142.html. Historical records indicate there was a transitional period after the German annexation of Austria during which officials in the Austrian territory used either the Austrian or German law, depending on which they thought would be more successful in securing a conviction. See Geoffrey J. Giles, “The Nazi Persecu­ tion of Homosexuals in Occupied Countries: A Lenient Exception to Normal Jus­ tice against Non-Germans?,” in Eradicating Differences: The Treatment of Minorities in Nazi-Dominated Europe, ed. Anton Weiss-Wendt (Newcastle upon Tyne: Cambridge Scholars, 2010), 41–59; and Günter Grau, Homosexualität in der NS-Zeit: Dokumente einer Diskriminierung und Verfolgung (Frankfurt am Main: Fischer Taschenbuch Verlag, 1993), 252–61. 2. Heinz Heger [Johann Neumann], “Vorwart des Verfassers,” Die Männer mit dem rosa Winkel: Der Bericht eines Homosexuellen über seine KZ-Haft von 1939–1945 (Ham­ burg: Merlin Verlag, 1972), 8. 3. Heger, 7.

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4. Robert Moeller, “Private Acts, Public Anxieties, and the Fight to Decriminalize Male Homosexuality in West Germany,” Feminist Studies 26, no. 3 (Fall 2010): 528–52. 5. Bundesministerium der Justiz und für Verbraucherschutz, “Gesetze im Inter­ net,” https://www.gesetze-im-internet.de/englisch_gg/englisch_gg.html. 6. Moeller, “Private Acts, Public Anxieties,” 534. 7. Hans-Joachim Schoeps, “Soll Homosexualität strafbar bleiben?,” Der Monat 15, no. 171 (December 1962): 26–27. 8. Clayton Whisnant, Male Homosexuality in West Germany: Between Persecution and Freedom, 1945–69 (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2012), 202. See also Samuel Clowes Huneke, States of Liberation: Gay Men between Dictatorship and Democracy in Cold War Germany (University of Toronto Press, 2022), chapter 4. 9. Whisnant, 203. 10. For the broader context of liberalization in Europe during this time see Dag­ mar Herzog, Sexuality in Europe: A Twentieth-Century History (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2011). 11. “Schimpf für Rosa,” Stern, “Fernsehen” section, no. 15, 1978, Schwulles­ bisches Ordner 86: Personalakten: P–Q, folder Rosa von Praunheim, SARCH archives. 12. “Nicht der Homosexuelle ist pervers. . . ,” GSR information, newsletter of the Gesellschaft für Sexualreform, Aachen, no. 1/1973, 1, Ordner 270, Centrum Schwule Geschichte Köln (hereafter CSG) archives. 13. Andreas Pretzel and Volker Weiß, eds., Rosa Radikale: Die Schwulenbewegung der 1970er Jahre (Hamburg: Männerschwarm Verlag, 2012). 14. Michael Holy, “Jenseits von Stonewall—Rückblicke auf die Schwulenbewe­ gung in der BRD von 1969–1980,” in Pretzel and Weiß, Rosa Radikale, 46–48, fn 16. 15. Sebastian Haunss, Identität in Bewegung: Prozesse kollektiver Identität bei den Au­ tonomen und in der Schwulenbewegung (Wiesbaden: Verlag für Sozialwissenschaften, 2004), 202. 16. Flyer from the Homosexuelle Initiative Münster, November 1980, Ordner 81: Orte M, folder Münster, SARCH archives. 17. HAW Info #1, “HAW Info,” bound collection, SM archives. 18. Peter Hedenström, interview with the author, Berlin, February 11, 2014. 19. Sammlung Holy, Feministenpapiere, 11, SM archives. 20. Patrick Henze, “Perversion of Society: Rosa von Praunheim and Martin Dan­ necker’s Film It Is Not the Homosexual Who Is Perverse, but the Society in Which He Lives (1971) as the Initiation of the Golden Age of the Radical Left Gay Movement in West Germany,” in Sexual Culture in Germany in the 1970s: A Golden Age for Queers?, ed. Janin Afken and Benedikt Wolf (Basingstoke, UK: Palgrave Macmillan, 2019), 111. 21. Patrick Henze, Schwule Emanzipation und ihre Konflikte: Zur westdeutschen Schwulenbewegung der 1970er Jarhe (Berlin: Querverlag, 2019), 302. 22. Elmar Kraushaar, interview with Patrick Henze, May 11, 2013, quoted in Henze, 310. 23. Henze, 304. 24. Wolfgang Theis, interview with Patrick Henze, March 28, 2014, quoted in Henze, 305. 25. Craig Griffiths, The Ambivalence of Gay Liberation: Male Homosexual Politics in 1970s West Germany (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2021), 133. 26. Sammlung Holy, Feministenpapiere, 8, SM archives.

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27. Dieter Schiefelbein, “ ‘ . . . so wie die Juden. . .’—Versuch, ein Mißverständnis zu verstehen,” in Der Frankfurter Engel: Mahnmal Homosexuellenverfolgung, ed. Initia­ tive Mahnmal Homosexuellenverfolgung (Frankfurt am Main, 1997), 35, quoted in Griffiths, Ambivalence of Gay Liberation, 132. 28. Sammlung Holy, Feministenpapiere, 4, SM archives. 29. Sammlung Holy. Feministenpapiere, 5. 30. Hedenström interview. 31. For more on the HAW’s “Pink Triangle Campaign” see Griffiths, Ambiva­ lence of Gay Liberation, 153, and Sébastien Tremblay, “ ‘Ich konnte ihren Schmerz körperlich spüren’: Die Historisierung der NS-Verfolgung und die Wiederaneignung des Rosa Winkels in der westdeutschen Schwulenbewegung der 1970er Jahre,” Inver­ tito 21 (2019): 179–80. 32. Emanzipation no. 3, 1976. 33. Unter Uns, no. 1, May/June 1977, 3. The authors of Gay News Germany also commented on Unter Uns’s presentation of the gay rights symbols. Gay News Germany 7, no. 75 ( June 1977), 12. 34. “Aus den Gruppen,” Emanzipation no. 3, 1978, 35. 35. Tremblay, “ ‘Ich konnte ihren Schmerz körperlich spüren,’ ” 197–98. 36. Griffiths, Ambivalence of Gay Liberation, 151. 37. The term cisgender describes a person whose gender identity matches the biological sex assigned at birth. Definition by Sarah Prager, Rainbow Revolutionaries: 50 LGBTQ+ People Who Made History (New York: HarperCollins, 2020), 108. 38. Cristina Perincioli, interview with Patrick Henze, December 27, 2011, quoted in Henze, Schwule Emanzipation und ihre Konflikte, 324–25. 39. Benedikt Wolf and Janin Afken, “Introduction: Constructing and Revisiting the Golden Age of Queer Sexual Culture in Germany,” in Afken and Wolf, Sexual Culture in Germany in the 1970s, 13. 40. Simon Dickel and Anne Potjans, “Racial Seeing and Sexual Desire: 1 Berlin Harlem and Auf den Zweiten Blick,” in Afken and Wolf, Sexual Culture in Germany in the 1970s, 197. 41. “Ein Brief von Huey Newton an die revolutionären Brüder und Schwest­ ern über die ‘Women’s Liberation’ und ‘Gay Liberation’ Bewegungen,” HAW Info 1 (November 1971): Anhang 1. 42. Reinhard, “Rosa für Schwule,” HAW Info 18 (March 1975): 15. 43. Ika Hügel-Marshall, Invisible Women: Growing Up Black in Germany, trans. Eliz­ abeth Faggney (New York: Continuum, 2001), 98. 44. Tiffany Florvil, Mobilizing Black Germany: Afro-German Women and the Making of a Transnational Movement (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 2020), 3. 45. Florvil, 215, fn 46. 46. Florvil, 12. 47. Griffiths, Ambivalence of Gay Liberation, 142. 48. Tremblay, “ ‘Ich konnte ihren Schmerz körperlich spüren,’ ” 200. 49. Ulrich Pramann, “. . . den würde ich kastrieren lassen,” Stern 18 (1976), 209– 10, quoted in Griffiths, Ambivalence of Gay Liberation, 146. 50. Hans Heinz Bär, “Noch tief im Ghetto,” Gay Journal, February 1981, 19. 51. Spectator: “Das dritte Reich noch nicht zu Ende,” Uni, no. 8 (1970), 8–9, Ord­ ner 87: NS Alte Quellen, SARCH archives.

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52. “Schwulen gegen Faschismus und Unterdrückung,” flyer by Viola Flieder­ wild, Ordner 81: Orte M, folder Mainz, SARCH archives. 53. Rosa Winkel? Das ist doch schon lange vorbei. . ., produced by Peter Recht, Christiane Schmerl, and Detlef Stoffel of the Fakultät für Soziologie, Uni Bielefeld (1975/1976). 54. Promotional flyer for Stoffel’s Rosa Winkel? film, Ordner 87: NS Widerstand, Filme, Bent, and Bücher Verbrennung, SARCH archives. 55. Ordner 87: NS Widerstand, Filme, Bent, and Bücher Verbrennung, SARCH archives. 56. Note the false use of “renewed.” “Ein ‘rosa Winkel’ als Symbol der Eman­ zipation: Aktion der ‘ABH,’ ” in Braunschweiger Zeitung, July 15, 1975, Ordner: Orte Braunschweig, SARCH archives. 57. “Ein ‘rosa Winkel’ als Symbol der Emanzipation: Aktion der ‘ABH.’ ” 58. Sammlung Holy, Feministenpapiere, 20, SM archives. 59. “Warmer Brüder gegen Kalte Krieger,” flyer of the Initiativegruppe Homosex­ ualität Mainz, Ordner 81: Orte M, folder Mainz, SARCH archives. My emphasis added. 60. Flyer compiled by Viola Fliederwild, July 1979, Ordner 81: Orte M, folder Mainz, SARCH archives. 61. Flyer compiled by Viola Fliederwild, July 1979. 62. “Wahlzeitung,” Rosa Lista, January 1986, Ordner: Orte Braunschweig, SARCH archives. Emphasis added. 63. “Der Rosa Winkel: Bedeutung eines alten und neuen Schwulenabzeichens,” Links Unten, no. 4, Ordner: Berlin 1971–1985, SARCH archives. 64. “Wir Tragen den Rosa Winkel, Blatt, 48, no date, Ordner: Berlin 1971–1985, SARCH archives. 65. “Warm brothers” (warme Brüder) was a slang term for homosexual men. The motto rhymes in German: “Brüder und Schwestern, ob warm oder nicht, Kapitalis­ mus bekämpfen ist unsere Pflicht!” 66. Hedenström interview. The American scholar and activist James Steakley also mentioned this in an interview on November 19, 2015. 67. “Schwule gegen Nazis!,” open letter to “Sisters in Wiesbaden,” from Wolfgang Senft, January 12, 1981, Ordner 81: Orte N–R, folder Nürnberg, SARCH archives. 68. “Schwule für den Frieden,” pamphlet of the Allgemeine Homosexuelle Arbeitsgemeinschaft, Ordner: Orte Berlin, 1971, 1985, SARCH archives. 69. “40 Jahre BRD,” Südwind, no. 4 (1989), 4. 70. Dagmar Herzog demonstrates that sexuality played a vital role in the West German Vergangenheitsbewältigung in her book Sex after Fascism: Memory and Morality in Twentieth-Century Germany (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2005). 71. Wilfried Mausbach, “America’s Vietnam in Germany—Germany in Amer­ ica’s Vietnam: On the Relocation of Spaces and the Appropriation of History,” in Changing the World, Changing Oneself: Political Protest and Collective Identities in West Germany and the US in the 1960s and 1970s, ed. Belinda Davis, Wilfried Mausbach, Martin Klimke, and Carla MacDougal (New York: Berghahn Books, 2010), 54. 72. Günter Anders, “Der amerikanische Krieg in Vietnam oder Philosophisches Wörterbuch heute,” Das Argument 9, no. 45 (1967): 349–97, esp. 360. 73. Dan Puckett, “Reporting on the Holocaust: The View from Jim Crow Ala­ bama,” Holocaust and Genocide Studies 25, no. 2 (Fall 2011): 219–51. 74. David Goode, Darryl Hill, Jean Reis, and William Bronston, A History and Sociology of the Willowbrook State School (Washington, DC: American Association on Intellectual and Developmental Disabilities, 2013), 137–40.

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4. “It’s a Scar, but in your heart”

1. James Steakley, Skype interview with the author, November 19, 2015. 2. James Steakley, interview with Troy Reeves, University of Wisconsin–Madi­ son Archives Oral History Program, interview #1088, second interview session, June 16, 2010. 3. James Steakley, “Homosexuals and the Third Reich,” Body Politic, January/ February 1974, 1. 4. David Thorstad, phone interview with the author, March 5, 2021. 5. Thorstad interview. 6. Thorstad interview. 7. Matthew Riemer and Leighton Brown, We Are Everywhere: Protest, Power, and Pride in the History of Queer Liberation (New York: Ten Speed, 2019), 115. Elizabeth Armstrong and S. M. Crage, “Movements and Memory: The Making of the Stone­ wall Myth,” American Sociological Review 71, no. 5 (2006): 724–51. 8. “Gay is good” was coined by famed activist Frank Kameny. See Eric Cervini, The Deviant’s War: The Homosexual vs. the United States of America (New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2020). 9. The International Committee on Sexual Equality (ICSE) was founded by the Dutch Cultuur en Ontspanningscentrum (COC) in 1951 and collected and sold cop­ ies of national homophile publications such as ONE (USA) and Der Kreis (Switzerland) to its relatively small international audience. Leila Rupp, “The Persistence of Trans­ national Organizing: The Case of the Homophile Movement,” American Historical Review 116, no. 4 (October 2011): 1014–39. 10. Joscha Schmierer, “Der Zauber des großen Augenblicks: Der international Traum von ’68,” in Die Früchte der Revolte: Über die Veränderung der politischen Kultur durch die Studentenbewegung, ed. Lothar Baier et al. (Berlin: K. Wagenbach, 1988), 124–25. 11. Peter Hedenström, interview with the author, Berlin, February 11, 2014. 12. Hedenström interview. 13. Hedenström interview. 14. Anja Reich, “Erst jetzt hat Rosa von Praunheim erfahren, dass er in einem Rigaer Gefängnis geboren wurde und wer seine leiblich Mutter ist. Ein Gespräch mit dem Filmmacher über die lange Suche nach sich selbst,” Berliner Zeitung, Febru­ ary 16, 2008. 15. Rosa von Praunheim, Armee der Liebenden oder Aufstand der Perversen (Munich: Trikont Verlag, 1979), 7. 16. Rosa von Praunheim, 50 Jahre pervers: Die Sentimentalen Memoiren des Rosa von Praunheim (Cologne: Verlag Kiepenheuer & Witsch, 1993), 127–28. 17. Praunheim, 50 Jahre pervers, 128. 18. Praunheim, Armee der Liebenden, 9. 19. Armee der Liebenden oder Aufstand der Perversen (1979), directed and produced by Rosa von Praunheim. 20. Patrick Schneider, “Vom langen und schwierigen Marsch in die neue Gesell­ schaft: Streiflichter aus der amerikanischen GAY-Bewegung,” Ordner: Ausland, U–Z, SARCH archives. 21. Letter from Harold C. Walker to Homosexuelle Aktionsgruppe Marburg, March 1, 1979 (sent with the letter was a photograph of Walker), Ordner 81: Orte M, folder Marburg, SARCH archives.

