The Pink Triangle: The Nazi War Against Homosexuals [Hardcover]

Richard Plant (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: August 1987

This is the first comprehensive book in English on the fate of the homosexuals in Nazi Germany. The author, a German refugee, examines the climate and conditions that gave rise to a vicious campaign against Germany’s gays, as directed by Himmler and his SS--persecution that resulted in tens of thousands of arrests and thousands of deaths.

In this Nazi crusade, homosexual prisoners were confined to death camps where, forced to wear pink triangles, they constituted the lowest rung in the camp hierarchy. The horror of camp life is described through diaries, previously untranslated documents, and interviews with and letters from survivors, revealing how the anti-homosexual campaign was conducted, the crackpot homophobic fantasies that fueled it, the men who made it possible, and those who were its victims, this chilling book sheds light on a corner of twentieth-century history that has been hidden in the shadows much too long.

--This text refers to the Paperback edition.

Editorial Reviews

Review

“A powerful and painful account.”—Martin Gilbert, author of The Holocaust

“A valuable contribution . . . the lesson that The Pink Triangle elicits from the Holocaust is the realization that we are still haunted by the specters of the Third Reich.”—San Francisco Chronicle

"A strong book, not easy to put down . . . Mr. Plant writes convincingly, keeps clear of sentiment, and lays bare a particularly fearful corner of mid-twentieth century inhumanity."—The Economist

--This text refers to the Paperback edition.

About the Author

Richard Plant was born in Frankfurt and was a graduate of the University of Basel, where he earned his Ph.D. Since emigrating to the United States in 1938, he has contributed numerous articles to many publications, and teaches at the New School for Social Research in New York City.

--This text refers to the Paperback edition.

Product Details

• Hardcover
• Publisher: New Republic Books; 1St Edition edition (August 1987)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0030602793
• ISBN-13: 978-0030602795
• Average Customer Review: 3.5 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (11 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #9,287,886 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

19 of 23 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars A Complete Account, March 5, 1998

By 

[e-mail] (Glens Falls, NY) - See all my reviews

This review is from: The Pink Triangle: The Nazi War Against Homosexuals (Paperback)

It's obvious that Richard