244

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22. Roland Müller, interview with the author, Berlin, November 26, 2013. 23. PGN staff, “U.S. Poised to Deport Immigrants Who Persecuted Gays under Nazis,” Philadelphia Gay News, April 29–May 5, 1976, accessed at “40 Years Ago in PGN: April29–May5,” https://epgn.com/2016/04/28/40-years-ago-in-pgn-april-29-may-5. 24. Randy Alfred, “Fighting for Our Lives . . . and Others,” San Francisco Sentinel, April 7, 1977, 6. 25. Gillian Frank, “The Yellow Star and the Pink Triangle: Judaism and Gay Rights in the 1970s,” Notches blog, August 19, 2014, https://notchesblog.com/2014/08/19/ the-yellow-star-and-the-pink-triangle-judaism-and-gay-rights-in-the-1970s. 26. Frank, “Yellow Star and the Pink Triangle.” 27. Mark Segal, Zoom interview with the author, February 19, 2021. 28. Lesbian History (@lesbian_history), photo of “Jewish Lesbians: Surviving and Proud,” photographer unknown, June 24, 1984, Instagram, May 6, 2021, https:// www.instagram.com/p/COjaFfPgOV8/?utm_source=ig_web_copy_link. 29. Martha Shelley, phone interview with the author, February 26, 2021. 30. Lesléa Newman, phone interview with the author, February 23, 2021. 31. Sara Hart, “A Dark Past Brought to Light,” 10 Percent (Winter 1993): 74, quoted in Erik N. Jensen, “The Pink Triangle and Political Consciousness: Gays, Les­ bians, and the Memory of Nazi Persecution,” Journal of the History of Sexuality 11, no. 1/2 ( January–April 2002): 319. 32. Amy Elman, “Triangles and Tribulations: The Politics of Nazi Symbols,” Jour­ nal of Homosexuality 30, no. 3 (1996): 2. 33. Nancy Nangeroni, phone interview with the author, March 10, 2021. 34. Morgan Gwenwald, phone interview with the author, April 5, 2021. 35. Janet Cooper, “Dake Cooper” column, Gay Community News, May 10, 1975, 10. 36. Harvey Milk, speech on June 25, 1978, quoted in Randy Shilts, The Mayor of Castro Street: The Life and Times of Harvey Milk (New York: St. Martin’s, 1982), 364. 37. “Never again, no on prop 64, stop LaRouche,” political poster created by the Central Coast Citizens against LaRouche, 1986, posters and graphic materials, box 1, P00029, ONE National Gay and Lesbian Archives, http://digitallibrary.usc. edu/digital/collection/p15799coll4/id/42146/rec/2. 38. “I didn’t know my vote counted,” political poster created by the Central Coast Citizens against LaRouche, 1986, posters and graphic materials, box 1, P00030, ONE National Gay and Lesbian Archives, http://digitallibrary.usc.edu/digital/ collection/p15799coll4/id/42141. 39. Avram Finkelstein, After Silence: A History of AIDS through Its Images (Oakland: University of California Press, 2018), 38. 40. Brian Howard, Instagram message to the author, June 27, 2021. 41. Finkelstein, After Silence, 39. 42. William F. Buckley Jr., “Crucial Steps in Combating the Aids Epidemic; Iden­ tify All the Carriers,” New York Times, Op-Ed, March 18, 1986. 43. Finkelstein, After Silence, 43–44. 44. Finkelstein, 44. 45. Avram Finkelstein, quoted in Sarah Schulman, Let the Record Show: A Politi­ cal History of ACT UP New York, 1987–1993 (New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2021), 322. 46. Avram Finkelstein, Zoom interview with the author, March 15, 2021.

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47. Finkelstein, After Silence, 46. 48. Finkelstein, quoted in Schulman, Let the Record Show, 323. 49. Brian Howard, email to the author, July 15, 2021. 50. Finkelstein, After Silence, 45. 51. Theodore Kerr, “How Six NYC Activists Changed History with ‘Si­ lence = Death,’ ” Village Voice, June 20, 2017, https://www.villagevoice. com/2017/06/20/how-six-nyc-activists-changed-history-with-silence-death/. 52. Finkelstein interview. 53. Finkelstein, After Silence, 67. 54. Finkelstein, After Silence, 65. 55. “Forced AIDS Tests. Then What?,” editorial, New York Times, June 7 1987. 56. Riemer and Brown, We Are Everywhere, 254. 57. Finkelstein interview. 58. Finkelstein, After Silence, 76. 59. Christopher Vials, Haunted by Hitler: Liberals, the Left, and the Fight against Fas­ cism in the United States (Amherst: University of Massachusetts Press, 2014), 195. 60. Vials, 196. 61. Schulman, Let the Record Show, 362. 62. “Shared moral universe” comes from Wilfried Mausbach, “America’s Viet­ nam in Germany—Germany in America’s Vietnam: On the Relocation of Spaces and the Appropriation of History,” in Changing the World, Changing Oneself: Political Protest and Collective Identities in West Germany and the US in the 1960s and 1970s, ed. Belinda Davis, Wilfried Mausbach, Martin Klimke, and Carla MacDougal (New York: Berghahn Books, 2010), 54. 63. Rosa Flieder, April–May 1987, 11. See also Dagmar Herzog, Sex after Fascism: Memory and Morality in Twentieth-Century Germany (Princeton, NJ: Princeton Univer­ sity Press, 2005), 252; and Jensen, “Pink Triangle and Political Consciousness,” 332. 64. Larry Kramer, Reports from the Holocaust: The Making of an AIDS Activist (New York: St. Martin’s, 1989). 65. For example, see Black T-shirt, “March on Washington ’87,” Wearing Gay His­ tory digital archive, http://www.wearinggayhistory.com/items/show/3274. 66. Letter from the March on Washington Committee Inc. to their members, Ms Coll: 5, Series I: March on Washington (1987)—Subseries B: Meetings, Agendas, Minutes, National Organizing Committee 08/1986–09/1987, The History Project (hereafter THP) archives, Boston. 67. Flyer, MS Coll: 5, Series I: March on Washington (1987)—Subseries A: Gen­ eral, Fliers & Pamphlets, THP archives. 68. Sue Wong, “200,000 Gays and Supporters Rally in Washington to Press for Rights,” Boston Globe, October 12, 1987; Karlyn Barker, “Gay Activists Arrested at High Court: Peaceful Civil Disobedience by 572 Culminates Week’s Events,” Wash­ ington Post, October 14, 1987. 69. Peter Novick, The Holocaust in American Life (New York: Houghton Mifflin, 1999). 70. Vials, Haunted by Hitler, 201. 71. Jensen, “Pink Triangle and Political Consciousness,” 328. 72. Gwenwald interview. 73. Jose Gutierrez, Zoom interview with the author, February 24, 2021. 74. Gutierrez interview.

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75. Gutierrez interview. 76. Gutierrez interview. 77. Gutierrez interview. 78. Cheryl Head, Zoom interview with the author, May 19, 2021. 79. Head interview. 80. Riemer and Brown, We Are Everywhere, 238. 81. Riemer and Brown, 242. 82. LGBT History (@lgbt_history), photograph “Asian/Pacific Queer-n-Proud!,” March on Washington for Lesbian, Gay and Bi Equal Rights and Liberation, Wash­ ington, DC, April 25, 1993, photo by William Tom, Instagram, May 3, 2020, https:// www.instagram.com/p/B_vI1HnpTwE/?utm_source=ig_web_copy_link. 83. Marianne Diaz, interview with Mason Funk, July 13, 2016, Outwords Oral History archive, https://theoutwordsarchive.org/subjectdetail/marianne-diaz. 84. Nangeroni interview. 85. Nangeroni interview. 86. Nangeroni interview. The photograph can be viewed at http://www.gender­ talk.com/tg-symbol. 87. A collections search for “pink triangle” at the Digital Transgender Archive (www.digitaltransgenderarchive.net) produces over one hundred results. Two of Nangeroni’s pins are among the first results. 88. Crystal Mason, Zoom interview with the author, April 19, 2021. 89. Mason interview. 90. Gwenwald interview. 91. Henrietta Hudson (@henriettahudson), “The New Logo: Theory and Influ­ ence,” Instagram, April 8, 2021, https://www.instagram.com/p/CNap17fpvWu/. 92. Newman interview. 93. Mason interview. 94. Mason interview. 95. Jonathan Ned Katz, “Katz on History: Signs of the Times—the Making of Liberation Logos,” Advocate, October 10, 1989, 49. 5. “Remembrances of Things Once hidden”

1. L. Winton, “Don’t Watch,” letter to the editor of the News (Havant, UK), August 27, 1983. 2. Jocelyn Sweetman, “A Sad Reflection. . . ,” letter to the editor of the News (Havant, UK), September 3, 1983. 3. David Gordon, “Playwright Martin Sherman Looks Back at His Landmark Drama Bent,” TheaterMania.com, August 4, 2015, https://www.theatermania.com/ los-angeles-theater/news/martin-sherman-bent-taper-interview_73724.html. 4. Michael Lynch, “Bent under Hitler, Bent under Ackroyd,” Body Politic, April 1981, 28. 5. Marvin Cutler, ed., Homosexuals Today: A Handbook of Organizations and Pub­ lications (Los Angeles: ONE, 1956), 124. 6. David Thorstad, phone interview with the author, March 5, 2021. 7. Thorstad interview. 8. Jonathan Ned Katz, Zoom interview with the author, February 8, 2021.

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9. James Steakley, “Homosexuals and the Third Reich,” Body Politic, January/ February 1974, 1. 10. John Lauritsen and David Thorstad, The Early Homosexual Rights Movement (1864–1935) (New York: Times Change, 1974), 38–45. 11. Jonathan Ned Katz, Zoom interview with the author, June 22, 2020. 12. Pink Triangle Press website, http://www.pinktrianglepress.com/our-name. 13. Thorstad interview. 14. Katz interview, February 8, 2021. 15. James D. Steakley, The Homosexual Emancipation Movement in Germany (New York: Arno, 1975). 16. James Steakley, interview with Troy Reeves, University of Wisconsin–Madi­ son Archives Oral History Program, interview #1088, third interview session, June 21, 2010. 17. Harry Wilde, Das Schicksal der Verfemten: Die Verfolgung der Homosexuellen im “Dritten Reich” und ihre Stellung in der heutigen Gesellschaft (Tübingen: Katmann, 1969). 18. “§175: Das Gesetz fällt—bleibt die Ächtung?,” Der Spiegel, May 12, 1969, 55. 19. Solicitation in the Gay Community News for readers to donate and become a “GCN Sustainer,” Collection 5, Series 1—March on Washington 1987, folder Ntl L&G March on Washington 1987, THP archives. 20. Complete circulation statistics for these early periodicals are not available. 21. “Spectator: ‘Das Dritte Reich noch nicht zu Ende,’ ” Ordner 87: NS Alte Quelle & Lesben, Uni, 1970, SARCH archives. Uni was an “international newspa­ per for friendship, information, and tolerance,” published by the International Homosexual World Organization (IHWO) beginning in 1969. This is not to be con­ fused with the IHWO (Internationale Homophilen Welt Organization) that was founded in Hamburg in 1969. Raimund Wolfert, “Gegen Einsamkeit und ‘Einsiedelei’ ”: Die Geschichte der Internationalen Homophilen Welt-Organization (Hamburg: Männer­ schwarm, 2009). 22. Dieter Reimel, “Der schwule Holocaust,” Südwind, December 1994 / Janu­ ary 1995, 27. 23. “Die Entarteten im KZ,” Du & Ich, November 1972, 10. 24. “Die Dornenkrone: Ein Bericht aus dem KZ Sachsenhausen,” Emanzipation, March/April 1977, 26 25. L. D. Classen von Neudegg, “Schicksale: Die Dornenkrone: Ein Tatsachen­ bericht aus der Strafkompanie Sachsenhuasen,” Humanitas, February 1954, 58–60. 26. Michael Föster, “Deutsche Weihnacht: Galgen unterm Tannenbaum,” Du & Ich, December 1980, 67. 27. “30 Jahre später? . . . Massenmord an Homosexuellen bis heute unaufgeklärt,” Emanzipation no. 3, 1975, 1. 28. B.R., “8. Mai—Tag der Befreiung?,” in Keller-Journal, no. 2, 1985: 8. 29. Robert Reck, “Die Liebe zum Feind: Kontroverse um Schwule Gedenktafel,” letter to the editor, Südwind, no. 5, 1988, 6. 30. Ira Glasser, “The Yellow Star and the Pink Triangle,” New York Times, Sep­ tember 10, 1975. 31. “A Jewish Gay’s Reflection on Auschwitz,” Gay Community News, May 10, 1975, 10. 32. Scott Correll, “The Pink Triangle,” Memphis Gaze, May 1980, 3.

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33. Terry Boughner, “Introduction: A Time to Die,” Wisconsin Light 1, no. 12, September 22–October 5, 1988, 1. The twenty-six-part series ran from Septem­ ber 1988 to November 1989. 34. Terry Boughner, “A Time to Die, VIII,” Wisconsin Light 2, no. 1, January 12– 25, 1989, 2. 35. Terry Boughner, “A Time to Die, XVIII,” Wisconsin Light 2, no. 13, June 29– July 12, 1989, 2. 36. Terry Boughner, “A Time to Die, XXII,” Wisconsin Light 2, no. 18, Septem­ ber 7–20, 1989, 2. 37. Terry Boughner, “A Time to Die, XIII,” Wisconsin Light 2, no. 6, March 23– April 5, 1989, 2. 38. Peter Hedenström, interview with the author, Berlin, February 11, 2014. 39. The pseudonym that Werres used most often was Jack Argo, but others in­ cluded Julius Mesenbach, Gay Guy, Heins Bär, Norbert Weissenhagen, and Hans Daniel. 40. Rainer Hoffschildt, conversation with the author, January 15, 2014. 41. Boughner, “Introduction: A Time to Die,” 4. 42. Lannon D. Reed, Behold a Pale Horse: A Novel of Homosexuals in the Nazi Holo­ caust (San Francisco: Gay Sunshine, 1985); Robert C. Reinhart, Walk the Night: A Novel of Gays in the Holocaust (Boston: Alyson Books, 1994). 43. Andreas Krass, “Queer Fictions of Berlin: Gender Trouble in Cabaret (1971) and Hedwig and the Angry Inch (2001),” in Sexual Culture in Germany in the 1970s: A Golden Age for Queers?, ed. Janin Afken and Benedikt Wolf (Basingstoke, UK: Palgrave Macmillan, 2019), 66. 44. Richard Monette, quoted in Lynch, “Bent under Hitler; Bent under Ackroyd,” 28. 45. Martin Sherman, interview with Lynch, “Bent under Hitler; Bent under Ack­ royd,” 28. 46. Erik Jensen, “The Pink Triangle and Political Consciousness: Gays, Lesbians, and the Memory of Nazi Persecution,” Journal of the History of Sexuality 11, no. 1/2, Special Issue: Sexuality and German Fascism ( January–April 2002): 345. 47. Herbert Loebel, “Gays Weren’t Doomed,” New York Times, November 25, 1989. Loebel referenced Richard Plant, “Nazis’ Forgotten Victims: Gays,” New York Times, November 7, 1989. 48. Dorthe Seifert, “Between Silence and License: The Representation of the Na­ tional Socialist Persecution of Homosexuality in Anglo-American Fiction and Film,” History and Memory 15, no. 2 (Fall/Winter 2003): 106. 49. Kevin Jackson, “Bent,” Kevin Jackson’s Theatre Diary (blog), February 23, 2010, http://kjtheatrereviews.blogspot.com/2010/02/bent.html. 50. Stephen Holden, “Sent from Gay Berlin to Labor at Dachau,” review of the film version of Bent, New York Times, November 26, 1997. 51. Dominique François, “Bent,” him, October 1979, 40. 52. Heinz Schubert, “Theater: Rosa Winkel,” Der Spiegel, April 21, 1980. 53. Wolfgang Platzeck, “Liebe hinter Stacheldraht: Martin Shermans Stück über Homosexuelle im KZ,” Westdeutsche Allgemeine Zeitung, September 29, 1980. 54. Frank Arlig, “Bent: Schwule Boulevard,” HE, January 1980, 17, Ordner 87: NS Widerstand, Filme, Bent, und Bücher Verbrennung, SARCH archives.

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55. This quote, attributed to W. Ringelband from the Weser-Kurier, was included under “critical acclaim for Rosa Winkel” in the playbill at the Theater der Keller in Cologne. Ordner: Varia 3, #298, Centrum Schwule Geschichte Köln (CSG) archives. 56. Calendar, Keller-Journal, no. 1 (1982): 11. 57. Schulz (Schwulenzentrum) at “Theater der Keller” in Cologne, Decem­ ber 14, 1988, Ordner: 87—NS Widerstand, Filme, Bent, und Bücher Verbrennung, SARCH archives. 58. Bent by Martin Sherman, Playbill for Berlin’s Schiller Schlosspark Werkstatt Theater, 1980/1981 theater season, Ordner: 87—NS Widerstand, Filme, Bent, und Bücher Verbrennung, SARCH archives. 59. Bent (Rosa Winkel), Playbill from Theater im Zimmer, Hamburg, 1981/1982 season, C: Deutsches Reich, 1933–1945, C.7 (Erinnerungskulturen), C.2 (Publizis­ tische Darstellungen), Schwules Museum archives (hereafter cited as C.7.2., SM archives). 60. Mel Cooper, “. . . but not broken,” Body Politic, November 1979, 39. 61. Lynch, “Bent under Hitler, Bent under Ackroyd,” 28. 62. Lesléa Newman, A Letter to Harvey Milk: Short Stories (Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 1988), 39. 63. Newman, 42–43. 64. Newman, 44–45. 65. Lesléa Newman, phone interview with the author, February 23, 2021. 66. Newman interview. 67. Newman interview. 68. Wolfgang Harthauser, “Der Massenmord an Homosexuellen im Dritten Reich,” in Das große Tabu: Zeugnisse und Dokumente zum Problem der Homosexulität, ed. Willhart S. Schlegel (Munich: Rütten and Loening, 1967), 7–37. 69. Letter from Autorengemeinschaft Heinz F.S. Kiehr/Johannes Werres to Alle Redaktionen von Homo-Zeitschriften, Homo-Gruppen, Homo-Läden, HomoVertreibe, etc., April 1979, Ordner 274, CSG archives. 70. Harry Wilde, Das Schicksal der Verfemten: Die Verfolgung der Homosexuellen im “Dritten Reich” und ihre Stellung in der heutigen Gesellschaft (Tübingen: Katmann, 1969). 71. Rüdiger Lautmann, Winifried Grikschat, and Egbert Schmidt, “Der rosa Winkel in den nationalsozialistischen Konzentrationslagern,” in Seminar: Gesellschaft und Homosexualität, ed. Rüdiger Lautmann (Frankfurt am Main: Suhrkamp, 1977), 325–65. 72. Hans-Georg Stümke and Rudi Finkler, Rosa Winkel, Rosa Listen: Homosexuelle und “Gesundes Volksempfinden” von Auschwitz bis heute (Hamburg: Rowohlt, 1981). 73. Heinz-Dieter Schilling, ed., Schwule und Faschismus (West Berlin: Elefanten, 1983). 74. Hans-Georg Stümke, Homosexuelle in Deutschland: Eine politische Geschichte (Munich: Verlag C. H. Beck, 1989). 75. Stefan Micheler and Jaokob Michelsen, “Geschichtsforschung und Iden­ titätsstiftung: Von der ‘schwulen Ahnenreihe’ zur Dekonstruktion des Homosexuel­ len,” in Was heißt hier schwul? Politik und Identitäten im Wandel, ed. Detlef Grumbach (Hamburg: Männerschwarm, 1997), 101. 76. Andreas Salmen and Albert Eckert, 20 Jahre bundesdeutsche Schwulenbewegung 1969–1989 (Cologne: Bundesverband Homosexualität e.V., 1989), 65. Lautmann and

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Jellonnek estimated that in 2000, four-fifths of the scholars researching the Nazi per­ secution of queer people were themselves either gay or lesbian. See Burkhard Jel­ lonnek and Rüdiger Lautmann, eds., Nationalsozialistischer Terror gegen Homosexuelle: Verdrängt und ungesühnt (Paderborn: Ferdinand Schöhning, 2002), 12. 77. Micheler and Michelsen, “Geschichtsforschung und Identitätsstiftung,” in Grumbach, Was heißt hier schwul?, 105. 78. “Gay Pride Report,” Boston Globe, June 14, 1987, Collection 5, Series 1: March on Washington 1987, folder Ntl L&G March on Washington 1987, THP archives. 79. “Why we need to write our own history,” in pamphlet Come Out New England: National Lesbian and Gay March on Washington, Collection 5, Series 1: March on Wash­ ington 1987, folder Ntl L&G March on Washington 1987, THP archives. 80. James Steakley, Skype interview with the author, November 19, 2015. 81. Heinz Junge, “Die mit dem ‘rosa Winkel,’ ” letter to the editor, Frankfurter Rundschau, May 27, 1981. 82. Stümke quoted in “Was ist ein ‘175er’ wert? Streit um ‘rosa Winkel’ im KZ,” Gay Journal, January 1982, 1. 83. Rüdiger Lautmann, “Die mit dem ‘rosa Winkel,’ ” letter to the editor, Frank­ furter Rundschau, June 16, 1981. 84. Jens Dobler, letter to Dorian Hasselhoff (Büro für gleichgeschlechtliche Leb­ ensfragen, Potsdam), July 12, 1995, Ordner 87: NS Alte Quelle & Lesben, SARCH archives. 85. Jan Feddersen, “Kein Fall für den Reißwolf,” Die Tageszeitung, October 21–22, 1995. 86. Quoted in Cornelia Bolesch, “Wichtige Akten über Nazi-Opfer vernichtet?,” Süddeutsche Zeitung, March 12, 1996, 40. 87. Silke Mertins, “NS-Justizgeschichte im Reißwolf,” TAZ Hamburg, May 22, 1996. 88. Collection 11: the Daughters of Bilitis, Series 3: DOB Correspondence: folder 11—General Correspondence, 1970–1997, THP archives. For the works Shively pro­ vided as sources see Hans Peter Bleuel, Sex and Society in Nazi Germany (Philadelphia: Lippincott, 1973); and James Steakley, “Homosexuals and the Third Reich,” Body Politic, January/February 1974, 1. 89. Call for applications, “Flaunting It: First National Graduate Student Confer­ ence on Lesbian and Gay Studies,” University of Wisconsin–Milwaukee, ONE Na­ tional Gay and Lesbian Archives, http://digitallibrary.usc.edu/digital/collection/ p15799coll4/id/44773. 90. Jok Church, phone interview with the author, December 29, 2015. 91. “Surviving the Nazis,” Weekly News Bulletin, April 10, 1979, 8; also, “Search for Gay Survivors of the Death Camps,” Christopher Street, June 1979, 66. 92. Church interview. 93. “Our Herstory,” Lesbian Herstory Archives website, https://lesbianhersto­ ryarchives.org/about/a-brief-history. 94. Lesbian Herstory Archives Newsletter, #2 (March 1976), 2. 95. Lesbian Herstory Archives Newsletter, #12 ( June 1991), 7. 96. Joan Nestle, email to the author, April 18, 2021. 97. Morgan Gwenwald, phone interview with the author, April 5, 2021. 98. Gwenwald interview.

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99. Heinz Heger [Johann Neumann], The Men with the Pink Triangle, trans. Da­ vid Fernbach (Boston: Alyson, 1980). 100. Rüdiger Lautmann, “The Pink Triangle: The Persecution of Homosexual Males in Concentration Camps in Nazi Germany,” Journal of Homosexuality 6, no. 1–2 (1981): 141–60; Erwin J. Haeberle, “Stigmata of Degeneration: Prisoner Markings in Nazi Concentration Camps,” Journal of Homosexuality 6, no. 1–2 (1981): 135–39; Erwin J. Haeberle, “Swastika, Pink Triangle and Yellow Star: The Destruction of Sex­ ology and the Persecution of Homosexuals in Nazi Germany,” Journal of Sex Research 17, no. 3 (August 1981): 270–87. 101. Richard Plant, The Pink Triangle: The Nazi War against Homosexuals (New York: New Republic Books, 1986). Frank Rector had published The Nazi Extermination of Homosexuals (New York: Stein and Day) in 1981, but it was full of factual errors, overgeneralizations, and arguments that could not be substantiated with fact. 102. One reviewer in the Los Angeles Times (November 23, 1986) critiqued Plant’s book for focusing too much on the Nazi perpetrators and not enough on individual fates of homosexual victims. 103. “Schwule im KZ—zu Recht?,” Emanzipation, March/April 1980, 7. 104. “Der ‘rosa Winkel’ Schicksale im KZ: Ausstellung über ‘Homosexuelle im Faschismus und heute,’ ” General-Anzeiger für Bonn, January 27, 1983. 105. Einladung zum Seminar “Homosexualität und Faschismus,” Varia 2, Ordner 297, CSG archives. 106. C: Deutsches Reich, 1933–1945, C.7 (Erinnerungskulturen), C.4 (Veranstal­ tungen), Schwules Museum archives (hereafter cited as C.7.4., SM archives). 107. “Homosexualität im Nationalsozialismus: Vernichtungsmaschinerie wird eindringlich dokumentiert,” Südwest Presse, June 2, 1986, C.7.4, SM archives. 108. Homosexuelle im National-Sozialismus, Ausstellungskatalog, CSG Library. 109. Claudia Schoppmann, Days of Masquerade: Life Stories of Lesbians during the Third Reich, trans. Allison Brown (New York: Columbia University Press, 1996). 110. Monika Richrath, interview with Claudia Schoppmann, lespress (no date given), http://www.lespress.de/0498/texte0498/csch.html. 111. Edgar Peinelt, “Nachbilder des Rosa Winkels,” Die Tageszeitung, March 2, 1990; Tilman Krause, “Opfer waren sie alle,” Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung, April 2, 1991; Micha Schulze, “Neue Thesen wider das Versäumnis der Wissenschaft,” Die Tageszeitung, July 5, 1991. 112. Burkhard Jellonnek, Homosexuelle unter dem Hakenkreuz: Die Verfolgung von Homosexuellen im Dritten Reich (Paderborn: Ferdinand Schöningh Verlag, 1990). 113. Jellonnek, 36. 114. Jellonnek, 9 115. Jellonnek and Lautmann, Nationalsozialistischer Terror gegen Homosexuelle. 116. Conference program for Wider das Vergessen: Die Verfolgung von Ho­ mosexuellen im Dritten Reich—Die unterbliebene Wiedergutmachung für homo­ sexuelle Opfer in der Bundesrepublik Deutschland, Saarbrücken Kongresshalle, September 30 to October 2, 1996, Ordner 274, CSG Library and CSG archives. 117. Other organizations also lent financial and organizational support, such as Schwulenverband in Deutschland e.V., Gegen Vergessen—Für Demokratie e.V., Schwullesbische Studien der Universität Bremen, and Homosexuelle und Kirche e.V. 118. Conference program, Wider das Vergessen, CSG Library.

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119. Letter from Prof. Dr. Ilse Kokula to Dr. Burkhard Jellonnek, April 3, 1996, C: Deutsches Reich, 1933–1945, C.7 (Erinnerungskulturen), C.3 (Gedenkorte), C.1 (Gedenkort Berlin), Ordner: Initiative Homo-Monument, Schwules Museum ar­ chives (hereafter cited as C.7.3.1., SM archives). 120. Pierre Seel, Moi, Pierre Seel, déporté homosexuel (Paris: Calmann-Lévy, 1994); Gad Beck, Und Gad ging zu David: Die Erinnerungen des Gad Beck, 1923 bis 1945 (Ber­ lin: Edition diá, 1995). For works that contain gay survivor testimony see Stümke and Finkler, Rosa Winkel, Rosa Listen; Ilse Kokula, Jahre des Glücks, Jahre des Leids: Gespräche mit älteren lesbischen Frauen (Kiel: Frühlings Erwachen, 1986); Lutz van Dijk, “Ein erfülltes Leben—Trotzdem . . .” Erinnerungen Homosexueller 1933–1945 (Hamburg: Rowohlt Taschenbuch Verlag, 1992); Claudia Schoppmann, Zeit der Maskierung: Leb­ ensgeschichten lesbischer Frauen im “Dritten Reich” (Berlin: Orlanda Frauenverlag, 1993); Lutz van Dijk, Einsam war ich nie: Schwulen unter dem Hakenkreuz, 1933–1945, with the cooperation of Günter Grau, epilogue by Wolfgang Popp (Berlin: Querverlag, 2003). 121. Rainer Hoffschildt, e-mail to the author, March 22, 2016. 122. In this book’s bibliography see works by Robert Beachy, Geoffrey J. Giles, Samuel Huneke, Laurie Marhoefer, and Andrew Wackerfuss. 123. We Were Marked with a Big A, directed by Elke Jeanrond and Joseph Weishaupt, produced by Mediengruppe Schwabing, United States Holocaust Memorial Museum and Norddeutscher Rundfunk, VHS, 1994; Paragraph 175, produced and directed by Rob Epstein and Jeffrey Friedman, Telling Pictures, 2000, DVD. 124. Anna Hájková, “Introduction: Sexuality, Holocaust, Stigma,” German History, special issue, June/July 2020, https://doi.org/10.1093/gerhis/ghaa033; Hájková, “Queer History and the Holocaust,” Notches blog, January 22, 2019. https://notches­ blog.com/2019/01/22/queer-history-and-the-holocaust. 125. In this book’s bibliography see works by Jennifer V. Evans, Craig Griffiths, Dagmar Herzog, Samuel C. Huneke, Erik N. Jensen, Arnaud Kurze, Marnie Ror­ holm and Kem Gambrell, Dorthe Seifert, Sébastien Tremblay, Angelika von Wahl, and Christiane Wilke. 126. In this book’s bibliography see works by Jennifer Evans and Eilissa Mailän­ der, Rainer Herrn, Laurie Marhoefer, and Katie Sutton. 127. Mark S. Malkin, “Remembrances of Things Once Hidden: Holocaust Me­ morial Vigil Pays Homage to Gay War Dead,” Bay Windows, April 29, 1993, 6–7. 6. “we died There, Too”

1. Anonymous post in “Gedenkkugel für die ermordeten lesbischen Frauen im Frauen-KZ Ravensbrück,” Facebook page, posted by the page administrators, April 19, 2021, https://www.facebook.com/permalink.php?story_fbid=4044885965 571751&id=1779855708741466. 2. Bericht der “Lesben in der Kirche” (Arbeitskreis Homosexuelle Selbsthilfe) über ihre Besuche im KZ Ravensbrück. Reproduced in Samirah Kenawi, Frauengrup­ pen in der DDR der 80er Jahre. Eine Dokumentation (Berlin: GrauZone, 1995), 388. 3. Maria Bühner, “The Ambivalence of Feeling Backward: Lesbian Activists in the German Democratic Republic and Their Politics of Memory,” History; Sexuality; Law, Hypotheses (blog), March 30, 2021, https://hsl.hypotheses.org/tag/maria-buehner.

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4. Josie McLellan, “Lesbians, Gay Men and the Production of Scale in East Ger­ many,” Cultural and Social History 14 (2017): 97. 5. Irmes Schwager, quoted in Anna Hájková and Birgit Bosold, “Aktivistinnen des lesbischen Gedenkens,” Invertito 21 (2019): 70. 6. Schwager, quoted in Hájková and Bosold, 80. 7. Lisa Steininger, quoted in Hájková and Bosold, 70. 8. Wiebke Haß, e-mail to the author, May 16, 2021. 9. The original text in German reads, “In Gedenken aller lesbischen Frauen und Mädchen im Frauen-KZ Ravensbrück und Uckermark. Lesbische Frauen galten als ‘entartet’ und wurden als ‘asozial,’ als widerständig und ver-rückt und aus anderen Gründen verfolgt und ermordet. Ihr seid nicht vergessen!” 10. Steininger, quoted in Hájková and Bosold, 70. 11. Alexander Zinn, quoted in Lisa Steininger, “ ‘Gedenkkugel’—Lesbian Com­ memorative Orb (Ravensbrück),” September 19, 2017, https://europeanlesbiancon­ ference.org/gedenkkugel-lesbian-commemorative-orb-ravensbruck. 12. Anna Hájková, quoted in Hájková and Bosold, 92. 13. Hájková, quoted in Hájková and Bosold, 86. 14. Press release from the Lesben- und Schwulenverband Deutschland, “Durch­ bruch für Erinnerungszeichen für die lesbischen Frauen in Ravensbrück,” July 14, 2021, https://www.lsvd.de/de/ct/5537-Durchbruch-fuer-Erinnerungszeichen-fuer­ die-lesbischen-Frauen-in-Ravensbrueck. 15. Rainer, VSG, “Kranziederlegung im KZ Dachau,” in Emanzipation, no. 1 (1976), 17. 16. “Gedenkgottesdienst für homosexuelle KZ-Häftlinge, Süddeutsche Zeitung, May 9, 1980. 17. “Homosexuelle erinnern an ihre Verfolgung,” Süddeutsche Zeitung, May 11, 1980. 18. Press release from HuK Berlin, November 15, 1992, subject: “Einweihung einer Gedenktafel für homosexuelle NS-Opfer in Sachsenhausen,” C: Deutsches Reich, 1933–1945, C.7 (Erinnerungskulturen), C.3 (Gedenkorte), C.1 (Gedenkort Berlin), Schwules Museum archives (hereafter cited as C.7.3.1., SM archives). 19. Hans-Joachim Müller, press release, July 8, 1985, C: Deutsches Reich, 1933– 1945, C.2 (Kriminalisierung, Erfassung, Verfolgung, und Vernichtung), C.6 (In­ ternierung), C.16 (Sachsenhausen), Schwules Museum archives (hereafter cited as C.2.6.16., SM archives). 20. Federal President Richard von Weizsäcker, speech during the ceremony com­ memorating the fortieth anniversary of the end of war in Europe and of National Socialist tyranny. Bundestag in Bonn, Germany, May 8, 1985, https://www.bunde­ spraesident.de/SharedDocs/Downloads/DE/Reden/2015/02/150202-RvW-Rede­ 8-Mai-1985-englisch.pdf ?__blob=publicationFile. 21. Christoph Kranich, Marcus Kaminski, and Jens Michelsen, eds., for the “Polit­ gruppe” of the Rat+Tat-Zentrum für Homosexuelle, Schwule in Auschwitz: Dokumen­ tation einer Reise (Bremen: Geffken, 1990), Gefördert durch die Landeszentrale für Politische Bildung, Bremen, 3. 22. For a selection of the articles on Karl B. and the trip to Auschwitz see “Die vergessenen Leiden des Karl B.,” Weser Kurier, March 23–24, 1989; “Wiedersehen mit

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Auschwitz,” Die Tageszeitung, July 13, 1989; “Auch nach 40 Jahren keine Grausamkeit vergessen: Ex-Häftling fuhr nach Auschwitz,” Nordsee Zeitung, October 2, 1989; Lutz van Dijk, “Vergessene Opfer: Eine Gruppe Homosexueller unternahm eine Geden­ kreise nach Auschwitz,” Die Zeit, October 27, 1989, 85; Lutz van Dick and Christoph Kranich, “Zeugnisse des Schreckens: Schwule besuchen die KZ-Gedenkstätte in Aus­ chwitz,” Magnus, October 1989, 48. Chapter six of Lutz van Dijk’s book “Ein erfülltes Leben trotzdem . . .” Erinnerungen Homosexueller 1933–1945 (Hamburg: Rowohlt, 1992), is also dedicated to Karl B. 23. Kranich, Kaminski, and Michelsen, Schwule in Auschwitz, 3. 24. Pieter Koenders, The Homomonument, official monument booklet (Amster­ dam: Stichting Homomonument, 1987). 25. “Kommentar: Denkmal für verfolgte und in KZ’s getötete Homosexuelle,” Gay News Germany, January 1980, 12. 26. Frodo Kaiser, “Heil Kohl,” Die Tageszeitung, October 8, 1982. 27. Plaque on the “Homomonument.” The memorial’s official website is www. homomonument.nl. 28. Quoted in “Homo-Monument in Amsterdam; Keine Gedenktafel in Dachau,” Südwind 1 (1988), 11. 29. TN, “Homo-Monument in Amsterdam; Keine Gedenktafel in Dachau,” Süd­ wind 1 (1988), 11. 30. Quoted in “Gedenktafel in Mauthausen,” Kellerjournal 1 (1985): 7. 31. Hans Zauner, interview with Lew Gardner, Sunday Express, 1960, quoted in Erik N. Jensen, “The Pink Triangle in Political Consciousness: Gays, Lesbians, and the Memory of Nazi Persecution,” Journal of the History of Sexuality 11, no. 1/2 ( Janu­ ary–April 2002): 321. 32. Verein für sexuelle Gleichberechtigung VSG e.V., pamphlet, Aufstellung des Gedenksteins der Münchner Schwulengruppen für die homosexuellen Opfer des Nationalso­ zialismus, folder VSG-Schwulen Gruppe ab 1986, Archive of the KZ-Gedenkstätte Dachau (hereafter AGD). 33. Norbert Reck, “Die Liebe zum Feind,” Südwind 5 (1988), 6. 34. Letter from Dr. Hans-Jochen Vogel to the leadership of the CID, July 4, 1988, folder VSG-Schwulen Gruppe ab 1986, AGD. 35. For a more detailed account of the Dachau memorial debate see W. Jake Newsome, “Liberation Was Only for Others: Breaking the Silence in Germany Sur­ rounding the Nazi Persecution of Homosexuals,” Holocaust in History and Memory 7 (2014): 61–65. 36. Document dated May 4, 1987, signed by [Rainer] Hoffschildt, box 87: NS-KZ Bergen-Belsen (I), SARCH. 37. Letter from the BVH office in Bonn to “all sexual liberation groups in West Germany and West Berlin,” November 24, 1986, box 87: NS-KZ Bergen-Belsen (I), SARCH. 38. “Homosexuelle: Nazi-Opfer zweiter Klasse,” UZ, January 13, 1987, 5, box 87: NS-KZ Bergen-Belsen (I), SARCH. 39. Timeline authored by Treffen Hannoverscher Homosexuellen-Gruppen, March 3, 1987, box 87: NS-KZ Bergen-Belsen (I), SARCH. 40. Letter from Peter Humann on behalf of the BVH board to the Lower Saxony minister for federal affairs, April 7, 1987, box 87: NS-KZ Bergen-Belsen (I), SARCH.

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41. Letter from Die Grünen im Landtag to Minister für Bundes- und Europa­ angelegenheiten, March 1987, box 87: NS-KZ Bergen-Belsen (I), SARCH. 42. Letter dated March 6, 1987, box 87: NS-KZ Bergen-Belsen (I), SARCH. 43. Internal report by Alfred Grobbel, member of the Treffen Hannoverscher Homosexuellen-Gruppen, dated May 25, 1987, box 87: NS-KZ Bergen-Belsen (I), SARCH. 44. Quoted in Flex: Das Stadtmagazin für politische Kultur Hannover, no. 1 (1988), 46. 45. For example see “Dokumente für Bergen-Belsen Gesucht,” Gay Express, December 1988, 1. 46. Invitation letter from the Lower Saxony minister for federal and European Affairs to the Treffen Hannoverscher Homosexuellen-Gruppen, November 9, 1988, box 87: NS-KZ Bergen-Belsen (I), SARCH. 47. Jörg Lenk, interview with the author, Cologne, January 27, 2014. 48. Transcript of speech given by Cologne mayor Norbert Burger at the dedica­ tion of the memorial to gay and lesbian victims of the Nazi regime, June 24, 1995, Ordner 274, Archives of the Centrum Schwule Geschichte Köln (hereafter CSG, Cologne). 49. “FAQ,” Stolpersteine project official home page, http://www.stolpersteine. eu/en/faq/. 50. “Germany: 75,000th ‘Stolperstein’ for Holocaust Victims Laid,” Deutsche Welle, December 29, 2019, https://www.dw.com/en/germany-75000th-stolperstein­ for-holocaust-victims-laid/a-51827506. 51. “Wir Erinnern,” Stolperstiene Homosexuelle, https://www.stolpersteine­ homosexuelle.de/. 52. Maria Fiedler, “Stolperstein für lesbische BVG-Schaffnerin—Tod im KZ,” Der Tagesspiegel, November 16, 2015, https://www.tagesspiegel.de/gesellschaft/queer­ spiegel/verfolgung-homosexueller-durch-die-nazis-stolperstein-fuer-lesbische-bvg­ schaffnerin-tod-im-kz/12591574.html#. 53. Speech by Norbert Burger, June 24, 1995, Ordner 274, CSG, Cologne. 54. “News Brief: Hamburg, West Germany,” Advocate, June 11, 1985, 25. 55. “Victims’ Memorial Denied,” Body Politic, October 1986. 56. Verein für sexuelle Gleichberechtigung VSG e.V, Aufstellung des Gedenksteins der Münchner Schwulengruppen für die homosexuellen Opfer des Nationalsozialismus, pam­ phlet, folder VSG-Schwulen Gruppe ab 1986, AGD. 57. “Nachrichten,” Südwind 2 (1987), 9. 58. Internal memo, subject: Mosaic of Victims, from David Luebke to Raye Farr, CC: Radu Ioanid, Sarah Ogilvie, Michael Berenbaum, Ann Farrington, and Joan Ringelheim, January 17, 1992, box 2010.077/bx. 1—Klaus Müller, folder Outreach— Feminist, Lesbian, Gay, USHMM institutional archives. 59. The GAA of Washington changed its name to the Gay and Lesbian Activists Alliance in 1986. 60. Elie Wiesel, chairman, President’s Commission on the Holocaust, Report to the President, September 27, 1979. 61. Craig Howell, Zoom interview with the author, June 1, 2020. 62. Quoted in Phil McCombs, “The Politics of Creating the Holocaust Memo­ rial,” Washington Post, April 13, 1983.

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63. Quoted in McCombs. 64. Monroe Freedman responded to the GAA on February 1 and again on March 14. See Craig Howell, “Behind the Exhibits: The Campaign to Memorialize Gay Victims of Nazi Persecution,” remarks delivered to the Rainbow History Project on November 3, 2003, https://web.archive.org/web/20031203121832/http://www. glaa.org/archive/2003/howellbehindtheexhibits1103.shtml. 65. Quoted in Howell, “Behind the Exhibits.” 66. Howell, “Behind the Exhibits.” 67. For one such ad see Lesbian Connection 14, no. 2, September/October 1991, 3. 68. Edward T. Linenthal, Preserving Memory: The Struggle to Create America’s Holo­ caust Museum (New York: Viking, 1995), 187–88. 69. “Protest der Homosexuellen,” Kölner Stadt-Anzeiger, April 26, 1993. 70. Deb Price, “The Pink Triangle Tells Another Side of the Holocaust,” Detroit News, March 19, 1993; Aras van Hertum, “The Forgotten Victims: New Museum Documents the Lives of Gay Holocaust Victims,” Washington Blade, April 23, 1993, 69; Mark S. Malkin, “Remembrances of Things Once Hidden: Holocaust Memorial Vigil Pays Homage to Gay War Dead,” Bay Windows, April 29, 1993, 6–7. 71. Quoted in Linenthal, Preserving Memory, 189. 72. Corbin Lyday, Zoom interview with the author, December 4, 2020. 73. Lyday interview. 74. Associated Press, “New Holocaust Museum Opens Its Doors to Public,” Los Angeles Times, April 27, 1993. 75. “Architecture and Art: Hall of Remembrance,” USHMM website, https:// www.ushmm.org/information/about-the-museum/architecture-and-art/ hall-of-remembrance. 76. Lyday interview. 77. Lyday interview. 78. Visitor comment card, box 2010.077/bx. 1—Klaus Müller, folder Klaus— Mail & Calls, USHMM institutional archives. 79. Visitor comment card, May 26, 1993, box 2010.077/bx. 1—Klaus Müller (In­ stitutional Archives), folder Responses—Homosexual Persecution, USHMM institu­ tional archives. 80. Visitor comment card, May 26, 1993, box 2010.077/bx. 1—Klaus Müller (In­ stitutional Archives), folder Responses—Homosexual Persecution, USHMM institu­ tional archives. 81. Box 2010.077/bx. 1—Klaus Müller (Institutional Archives), folder: Gay & Les­ bian Campaign, October 1996, USHMM institutional archives. 82. “Persecution of Homosexuals under the Nazi Regime,” Conference at the US Holocaust Memorial Museum, 2000. Audio recording at https://www. ushmm.org/research/tools/videos-recordings-and-transcripts-of-past-events/ past-conferences-and-workshops. 83. James Steakley, interview by Troy Reeves, University of Wisconsin–Madison Archives Oral History Program, third interview session, June 21, 2010. 84. Edward “Ted” Phillips, interview with the author, Washington, DC, April 8, 2014. 85. Patrick Carney, “The Pink Triangle of Twin Peaks,” Bay Times, June 14–20, 2012, 16. 86. Pink Triangle Memorial, Eureka Valley Foundation, www.pinktrianglepark.org.

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87. For a more detailed study of Pink Triangle Park see Marnie Rorholm and Kem Gambrell, “The Pink Triangle as an Interruptive Symbol,” Journal of Hate Stud­ ies 15, no. 63 (2019): 63–81. 88. Jim Darby, interview by Mason Funk, OUTWORDS Oral History Archive, July 18, 2016, https://www.theoutwordsarchive.org/subjectdetail/jim-darby. 89. “TSgt. Leonard Matlovich, USA,” www.leonardmatlovich.com. 90. Ch. Urlauber and M. Schwaiger, “Aus der Geschichte lernen, ist mehr als Kränze niederzulegen!,” Südwind 6 (1989), 6. 91. “Senat soll Wiedergutmachung für NS-Opfer verbessern,” Tagesspiegel, June 24, 1986. 92. §5 of the Allgemeine Kriegsfolgengesetz Richtlinien (AKG-RL). Text and commentary available: “Härteleistungen aus dem AKG-Härtefonds,” compiled by Bundesarbeitsgemeinschaft Schwule Juristen, https://www.lsvd.de/bund/buch/15. html. 93. “Beerdigung dritter Klasse,” Der Spiegel, December 8, 1986, 14. 94. Klaus Hartung, “Geld ohne Wiedergutmachung,” Tageszeitung, Novem­ ber 4, 1987. 95. Gunter Hofmann, “Keine große Geste: Für die vergessenen NS-Opfer wird es nur einen Härtefonds geben,” Die Zeit, December 4, 1987. 96. “Schwule Nazi-Opfer erneut diskriminiert!,” KellerJournal, no. 1 (1987): 6. 97. Jörg Hutter, “Zum Scheitern der Politik individueller Wiedergutmachung,” in Nationalsozialistischer Terror gegen Homosexuelle: Verdrängt und ungesühnt, ed. Bur­ khard Jellonnek and Rüdiger Lautmann (Paderborn: Ferdinand Schöhning, 2002), 349. 98. §4, Paragraph 2 of the AKG-Härteregelungen, https://www.lsvd.de/bund/ buch/15.html. 99. “Considerable damage to health” was quantified as 50 percent disabled as a result of “unjust” measures, or 80 percent disabled by “general adverse health ef­ fects.” §4, Paragraph 1 of the AKG-Härteregelungen, https://www.lsvd.de/bund/ buch/15.html. 100. §7, paragraphs 1 and 2 of the AKG-Härteregelungen, https://www.lsvd.de/ bund/buch/15.html. 101. Hutter, “Zum Scheitern der Politik individueller Wiedergutmachung,” 350–51. 102. Richtlinien der Bundesregierung über Härteleistungen (Anm. 35), §7, Abs. 2, Ziffer 1. 103. Deutscher Bundestag, Referat Öffentlichkeitsarbeit, ed., Wiedergutmachung und Entschädigung für nationalsozialistisches Unrecht. Öffentliche Anhörung des Innenauss­ chusses des Deutschen Bundestages am 24. Juni 1987, in Zur Sache 87/3, p. 372. 104. Berliner Landesregierung: Satzung der Stiftung “Hilfe für Opfer der NSWillkürherrschaft,” Drucksache des Abgeordnetenhauses von Berlin, Nr. 10/1895, Berlin den 3.12.1987, p. 4, quoted in Hutter, “Zum Scheitern der Politik individueller Wiedergutmachung,” 352. 105. Hutter, “Zum Scheitern der Politik individueller Wiedergutmachung,” 350–51. 106. “NS-Opfer erneut vergessen,” Südwind 4 (1992), 28. 107. Invitation for a discussion: “Rosa Granit vor’s Kanzleramt? Brauchen wire in Denkmal für die schwulen NS-Opfer?” (by Initiative Schwulen Denkmal)—Diskus­ sion am 24. Januar 1994 in C.7.3.1, SM archives.

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108. “Neuer Streit um Holocaust-Mahnmale: Auch Sinti und Roma wollen ei­ gene Gedenkst.tte in Berlin,” Wiener Zeitung, August 25, 1999. 109. Quoted in Elke Vogel, “Neuer Streit um Mahnmale zum Holocaust: War­ nung in Berlin vor Denkmals-Inflation,” Ostthüringer Zeitung, August 31, 1999. 110. Beschluss der Deutschen Bundestages ( June 25, 1999), www.holocaust-den­ kmal-berlin.de/index.php?id=44; see also Christiane Wilke, “Remembering Com­ plexity? Memorials for Nazi Victims in Berlin,” International Journal of Transitional Justice 7, no. 1 (March 2013): 136–56. 111. Jan Feddersen, “An wen erinnert ein Homodenkmal?,” Die Tageszeitung, De­ cember 10, 1996. 112. Speech by Norbert Burger, June 24, 1995, Ordner 274, CSG archives. 113. For a more detailed study of the Berlin monument see Jennifer Evans, “Harmless Kisses and Infinite Loops: Making Space for Queer Place in Twenty-First Century Berlin,” in Queer Cities, Queer Cultures: Europe since 1945, ed. Matt Cook and Jennifer V. Evans (London: Bloomsbury, 2014), 75–94. 114. Alice Schwarzer, “Mal wieder dir Frauen vergessen!,” EMMA, August 24, 2006. It was published September 1, 2006, on EMMA’s website, https://www.emma. de/artikel/homo-mahnmal-mal-wieder-die-frauen-vergessen-263541; emphasis added. 115. Maren Kroymann, “Verschwundene Minderheit,” taz, August 29, 2006. 116. “Homosexuellen-Denkmal: ‘Emma’ kritisiert vergessne Frauen,” Der Stan­ dard, August 29, 2006. 117. Joachim Müller, “Leserbrief,” HuK Info, no. 126, September 1997, 60. 118. Quoted in Rainer Schulze, “Himmler’s Crusade against (Male) Homosexu­ ality and the Continuing Stigmatisation of LGBT People after 1945,” Holocaust in History and Memory 4 (2011): 34. 119. Plaque text, Memorial to the Homosexuals Persecuted under the National Socialist Regime, available at http://www.stiftung-denkmal.de/en/home/news/ detail/article/denkmal-fuer-die-im-nationalsozialismus-verfolgten-homosexuellen. html. 120. Bianca Blei, “Aufregung um lesbischen Kuss,” Der Standard, April 8, 2010. 121. Blei, “Aufregung um lesbischen Kuss.” 122. Susanne Höll, “Der Richter und das Opfer,” Süddeutsche Zeitung, July 18, 2012, 3. 123. Ulrike Janz, quoted in Hájková and Bosold, “Aktivistinnen des lesbischen Gedenkens,” 95. 124. Patrick Carney, conversation with the author, June 28, 2014. Epilogue

1. Klaus Mueller, Zoom interview with the author, March 4, 2021. 2. Klaus Mueller, phone interview with the author, August 5, 2021. 3. Heinz Heger [Johann Neumann], The Men with the Pink Triangle: The True Life and Death Story of Homosexuals in the Nazi Death Camps, trans. David Fernbach (Boston: Alyson, 1994), 96. 4. Mueller, phone interview. 5. Mueller, Zoom interview. See also United States Holocaust Memorial Mu­ seum, “Documenting Nazi Persecution of Gays: Josef Kohout/Wilhelm Kroepfl

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Collection (Curators Corner #13),” YouTube video, 9:12, January 14, 2013, https:// youtu.be/kj-wGkcyTL8. 6. Mueller, Zoom interview. 7. “Looking back at the Pride Flag,” Phaidon, June9, 2017, https://www.phaidon. com/agenda/design/articles/2017/june/09/looking-back-at-the-pride-flag. 8. Ty Marshal, “A Short History of the Rainbow Flag,” Syracuse Times, June 19, 2014, https://www.syracusenewtimes.com/rainbow-flag. 9. “Looking back at the Pride Flag.” 10. Cheryl Head, Zoom interview with the author, May 19, 2021. 11. Matthew Riemer and Leighton Brown, We Are Everywhere: Protest, Power, and Pride in the History of Queer Liberation (Berkeley: Ten Speed, 2019), 246, also 352 fn 26. 12. Jeffry J. Iovannone, “A Brief History of the LGBTQ Initialism,” Me­ dium, June 9, 2018, https://medium.com/queer-history-for-the-people/a-brief­ history-of-the-lgbtq-initialism-e89db1cf06e3. 13. Sharon Day, interview with Betsy Kalin for OUTWORDS Oral History Ar­ chive, March 5, 2018, https://www.theoutwordsarchive.org/subjectdetail/sharon-day. 14. Jose Gutierrez, Zoom interview with the author, February 24, 2021. 15. For more on commodification and the LGBTQ+ movement see Alexandra Chasin, Selling Out: The Gay and Lesbian Movement Goes to Market (Basingstoke, UK: Palgrave Macmillan, 2001); David K. Johnson, Buying Gay: How Physique Entrepreneurs Sparked a Movement (New York: Columbia University Press, 2021). 16. “What’s in the Archives? ‘Beering’ up for WorldPride.” The Aquives: Can­ ada’s LGBTQ2+ Archives, May 23, 2014, https://arquives.ca/newsfeed/news/ whats-archives-beering-worldpride. 17. Nike BETRUE 2018 Collection, Nike News, May 24, 2018, https://news.nike. com/news/nike-betrue-2018-collection. 18. Jason Rosenberg (@mynameisjro), Twitter post, May 31, 2018, 1:03 pm, https://twitter.com/mynameisjro/status/1002234051586084864. 19. LadyGagaVEVO, “Lady Gaga—Born This Way,” YouTube video, 07:19, posted February 27, 2011, https://youtu.be/wV1FrqwZyKw; todrickhall, “Nails, Hair, Hips, Heels by Todrick Hall,” YouTube video, 04:24, posted May 23, 2019, https://youtu.be/TQ04gPb4LlY. 20. “Zukunft braucht Erinnerung: Das Comeback des Rosa Winkels,” Queer.de, May 13, 2014, http://www.queer.de/detail.php?article_id=21558. 21. Альянсгетеросексуалов и ЛГБТза равноправие, Facebook post, February5, 2014, https://www.facebook.com/media/set/?set=a.458760787558833.1073741853. 291855357582711. 22. “Russian Gay Rights Activists Arrested,” NBC News, February 7, 2014, https://www.nbcnews.com/storyline/sochi-olympics/russian-gay-rights-activists­ arrested-n24771. 23. Darius Zheng, “Chileans Turn Up in Pink Triangles to Protest Chechnya’s Gay Concentration Camps,” Gay Star News, April 21, 2017, https://www.gay­ starnews.com/article/chileans-turn-up-in-pink-triangles-to-protest-chechnyas-gay­ concentration-camps. 24. Jason Romeyko, “Make Homophobia History,” Vangardist, Pink Triangle Is­ sue, May 2018, 5. 25. lgbt_history (@lgbt_history), 2020, “BLACK LIVES MATTER,” Queers come out for Black Lives Matter, San Francisco, December 24, 2014, photo/copyright

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by Steve Rhodes (@tigerbeat), Instagram, January 25, 2020, https://www.instagram. com/p/B7w32FIpVUW/?igshid=mc4gq239jzbp. 26. lgbt_history (@lgbt_history), 2020, “no pride for some of us without lib­ eration for all of us”—“we can’t breathe”—“black lives matter,” BLM-QTPOC contingent disrupts North Carolina Pride, Durham, September 26, 2015, photo by Zaina Alsous, c/o @workersworld_party, Instagram, July 13, 2020, https://www. instagram.com/p/CCmfsVwpke-/?igshid=1of5dima7og0h. 27. Ryan Lillis, “New Generation of LGBT Activists Sees ‘Confluence’ with Black Lives Matter,” Sacramento Bee, July 26, 2016. 28. Eli Erlick, email to the author, March 20, 2021. To learn more about TSER visit www.transstudent.org. 29. Erlick email. 30. Brian Howard, email to the author, July 15, 2021. 31. Mark Segal, Zoom interview with the author, February 19, 2021. 32. Head interview. 33. Crystal Mason, Zoom interview with the author, April 19, 2021. 34. Günter Dworek, speech at the commemoration ceremony for the Day of Re­ membrance for the Victims of National Socialism, January 27, 2010, http://archive. lsvd.de/politik/verfolgung-von-homosexuellen-in-deutschland.html. 35. Robert Niedermeier, “Paragraf 175: Eine Etschuldigung reicht nicht,” Queer. de, March 29, 2014, http://www.queer.de/detail.php?article_id=21294. 36. Kate Connolly, “Germany to Overturn Convictions of Gay Men Prosecuted after War,” Guardian, March 22, 2017, https://www.theguardian.com/world/2017/ mar/22/germany-approves-bill-to-pardon-gay-men-convicted-before-1969. 37. David Shimer, “Germany Wipes Slate Clean for 50,000 Men Convicted under Anti-gay Law,” New York Times, June 23, 2017, https://www.nytimes. com/2017/06/23/world/europe/germany-anti-gay-law.html. 38. Germany: Criminal Rehabilitation for Men Convicted after 1945 for Homo­ sexual Acts. Library of Congress Legal Monitor (August 9, 2017), https://www.loc. gov/item/global-legal-monitor/2017-08-09/germany-criminal-rehabilitation-for­ men-convicted-after-1945-for-homosexual-acts/. 39. Shimer, “Germany Wipes Slate Clean.” 40. Geir Moulson, “Germany to Compensate Gay Men Investigated after WWII,” AP News, March 13, 2019, https://apnews.com/9d8c446477a14a64a9da8 b87b7c9cb79. 41. “Israel Acknowledges Gay Holocaust Victims for First Time,” Advo­ cate.com, April 27, 2006, http://www.advocate.com/news/2006/04/27/ israel-acknowledges-gay-holocaust-victims-first-time. 42. Corinne E. Blackmer, “Pinkwashing,” Israel Studies 24, no. 2 (Summer 2019): 171–81; Sébastien Tremblay, “ ‘The Proudest Symbol We Could Put Forward?’: The Pink Triangle as a Transatlantic Symbol of Gay and Lesbian Identities from the 1970s to the 1990s” (PhD diss., Freie Universität Berlin, 2020).

B i b l i og raphy

Primary Sources Interviews Carney, Patrick. San Francisco. June 28, 2014.

Church, Jok. Phone. December 29, 2015.

Erlick, Eli. Email. March 14–15, 2021.

Finkelstein, Avram. Skype. July 1, 2014. Zoom. March 15, 2021.

Gutierrez, Jose. Zoom. February 24, 2021.

Gwenwald, Morgan. Phone. April 5, 2021.

Haß, Wiebke. Email. May 5-17, 2021.

Head, Cheryl. Zoom. May 19, 2021.

Hedenström, Peter. Berlin. February 11, 2014.

Howard, Brian. Email. June 27–30, 2021.

Howell, Craig. Zoom. June 1, 2020.

Katz, Jonathan Ned. Zoom. June 22, 2020, and February 8, 2021.

Koskovich, Gerard. San Francisco. June 23, 2014.

Lenk, Jörg. Cologne. January 27, 2014.

Lyday, Corbyn. Zoom. December 4, 2020.

Mason, Crystal. Zoom. April 19, 2021.

Mueller, Klaus. Zoom. March 4, 2021.

Müller, Roland. Berlin. November 26, 2013.

Nangeroni, Nancy. Phone. March 10, 2021.

Nestle, Joan. Email. April 18, 2021.

Newman, Lesléa. Zoom. February 23, 2021.

Phillips, Edward. Washington, DC. April 8, 2014.

Segal, Mark. Zoom. February 19, 2021.

Shelley, Martha. Phone. February 26, 2021.

Steakley, James. Skype. November 19, 2015.

Thorstad, David. Phone. March 5, 2021.

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Ordner 278

Ordner 297, Varia 2

Ordner 298, Varia 3

Forum Queeres Archiv München: LesBiSchwulTransinter* in Geschichte & Kultur (FQAM, Munich) Ordner A V2: VSG Ordner: Schwule Themen #2, Zeitungsausschnittsammlung Schwullesbisches Archiv Hannover (SARCH, Hanover) Box 117: Gay Journal Box 189: Gay News Germany—Pressedienst für homosexuelle Thematik Box: Groß #5—Gay Journal Ordner 81: Orte Braunschweig Ordner 81: Orte M Ordner 81: Orte N–R Ordner 86: Bewegungsgeschichte Ordner: 86: Person Werres Ordner 86: Personalakten, P–Q Ordner 86: Werres, I Ordner 86: Werres, II Ordner 87: NS Alte Quellen Ordner 87: NS/KZ Auschwitz Ordner 87: NS/KZ Bergen Belsen (I) Ordner 87: NS Widerstand, Bent, Filme, Buch/ Bücher-Verbrennung

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C: Deutsches Reich, 1933–1945 C.2: Kriminalisierung, Erfassung, Verfolgung, und Vernichtung C.2.6: Internierung C.2.7: Widerstand C.6: Nachwirkungen und (juristisch-legislative) Aufarbeitung C.6.1: Aufarbeitung Allgemein C.6.3: Rehabilitierung/Wiedergutmachung C.7: Erinnerungskulturen C.7.1: Allgemeines C.7.2: Publizistische Darstellungen C.7.3: Gedenkorte C.7.4: Veranstaltungen C.7.5: Mediale Aufarbeitung Sammlung Holly: Homosexuelle Aktion Westberlin (HAW), Feministenpapiere

Archives in the United States of America GLBT Historical Society Archives (GLBT, San Francisco) Buttons: Political Buttons: Slogans Ephemera Collection: ACT UP National Ephemera Collection: ACT UP SF box 1 Ephemera Collection: ACT UP SF box 2 Ephemera Collection: Protests, etc. Stonewall National Museum and Archives (SNMA, Fort Lauderdale, FL) Box: Buttons—Coming out, gay/queer, pride/march, symbols (lambda/triangle) Box: Buttons—Florida (2) Box: Buttons—Politics, hrcf Box: Buttons—State (A–C) Box: Buttons—State (N) Box: Buttons—State (O–W) Box: March on Washington, 1979, 1987 Box: Stonewall Library & Archives: Nazi Persecution of Homosexuals (USHMM Traveling Exhibit)

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Ms Coll: 5, Series 2, Gay & Lesbian Defense Committee

Ms Coll: 5, Series 3, Miscellaneous

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In dex

Page numbers in italics refer to figures and tables. Abel, Petra, 170

abortion, 42, 63

acknowledgment of Nazis’ gay victims:

activist demands for, 98–100, 143, 177,

215; in unified Germany, 200–201; in

West Germany, 141, 174–175, 180, 184,

192. See also compensation; “forgotten victims”; restitution ACT UP (AIDS Coalition to Unleash

Power), 14–15, 124–126, 132–133, 159,

209, 212. See also Silence = Death Project

and poster

Adams, Eve, 46, 233n82 Adenauer, Konrad, 62–64, 70, 76, 81, 86

Adriaansen, Robbert-Jan, 7

Advocate (periodical), 185

African Americans, 105; LGBTQ+ activists,

130–133, 213

Afro-German LGBTQ+ activists, 95–97 Afro-German Women (organization), 97

“Against Oblivion” (conference), 162–164 age of consent, 87, 101

AIDS activism, 120–127, 207. See also ACT UP AK Klappe, 90

Allied occupation: compensation framework and, 76–77; policies on gay victimhood, 58–62 Alltagsgeschichte (everyday history), 182–183 Alyson Publications, 160

American gay activists, 8; early homophile

movement, 110; gay liberation

movement, 6; intersectionality and,

210–212; pink triangle logo and, 14,

105, 109, 115–135; Stonewall riots, 110,

112, 113, 119; transnational networks,

111–115. See also pink triangle

memories

American Veterans for Equal Rights, 191

Amsterdam, memorial in, 176–177

Anders, Günter, 105

antisemitism, 26. See also Jews, Nazi

genocide of

anti-sodomy law. See Paragraph 175

archives: concentration camp badges in,

204–207; destruction of records by

German State archives, 156, 227n3;

grassroots LGBTQ+, 129–130, 157–160

(see also Lesbian Herstory Archives);

traveling exhibits and, 161

The Army of Lovers (1979), 114

Arno Press, 140

Arondeus, Willem, 30, 189

“Aryan” race, 10–11, 29. See also “master

race,” Nazi ideology of

Asian American and Pacific Islanders, 131

asocials (social deviants), 34, 36, 43–45, 63,

79, 133. See also black triangle

Association of the Persecuted of the Nazi

Regime (VVN), 73, 79, 97–98, 160

Auschwitz, 45–46, 48, 60, 144–145, 148,

175–176, 187

Austria, 177–178, 210, 239n1

Baker, Gilbert, 207–208

banned publications, 74–75

Barley, Katarina, 214

Basinski, Ruth, 45

Bavaria, 180

Bay Windows (periodical), 167

Beachy, Robert, 24, 165

“Beaten to Death, Silenced to Death”

(Totgeschlagen, Totgeschwiegen), 13, 178, 179

Beck, Gad, 30–31, 163

Behold a Pale Horse (Reed), 146, 148

Belinfante, Frieda, 30

Bent (Sherman), 136–137, 147–150, 185

Bentheim, Inge Ellen zu, 35

275

276

INDEX

Bergen-Belsen Concentration Camp Memorial, 179–182 Berlin: hardship funds, 195–196; memorials

in, 9, 134, 196–201; Nazi persecution of

queer spaces, 32–34; transnational activist

networks and, 112; Weimar-era queer

spaces, 23–25, 32–34, 33, 147. See also

Homosexuelle Aktion Westberlin

Berlin Senate, 214

Berlin Stories (Isherwood), 146–147

bisexuals: activist organizations, 131;

scholarship on, 8–9, 161, 166, 184, 215

Bisexual Women’s Liberation, 131

Bisexual Women’s Network (Boston), 131

Black LGBTQ+ activists: American,

130–133, 213; German, 95–97

Black Lives Matter movement, 210–211

Black Panther Party, 96

Black Pride, 130–131

black triangle, 43–45, 58, 133–134, 158,

192, 213

Bleuel, Hans, 156

Body Politic (periodical), 107–108, 139–140,

156–157, 185

Borden, Tre, 211–212

Born, Klaus, 80–81

Borneman, Ernest, 233n70

Boston Globe (newspaper), 155

Boston State College, 156

Boswell, Holly, 131–132

Bouchard, Bruno, 53

Boughner, Terry, 144–146

Bracher, Karl, 72

Braunschweig Homosexual Taskforce

(AHB), 100–101

Bremen, 195

Bremen Gay Help and Advice Center,

175–176

Bruns, Manfred, 161, 165

Bryant, Anita, 116

Buchenwald, 47, 48, 50, 58, 157

Buchenwald Concentration Camp

Memorial, 184, 200

Buckley, William F., Jr., 121, 125–126

Bundestag: of unified Germany, 196–197,

200–201, 213–214; of West Germany, 62,

64, 74, 77, 79, 86–87, 93, 100, 193–195

Burger, Norbert, 183

Burkhard (prisoner at Dachau), 47

Cabaret (show), 146–147, 208

California Proposition 64 (on AIDS), 120

Camurça, Carl, 97

Canada, 108

Canaday, Margot, 12

Carby, Hazel V., 15

Carney, Patrick, 190–191, 202–203 Carter, Jimmy, 186

castration, 51–52, 56

Cavallaro, Sahli, 158

Center for Advanced Holocaust Studies

(USHMM), 190

Centers for Disease Control (CDC),

123, 124

Central Coast Citizens against LaRouche, 244n38 Central Office for Combating Homosexuality

and Abortion, 42

Charlottenburg Rowing Club, 30

Chile, activists in, 210

Christian Democratic Union, 62–63, 86

Christopher Street (periodical), 141

Christopher Street Liberation Day Parade,

117, 131

Church, Jok, 157

Cieslack, Kasimir, 20–21, 51

citizenship: belonging and, 137 (see also

national belonging); defined, 10–12;

ideals of democracy and, 115–116 (see

also democratic society); Nazi laws on,

42 (see also Volksgemeinschaft); and politics

of memory, 10–16; power and, 11–12;

sexuality and, 10–12, 57, 64, 81, 83, 89,

101–102, 104, 126

civil liberties, 11, 14, 101, 126–127, 213

civil rights, 10, 22, 85, 96, 102, 104,

126–127, 164

collective memories. See grafted memories; memory practices; pink triangle memories; politics of memory Cologne, 182–184, 197, 209–210 coming out, politics of, 8; American gay

activism and, 13–14, 110, 127; in fictional

accounts, 150; gay concentration camp

survivors and, 83; Nazi past and, 119;

“Out Is In!” pin, 111; West German gay

activism and, 88–97. See also visibility

commemoration, 16, 76; activist demands

for, 16, 215; centered on gay men, 8–9,

16, 169; of double victimization, 13;

education and, 202–203; gay activist

movement and, 16; for lesbian victims,

168–173, 171; in the US, 190–192; in West

Germany, 173–176. See also memorials

and monuments

Communist Party (German), 24, 61

INDEX compensation: 2017 legislation on,

214–215; activism for, 98–100, 115,

213–214; commemoration and, 192;

denied to gay victims, 16, 53–56, 73–80,

143, 163–164, 206, 213; hardship funds,

193–196; memorials and, 184–185;

testimony of survivors and, 176. See also

restitution

concentration camps: badge system used

in, 4–5, 43–45, 58; black triangle (asocials

and lesbians), 43–45, 58, 133–134, 158,

192, 213; “conversion therapy” at, 28,

49–52, 71; gay men’s experiences in, 8–9,

41, 43–52, 57–58, 71–75; green triangle

(criminals), 43–45, 58; numbers of gay

men in, 46, 142, 144–145, 153, 155–156,

190, 227n1; numbers of lesbians in,

45–46, 168; pink triangle (gay men),

4–5, 43–45, 58, 104–105, 108, 118, 152,

204–207, 216 (see also pink triangle); red

triangle (political prisoners), 58, 206;

trans people’s experiences in, 47. See also

gay concentration camp survivors;

specific concentration camps

Congressional Cemetery, Washington,

DC, 192

Conrad, Elsa, 45

Cooper, Janet, 119

criminal code: in German Empire, 22;

in West Germany, 66, 141. See also

Paragraph 175; (anti-sodomy law)

Criminal Code Commission (West Germany),

65, 85–86

Criminal Law Commission (Third Reich), 39

cross-dressing, 24, 35, 40, 147, 233n86

Cultuur en Ontspanningscentrum, 243n9

Cuomo, Mario, 126

Dachau, 44–48, 58, 71, 148

Dachau Concentration Camp Memorial,

161, 173–174, 178–180, 183, 185, 200

Dade County Coalition for Human Rights, 116–117 Daily News, 46

Dannecker, Martin, 102, 113

Darby, Jim, 191

Day, Sharon, 208

Day of Remembrance for the Victims of

Nazism (2010), 213

Days of Masquerade (Schoppmann), 162

Decker, Jo-Ellyn, 229n1 degeneracy, 26, 33, 39, 49, 143, 170

Demnig, Gunter, 183–184

277

democratic society: of Weimar Republic, 23;

of West Germany, 13, 57, 64, 66, 72, 85,

87, 89, 101–102, 104, 164, 203, 213–214

denazification, 55, 60

denunciations, civilian: in Nazi era, 34–36,

40–42, 45, 61; in West Germany, 69

Department for Victims of Fascism, 61

Der Kreis (periodical), 72, 238n77, 243n9 Der Spiegel (magazine), 141, 149

Der Weg, 73

Diaz, Marianne, 131

Dickel, Simon, 95–96 Dickenson, Edward, 232n66 Die Deutsche Diktatur (Bracher), 72

Die Insel, 73

Diekwisch, Stefan, 181–182 Diemer-Nicolaus, Emmy, 87

Diepgen, Eberhard, 196

Dietrich, Karl, 51

Die Wahrheit (newspaper), 155

Die Zeit (newspaper), 193

Digital Transgender Archive, 246n87 Dijk, Lutz van, 165

disability rights movement, 105. See also people with disabilities discrimination, 5; in Germany, 40, 72, 78,

85, 92–95, 97, 100–102, 143, 154, 161,

198, 200, 213; Nazi era, 46, 60; in Russia,

210; in the United States, 110, 115–117,

119, 122, 157

Dobler, Jens, 39, 156, 165

Don (magazine), 141

Dora, 58

Dörmer, Heinz, 73, 79

Dowdle, Walter, 124

drag queens, 90

Dragset, Ingar, 197

Druten, John van, 147

Dubuque Brewing and Bottling

Company, 209

Du & Ich (periodical), 141, 143

Dworek, Günter, 213

The Early Homosexual Rights Movement

(Lauritsen and Thorstad), 139

East Germany: commemoration

ceremonies in, 174; establishment of, 62;

gay activists in, 9–10; lesbian activists in,

169; Paragraph 175 and, 68

Eckert, Albert, 155

Edel, Deborah, 158

education, 173–176; memorialization and, 182, 202–203

278

INDEX

Eischeid, Susan, 1–2

Eisenhower, Dwight, 58

Eisner, Frei, 78

Eldorado club, 25, 33

Elman, Amy, 118

Elmgreen, Michael, 197

Emanzipation (periodical), 141, 143

EMMA (magazine), 141, 197

entrapment: Nazi era, 33, 41, 42; in West

Germany, 69

equality: activist struggles for, 5, 104, 110,

161, 187, 216; coming out and, 127; gender,

66; in West German constitution, 102

Erlick, Eli, 212

eugenics, 27

Evans, Jennifer, 5, 165, 197, 232n57

exhibits and events, 125, 160–161, 190

Falwell, Jerry, 125–126

Fassbinder, Egmont, 15, 93

The Fate of the Ostracized (Wilde), 140

Fauroux, Camille, 39

Federal Archives of Koblenz, 161

Federal Compensation Law (BEG, 1956),

77–78, 98, 193

Federal Magnus Hirschfeld Foundation, 172

Federal Republic of Germany (FRG):

AIDS and, 126; citizenship rights (see citizenship; democratic society); criminalization of homosexuality, 5, 59–70 (see also Paragraph 175); discrimination against gays and lesbians, 100–101; family politics (Familienpolitik), 63–64; reunified Germany, 1990-onwards, 184–185, 196–202, 213–215. See also Bundestag; West German gay activists Finkelstein, Avram, 120–125

Finkler, Rudi, 153, 165

Finzsch, Norbert, 156

Firehouse (GAA), 112–113

Fliederlich, 103

Fliederwild, Viola, 101–102

Florvil, Tiffany, 96–97

Flossenbürg, 48, 51–52, 57–58, 205–206

forgetting, 12–13. See also politics of

memory

“forgotten victims,” 2–3, 56–57, 100, 156,

171–172, 184, 188, 193–196

Fosse, Bob, 147

Frank, Gillian, 116

Frankfurt am Main, 183

Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung (newspaper), 162

Frankfurter Rundschau (newspaper), 155

Free Democratic Party, 87

Freedman, Monroe, 186–187

Fremdenblatt, 34

Frick, Wilhelm, 26

Gatzweiler, Richard, 65

Gauweiler, Peter, 126

Gay, Lesbian, and Bisexual Veterans of

America, 191

Gay Academic Union, 139, 157–158 gay activists. See American gay activists; West German gay activists Gay Activists Alliance (GAA): activism related to Nazi past, 115; lambda logo, 110; memorialization and, 186–187; pink triangle logo, 108–109, 111; transnational networks and, 112–113 Gay and Lesbian Activists Alliance, 255n59 Gay and Lesbian Campaign (USHMM), 189

Gay Community News (Boston), 119, 141, 144

gay concentration camp survivors, 3;

in postwar West Germany, 64–70;

testimonies of, 71–75, 79–83, 104,

144–145, 163–165, 175–176, 200, 207.

See also acknowledgment of Nazis’ gay

victims; compensation; concentration

camps; Paragraph 175 (anti-sodomy law);

pink triangle memories; restitution

Gay Games, 114

gay identity, modern transnational: Berlin as

birthplace of, 24; collective memories and,

4; historical roots of, 137, 146, 148–149;

memorialization and, 185–192, 202–203;

pink triangle as activist logo and, 4–6, 85,

92–95, 104–105, 127–134, 152

Gay Journal (periodical), 141

Gay Liberation Front (US), 6, 14, 92

Gay Liberation Front Köln, 94

Gay Monument Initiative, 196

Gay News Germany, 177

Gay Philadelphia News, 212

gay press, 107–108, 112, 138–146, 243n9;

memorialization and, 185, 188;

restitution and compensation debates,

192–193

gay rights ordinance (Miami), 115–117 Gays and Fascism (1983), 154

Gays in Germany (Stümke), 154

Gay Sunshine (periodical), 141

Gay Sweatshop (theater), 136

gender equality, 66

gender-nonconforming people: denunciations of, 35–36, 40–41; in

INDEX postwar West Germany, 64; scholarship on, 166; in Weimar era, 147; West German gay activists and, 90–91 gender norms: Nazi era, 26–29, 39–41, 45,

49–52; in West Germany, 63–64, 85, 90–91

General Consequences of War Law (AKG,

1957), 79; Hardship Fund, 193–195

General Homosexual Committee (AHA),

97–98, 104, 160

genocide: debate on gay genocide or

“Homocaust,” 28, 49, 140, 142, 144–146,

155, 162–163; UN definition of, 63, 77.

See also Jews, Nazi genocide of

German Democratic Republic (GDR). See East Germany

German Empire, 22–23, 67

German Society for Sexual Research, 155

Gestapo (secret state police), 31, 32, 35–36,

39, 41, 42, 43

Giese, Hans, 67

Giles, Geoffrey, 5, 165

Giovanni’s Room (bookstore), 145

Gittings, Barbara, 192

Glasser, Ira, 144

Goebbels, Joseph, 144

Gorath, Karl, 60–61, 175–176

grafted memories, 7–10, 14, 109, 115, 137,

152, 228n12

Grau, Günter, 5, 165

Green Party, 98, 161, 180–181, 193

green triangle (criminals), 43–45, 58

Griffiths, Craig, 5, 90–91, 94, 97

Groszheim, Friedrich-Paul von, 34

Gründel, Lüdwig, 35

Grune, Richard, 25, 34–35, 43, 48

Gutierrez, Jose, 9, 128–130, 208–209

Gwenwald, Morgan, 16, 118–119, 128, 133,

158–160 Haeberle, Erwin, 160

Hájková, Anna, 5, 29, 39, 165, 172

Hall, Todrick, 209

Hamburg: court rulings on Paragraph 175,

67; hardship funds, 195; memorial in, 183; Nazi suppression of queer spaces in, 33–34, 42; State Archive in, 156, 227n3 Hanover Action Group on Homosexuality (HSH), 180–182

Harlem Club, 33

Harrison, Scott, 9

Hart, Sara, 117–118

Harthauser, Wolfgang, 153

Haß, Wiebke, 170, 172

279

Head, Cheryl, 130–131, 208, 212–213 Hedenström, Peter, 88, 92, 93, 112–113

Heger, Heinz (pseudonym): The Men with

the Pink Triangle, 83, 84, 91, 111, 129,

142–143, 149–150, 160, 187, 207, 232n68,

239n1. See also Kohout, Josef

Heineman, Elizabeth, 5, 165

Heinz F. (gay concentration camp survivor), 49–50 Helms, Jesse, 125

Henrietta Hudson (bar), 133

Henze, Patrick, 89

Heritage of Pride, 208

Herrn, Rainer, 166

Herzog, Dagmar, 5, 27, 165

heterosexuality, 11, 27, 29, 31, 39, 49, 63–64,

75, 85, 87, 101, 110, 118, 184

him (magazine), 141, 149

Himmler, Heinrich, 27, 32, 39, 42–43, 49, 144

Hirsch, Marianne, 7

Hirschfeld, Magnus, 23–24, 32, 108,

138–140

historical scholarship, 5–6; centered on

gay men, 8–9, 75, 164–167, 197–198; by

grassroots and queer activist-researchers,

3, 15–19, 135, 137, 155–160, 201, 250n76;

silence in professional academia on

Nazi persecution of queer people, 2–4,

12–13, 17, 71–72, 137, 150, 153; in West

Germany, 153–155

Hitler, Adolf: appointed chancellor, 25–26; execution of SA leaders, 31–32, 36–37 Hitler Youth, 28, 59

Hochrein, Axel, 214

Hockenberry, Clint, 187

Hoffmann, Erich, 93

Hoffschildt, Rainer, 5, 145, 164, 165, 182,

227n1, 232n66

Holtzman, Elizabeth, 115

Holy, Michael, 165

homophile movement, 66, 73–75, 89, 110,

243n9

homophobia: in concentration camps,

46–48; denazification and, 60; in Nazi

ideology, 26–29, 33–34 (see also Nazi

ideology); in postwar West Germany,

13, 63–75, 80–81, 85–87, 173, 195, 207;

in Russia, 210; stereotypes, 26, 35, 72; in

United States, 147

The Homosexual Emancipation Movement in

Germany (Steakley), 140

Homosexual Initiative of Vienna, 177–178 Homosexual Interest Group Berlin, 9

280

INDEX

homosexuality: coining of term

“homosexual,” 23; criminalization of, 2,

5, 59–70, 203 (see also Paragraph 175);

decriminalization of, 87, 196; Nazism and

(see Nazi ideology)

“Homosexuality and Fascism” (seminar), 161

“Homosexuality: Lesbians and Gay Men in

Society, History, and Literature” (Arno

Press series), 140

Homosexuals and the Church (HuK), 173–174, 178–179 “Homosexuals and the Third Reich”

(Steakley), 108, 139

“Homosexuals during Fascism and Today” (event), 160–161 “Homosexuals in National Socialism”

(exhibit), 161

Homosexuelle Aktion München, 102

Homosexuelle Aktion Westberlin (HAW),

14, 88–95, 102, 106, 108, 111–113; Feminist

Group, 91–92; Women’s Group, 95

Höppner, Helmut, 78

Höss, Rudolf, 71

Hot Chocolates (organization), 97

Howard, Brian, 120–122, 212

Hügel-Marshall, Ika, 96

Humanitas (magazine), 74, 143

human rights, 127, 178, 191

Huneke, Samuel, 5, 9, 165

Hutter, Jörg, 165, 194

I Am a Camera (play), 147

identity politics, 10. See also gay identity, modern transnational “Identity Politics and Commemoration”

(symposium), 172

Initiative of Autonomous Feminist Women and Lesbians from Germany and Austria, 168–173 Initiative of Black Germans, 97

Institute for Sexual Research (Frankfurt am

Main), 67

Institute for Sexual Science, 24, 32

International Advisory Board of the Brandenburg Memorials Foundation, 170–172 International Committee on Sexual Equality, 243n9 International Dachau Committee (CID), 178–179 International Foundation for Gender

Education, 132

International Gay Association, 187

international gay history, 16. See also historical scholarship; pink triangle memories; transnational gay activism International Homosexual World Organization, 247n21 International Ravensbrück Committee, 170

intersectional identities, LGBTQ+, 29–32,

45, 131; activism and, 96, 134; Black and,

96–97, 105, 130–133, 213; Jewish and,

45–46, 78, 117–118, 133, 150–153, 165,

212; Latinx and, 128–130, 131, 208–209

Isherwood, Christopher, 146–147 Israel, 130, 215

It’s Not the Homosexual Who’s Perverse (1971),

88, 106, 113–114

Jahrbuch für Sexual Zwischenstufen (Yearbook

of sexual intermediaries), 138

Janz, Ulrike, 201–202 Jehovah’s Witnesses, 28, 43, 63, 184, 200

Jellonnek, Burkhard, 5, 161, 162, 165,

250n76

Jenniger, Philipp, 193

Jensen, Erik, 5, 128, 148, 165

Jewish lesbians, 45–46, 78, 117–118, 133,

150–153

Jews, 10; compensation for victims, 76;

crime of associating with, 35–36, 45;

Nazi genocide of, 28, 30–31, 45–46, 63,

109, 142, 148, 186, 212; responses to Nazi

violence, 119

Johnston, Oliver, 120, 122, 124

Jose Gutierrez Archives, 129–130 Journal of Homosexuality, 160

Journal of Sex Research, 160

Junge, Heinz, 155–156 Jürgens, Heinrich, 181

justice, 4, 74, 76, 94, 152, 212–216;

remembering injustice and, 13–14, 216

Kameny, Frank, 191

Karl B. (pseudonym). See Gorath, Karl

Katz, Jonathan Ned, 134, 139–140, 233n82

Kautsky, Benedict, 44–45

Kentler, Helmut, 181

Kepner, Jim, 114

Kertbeny, Karl-Maria, 23

Kipp, Karl, 45, 46–47

Kitzing, Fritz, 40–41, 232n57

Klausa, Ekkehard, 196

Klimmer, Rudolf, 79

Knittel, Margarete, 30

Knoll, Albert, 165

INDEX Koch, Werner, 181

Kogon, Eugen, 47, 70

Kohout, Josef, 43, 47, 57–58, 82–83, 142,

205–207, 232n68, 239n1. See also Heger, Heinz (pseudonym for Kohout)

Kokula, Ilse, 161, 164, 181

Kramer, Larry, 113, 126–127

Krass, Andreas, 147

Kraus, Ota, 71

Kraushaar, Elmar, 90

Kreloff, Charles, 120, 122

Kroepfl, Wilhelm, 205–206

Kronberg, Miriam, 133

Kroymann, Maren, 197

Kulka, Erich, 71

Kuntz, Susanne, 170

labrys (lesbian symbol), 121

Lady Gaga, 209

Lahusen, Kay Tobin, 192

lambda (gay rights logo), 91, 110, 121

Lamm, Heinrich, 48

Landers, Werner, 65

Landsberg Fortress, 58–59

Langemann, Hans, 70

LaRouche, Lyndon, 120, 244n38

Latendorf, Albert, 48

Latinx LGBTQ+ communities, 128–130,

131, 208–209

Lauinger, Wolfgang, 33

Lauritsen, John, 108–109, 138–140

Lautmann, Rüdiger, 5, 150, 153, 154, 156,

160–161, 165, 181, 186–187, 227n1,

249n76

Lavender Hill Mob, 124

League of People’s Guardians, 63–64, 65

Lederer, Klaus, 214

leftist movements, 86–87, 89–90, 102.

See also New Left; social movements

Left Party, 214

Lenk, Jörg, 182

Lesbian Action Center of West Berlin, 95

lesbian and gay studies, 157. See also historical

scholarship Lesbian and Gay Union of Germany, 171–172, 196–197, 213–214 Lesbian Herstory Archives, 16, 118–119, 133, 157–160 lesbians: activism, 95, 96–97, 231n43;

compensation eligibility, 78; in

concentration camps, 39–40,

45–46, 158, 168 (see also black

triangle); denunciations by civilians,

281

35–36; marginalization of, 157;

memorialization of Nazi victims, 118,

168–173, 197–198, 200–202; Nazi

persecution of, 2, 38–40; occupation

period and, 61; Paragraph 175 and,

38–40, 67; scholarship on, 8–9, 154,

161–162, 184, 215

Lesbians in the Church (organization), 169

“A Letter to Harvey Milk” (Newman), 150–153 Let the Record Show (New Museum exhibit), 125

LGBTQ+ community, 10; symbols of, 207–213

(see also pink triangle; rainbow flag); use of

term, 17, 208, 227n2. See also American gay

activists; bisexuals; gay concentration camp

survivors; gender-nonconforming people;

homosexuality; lesbians; trans people; West

German gay activists

Lichtenburg, 41, 47

Links Unten, 102

Lione, Chris, 120

Loebel, Herbert, 148

Lorde, Audre, 97

Los Angeles Times, 188, 251n102 Lower Saxony, 180–182, 195–196 Lübeck memorial, 184

Lyday, Corbin, 188–189 Lynch, Michael, 137

Lyon, Phyllis, 114

Maas, Heiko, 214

Mailänder, Elissa, 166, 232n57 mainstream press, 149, 155; commemoration

and, 173–176, 188; compensation debates

in, 193; coverage of Nazi persecution of

gay men, 141; silence on Nazi persecution

of queer people, 137

Mainz Initiative Group on Homosexuality, 101

Marburg Gay Group, 114

March on Washington: in 1979, 119; in 1987,

127; in 1993, 129, 131, 187–189

Marhoefer, Laurie, 5, 24, 35–36, 40–41, 165

Marquez, Carlos, 211–212 marriages of convenience, 29–30 Martin, Del, 114

Mason, Crystal, 14–15, 132–134, 213

“master race,” Nazi ideology of, 10–11, 22,

26–28, 50, 104, 166

material reparations, 76. See also compensation Matlovich, Leonard, 191–192 Mausbach, Wilfried, 105, 245n62 Mauthausen, 49

282

INDEX

Mauthausen Concentration Camp Memorial, 177–178, 210 McLellan, Josie, 9 Meisinger, Josef, 39, 42 Memel (region), 53–54 memorials and monuments: in Amsterdam, 176–177; international scale of, 215; list of memorials to gay victims of Nazi regime, 221–225; list of memorials with pink triangle for LGBTQ victims of violence, 226; pink triangle memorials, 176–185; in unified Germany, 196–202; in the US, 167, 185–192, 202–203; in West Germany, 177–185. See also commemoration Memorial to the Homosexuals Persecuted under National Socialism, 163, 196–200, 199 Memorial to the Murdered Jews of Europe, 199 memory practices, 4–6; postmemory, 7; temporal and spatial context, 5–6. See also grafted memories; pink triangle memories; politics of memory The Men with the Pink Triangle. See Heger, Heinz Merlin Verlag, 83, 91 Micheler, Stefan, 154, 165 Michelsen, Jakob, 154 Milk, Harvey, 119–120, 150, 188, 207 Ministry of Expellees, Refugees, and the War-Damaged, 76 Moeller, Robert, 64 Monette, Richard, 148 Monowitz (Auschwitz III), 45, 47 monuments. See memorials and monuments morality, 4, 11, 136; activism and, 91, 187, 212; Holocaust as “shared moral universe,” 105, 126, 245n62; norms in Germany, 21–23, 34, 37, 41, 46, 63–71, 74, 77, 80, 85, 88, 98, 147, 174; “trash and smut law,” 74–75, 238n77; of victims, 30; of Wiedergutmachung (making good again), 76 Moringen, 45 Moses, Dirk, 97 Mueller, Klaus, 165, 187, 188, 205–207 Müller, Hans-Joachim, 174 Müller, Joachim, 50, 165, 198 Müller, Jürgen, 165 Müller, Roland, 114 Munich, 33, 93, 99, 102, 104, 142–143, 149, 173–174, 178, 184 Münster Homosexual Initiatives, 88

Nangeroni, Nancy, 14, 118, 131, 246n87 National Association on Homosexuality (BVH), 180–181 national belonging, 10–12, 31, 137, 216. See also citizenship National Socialist Terror against Homosexuals ( Jellonek and Lautmann), 163 Native Americans, 208 Natzweiler, 48, 51 The Nazi Extermination of Homosexuals (Rector), 251n101 Nazi ideology: on gender and sexual conformity, 2, 12, 22, 26–29, 39–41, 45, 49–52; on homosexuality as behavior, 28–29, 49–52, 104, 144; on homosexuality as racial and political threat, 37–43, 60, 70; of “master race,” 10–11, 22, 26–28, 50, 104, 166; propaganda against homosexuality, 33–34, 49; on reproduction and Aryan motherhood, 2, 39, 42, 45. See also Volksgemeinschaft (people’s community) Nazi leadership, gay men in, 31–32, 36–37, 65, 72, 156 “The Nazi Persecution of Homosexuals” (traveling exhibit), 190 Nazi persecution of LGBTQ+ people, 1–2, 20–21, 32–36; complicity and collaboration with, 22, 34–36, 40–41; within Nazi leadership, 31–32, 36–37; resistance against, 29–31, 50. See also concentration camps; gay concentration camp survivors; lesbians; Nazi ideology; Paragraph 175 (anti-sodomy law) neo-Nazis, 103, 104 Nestle, Joan, 158 Neudegg, L. D. Classen von (pseudonym), 74, 143 Neuengamme, 44, 73 Neuengamme Concentration Camp Memorial, 183, 185 Neumann, Bernd, 198, 200 Neumann, Heinz, 207 Neumann, Johann “Hanns,” 82–83 New Left, 11, 86, 89, 102. See also leftist movements Newman, Lesléa, 15, 117, 133–134, 150–153 Newton, Huey, 96 New York Area Bisexual Network, 131 New York Civil Liberties Union, 144 New York Times, 144, 148–149 Nieden, Susanne zur, 165 Nike corporation, 209

INDEX Nollendorfplatz in Berlin, 183 nonbinary people, 11, 17, 26, 227n7 Novick, Peter, 127–128 Nuremberg memorial, 184 Nuremberg war crimes trials, 77, 125–126 Oguntoye, Katharina, 97 Oline, Pamela, 158 Olstein, Hella, 46 Olympics, 210 ONE (organization), 138, 244n38 ONE (periodical), 243n9 On Our Rag (zine), 133 Oranienburg, 74, 183 “Out Is In!” pin, 111 Pack, Ernst, 20–21, 51–52 Paragraph 175 (anti-sodomy law): 1935 amendment criminalizing “indecency,” 2, 21, 22, 36, 38–43, 54, 60, 67–68, 101; 1969 amendment, 87, 101, 110, 141; 1973 amendment, 101; 1994 repeal, 196, 210; activism against, 85–87, 101–102, 115, 214–215; annulment of convictions, 200–201, 213–215; archival records on, 156, 227n3; civilian denunciations and, 36; continued enforcement in West Germany (1949–69), 13, 63–75, 80–81, 85–87, 173, 195, 214; criminalizing “intercourse-like” acts, 23, 38, 54, 68; in German Empire, 22–23, 67; intersecting identities and, 29; limited to men, 8–9, 64, 75, 133, 142, 171, 198; Nazi-era arrests and convictions, 2, 21–22, 34, 36, 42–43, 53–56, 59, 157, 232n66, 239n1 (see also concentration camps); in postwar occupation period (1945–49), 57–62; queer activistscholarship on, 140 (see also historical scholarship); in Weimar era, 23–25, 42. See also acknowledgment of Nazis’ gay victims; compensation; restitution Paragraph 175 (film, 2002), 165 Paragraph 175a (on sexual coercion), 38, 59–60, 68 Paragraph 183 (public nuisances), 40 Pareik, Andreas, 93 people with disabilities, Nazi persecution of, 27–29, 41, 63, 76–77, 175, 184 Perincioli, Cristina, 95 Philippi, Hans, 174 Phillips, Edward “Ted,” 190 “pink lists” (rosa Listen), 42, 68–70, 78, 102, 232n63 Pink Ticket (political party), 102

283

pink triangle, 5, 9, 13–15; in contemporary activist movements, 187, 207–213; in corporate marketing, 209; emergence as gay activist logo, 90–93, 109, 134–135; Jewish communities and, 116–118, 121, 131; modern gay identity and, 104–105; opposition to use as activist logo, 93–94, 117–118, 121, 122; origin as concentration camp badge for gay men, 4–5, 43–45, 58, 104–105, 108, 118, 152, 204–207, 216; polyvalent nature of symbol, 5, 9, 14, 94, 192, 209, 215–216; racial and gender dynamics, 15, 95–97, 128–133, 158–160. See also pink triangle memories The Pink Triangle (Plant). See Plant, Richard The Pink Triangle? But that Was a Long Time Ago. . . (1975), 100 Pink Triangle Campaign (at Mauthausen), 210 Pink Triangle Memorial Park, San Francisco, 191 pink triangle memories: AIDS activism and, 120–127; American LGBTQ+ activism and, 119–120; centered on gay men, 8–9, 75, 164–167, 197–198; defined, 5–6; in fictional works, 146–153; modes of storytelling, 15; political instrumentalization of, 127–128; politics of memory and, 10–16, 85–87; in postwar West Germany, 71–75; silencing of (see silencing of history); transnational gay identities and, 7–9, 127–134. See also American gay activists; commemoration; gay concentration camp survivors; historical scholarship; memorials and monuments; Nazi persecution of LGBTQ+ people; politics of memory; West German gay activists Pink Triangle Press (Toronto), 140 Pink Triangles, Pink Lists (Stümke and Finkler), 153, 181 Pink Triangle Wuppertal, 93 Plant, Richard, The Pink Triangle, 140, 148, 160–162, 165, 251n102 political opponents: compensation and, 77–78; Nazi persecution of, 28, 53–56 politics of memory, 4–6; citizenship and, 10–16; consequences of remembering, 213–216; defined, 12; gendered nature of, 16; implications of Nazi past, 10–16, 85–87; justice and, 13–14, 216; memorialization and, 200–202, 213; postmemory, 7; power and, 12. See also grafted memories; memory practices; pink triangle memories

284

INDEX

Praunheim, Rosa von, 88, 106, 113–114

President’s Commission on the Holocaust

(Carter), 186

press. See gay press; mainstream press Pretzel, Andreas, 165

pride marches and celebrations: 1979

March on Washington, 119; 1987 March

on Washington, 127; 1993 March

on Washington, 129, 131, 187–189;

Christopher Street Liberation Day

Parade, 117, 131; pink triangles and,

124–125, 174, 190–191, 211–212; rainbow

flag and, 207–208

Prinz Eisenherz (bookstore), 145

privacy, 51, 89, 127

“protective custody,” 39, 43, 59

Protestant Church of Reconciliation, 173–174, 178–179 Pulse nightclub shooting, 211

Putin, Vladimir, 210

queer: use of term, 17. See also LGBTQ+ community Rabinnical Council of America, 108–109 Radusch, Hilde, 61

Rahe, Thomas, 165, 182

rainbow flag, 121, 187, 207–210, 213

Rainbow History Project, 129

Ravensbrück, 45, 49

Ravensbrück Camp Community and Friends Circle, 168–169 Ravensbrück Concentration Camp Memorial, 168–173, 184, 200–202 Reagan, Ronald, 120, 122, 123, 124–125

Rector, Frank, 251n101 red triangle, 58, 206

Reed, Lannon, 146

Reimer, Horst, 157

Reinhart, Robert, 146

Remembering the Homosexual Victims of

National Socialism Initiative, 197

resistance by queer communities in Third

Reich, 29–31, 50

restitution, 192–196, 200; annulment of Paragraph 175 convictions, 200–201, 213–215; commemoration and, 173–176 (see also commemoration). See also acknowledgment of Nazis’ gay victims; compensation; Vergangenheitsbewältigung (coming to terms with Nazi past) Rise and Fall of the Third Reich (Shirer), 72

Röhm, Ernst Julius, 31–32, 36–37, 41, 65, 72

Roma, 10; Nazi persecution of, 27–29, 31,

63, 76–77, 175, 180–181, 184

Rosarote (“pinks” or “rosies”), 44, 233n70 Rosa Winkel (Pink Triangle), 149

Rosa Winkel Verlag (Pink Triangle Press,

Berlin), 145, 161

Rosenberg, Margarete, 45

Rothberg, Michael, 8

RotZSchwul (Rot Zelle Schwul, Red Cell

Gay), 91–92, 102, 111

Ruffin, Kurt von, 47, 233n86 Russian Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, and

Transgender Network, 210

Russo, Vito, 113, 114

SA (Sturmabteilung), 31–32, 36–37

Sachsenhausen, 41, 43, 44, 47, 48, 50, 74

Sachsenhausen Concentration Camp

Memorial, 155–156, 174, 183

Saint Petersburg, Russia, 210

Salmen, Andreas, 155

Sandmann, Gertrude, 24

San Francisco, 190–191, 210

“Save Our Children” coalition, 116–117

Schälicke, Bernd, 155

Schelsky, Helmut, 67

Schiefelbein, Dieter, 91

Schively, Charles, 156–157

Schleswig-Holstein, 195–196

Schmehling, Fritz, 214

Schmierer, Joscha, 112

Schnabel, Raimund, 71

Schneider, Patrick, 114

Schoeps, Hans-Joachim, 79, 86

Schöllhammer, Johann, 48

Schoppmann, Claudia, 5, 39, 61, 161, 162,

163, 165, 170, 181

Schrafstetter, Susanna, 77

Schultz, Dagmar, 97

Schulz (gay community center), 149

Schwager, Irmes, 169–170

Schwarzer, Alice, 197

schwul (gay), 91–92, 93

Schwule Aktion Köln, 94

Schwulenbewegung (West German gay

movement), 83, 87–104. See also West

German gay activists

Scientific-Humanitarian Committee

(WhK), 23–24, 138

Seel, Pierre, 44, 47, 62, 163

Segal, Mark, 6, 117, 212

Seifert, Dorthe, 5, 148

SerVaas, Cory, 125

INDEX Setterington, Ken, 165

Sex and Society in Nazi Germany (Bleuel),

156 sexual identity, 4, 8, 73, 89, 126, 200, 208.

See also gay identity, modern

transnational; heterosexuality

sexuality: citizenship and, 10–12, 83, 89,

101–102, 104, 126; sexual liberation of

1960s, 110; West German norms, 63–64,

85. See also Nazi ideology

Shelley, Martha, 14, 117

Sherman, Martin, 136–137, 147–150

Shirer, William, 72

Silence = Death Project and poster, 14,

121–126, 123, 129, 130, 132, 212. See also

ACT UP silencing of history, 2–4, 12–13, 53–70,

75–80, 143, 178, 188, 192, 216; defined,

12; tools of, 4. See also acknowledgment

of Nazis’ gay victims; “forgotten

victims”; historical scholarship

Sinti, 10; Nazi persecution of, 28, 63, 76–77,

175, 180, 184

Smula, Elli, 45

Socarrás, Jorge, 120–122 Social Democratic Party, 24, 86, 98, 178,

180, 193

Socialist Unity Party, 55

Socialist Workers Party, 108–109, 139

social movements, 4–5, 15, 89, 102–105,

210–211; of the “long sixties,” 11,

86–87, 111–112, 228n18. See also leftist

movements; New Left

Society for Sexual Equality (VSG), 173

sodomy, laws against. See Paragraph 175

solidarity, 4, 6, 88–89, 91, 96, 114, 116–117,

119, 134–135, 168, 210–212

SS (Schutzstaffel): homosexuality and,

27–28, 31–32, 37; information gathering,

42; pink triangle used by, 4; violence in

concentration camps, 47

State Archive in Hamburg, 156, 227n3 State Archives of Stuttgart, 161

Steakley, James “Jim,” 106–109, 139–140,

144, 148, 155, 156–157, 160, 190, 242n66

Steiniger, Lisa, 170–171 sterilization, forced, 27, 41, 49

Sternweiler, Andreas, 165

Stolpersteine (stumbling stones) memorial, 183–184

Stonewall riots, 110, 112, 113, 119

Ströbele, Christian, 193

student movements, 11, 89, 102, 229n18

285

Stümke, Hans-Georg, 5, 153–154, 156, 161,

165, 181

Süddeutsche Zeitung (newspaper), 174

Südwest Presse (newspaper), 161

Südwind (periodical), 104, 142, 143

suicide, 70

Süssmuth, Rita, 164

Sutton, Katie, 166

symbolic reparations, 76. See also

commemoration; memorials and

monuments

Tagesspiegel (newspaper), 193

Tageszeitung (newspaper), 161, 177, 197

Tammer, Teresa, 9

terminology, 16–19, 227n2, 227n7, 241n37

Theis, Wolfgang, 90

Thierack, Otto Georg, 39

Thomas, Johann, 47–48

Thorstad, David, 108–109, 115, 138–140

Tiergarten Park, Berlin, 184, 199

timeline of events, 217–220

Totzke, Ilse, 35–36, 45

transnational gay activism, 111–115, 145,

185–187; symbols of, 207–213. See also American gay activists; gay identity, modern transnational; West German gay activists trans people: in concentration camps, 47;

Nazi persecution of, 35, 40–41, 233n86;

pink triangle logo and, 131–132, 246n87;

scholarship on, 8–9, 161, 166, 184, 215; in

Weimar era, 24, 147

Trans Student Educational Resources, 212

“trash and smut law,” 74–75, 238n77

Tremblay, Sébastien, 5, 7, 165

Triángulo Rosa, 129

Tunten (“fairies” or “queens”), 90–91

Tuntenstreit (“Queens’ Quarrel”), 90

Uckermark, 170

Uni (periodical), 142, 247n21

United States: antihomosexual policies, 5,

60, 65; military, 191–192; policies toward

gay prisoners in US occupation zone,

58–62. See also American gay activists

United States Holocaust Memorial Council, 186–187 United States Holocaust Memorial Museum, 167, 185–190, 204–207, 215, 229n1, 234n104 University of Bielefeld, 100

University of Braunschweig, 102

286

INDEX

Unsere Kleine Zeitung (magazine), 141 Unter Uns (periodical), 93 Vaernet, Carl, 49 Vangardist (magazine), 210 Vergangenheitsbewältigung (coming to terms with Nazi past), 62–64, 105, 215. See also acknowledgment of Nazis’ gay victims; commemoration; restitution Vials, Christopher, 5, 125, 128 victimhood: gay victims, silencing and exclusion of, 53–70, 75–80, 143, 178, 192; “Germans as victims” narrative, 62–63. See also acknowledgment of Nazis’ gay victims; compensation; restitution “Victims of Fascism” (OdF), 53–56 visibility, 15–16, 27, 75, 88–92, 127–129, 158, 215. See also coming out; silencing of history Vogel, Hans-Jochen, 178 Volksgemeinschaft (people’s community), 10–11; gay men as political enemies of, 37; gender and sexual conformity in, 22, 26–29; lesbians as threat to, 39; Nazi laws and, 41–42. See also Nazi ideology Wackerfuss, Andrew, 165 Wahl, Angelika von, 5, 76 Walker, Harold C., 114 Walk in the Night (Reinhart), 146 war crimes trials, 62–63; at Nuremberg, 77, 125–126 Warsaw Ghetto, 119 Washington Blade (periodical), 141, 188 Weimar Republic, 23–25, 32–34, 42, 97, 138–140, 147, 178 Weizsäcker, Richard von, 174–175, 180, 192, 215 Werres, Johannes, 60, 74, 145, 248n39

Westdeutsche Allgemeine Zeitung (newspaper), 149 West German gay activists, 6–9; citizenship rights and (see citizenship); compensation debates and, 192–193; demonstrations, 92, 93, 97–98, 102–104; early homophile movement, 66, 73–75, 89; gay liberation movement (Schwulenbewegung), 11, 81, 83, 87–104; memorials to Nazis’ gay victims and, 176–185; pink triangle logo and, 13–14, 83, 91–95, 97–101, 115, 135; racial dynamics, 95–97; transnational networks, 111–115; Weimar era, 139–140. See also pink triangle memories West Germany. See Federal Republic of Germany Wherry, Kenneth, 58 Wiedergutmachung (“making good again”), 75–80, 193. See also compensation; restitution Wiesel, Elie, 186 Wilde, Harry, 140–141, 153 Wilke, Christiane, 5, 165 Wisconsin Light, “A Time to Die” series, 144–146 World War II. See Allied occupation; concentration camps; Nazi persecution of LGBTQ+ people Wowereit, Klaus, 198 Wuttke, Walter, 161 Zauner, Hans, 178 Zimmerman, Elizabeth, 30 Zinn, Alexander, 165, 171–172, 200 Zoe, Lucinda, 158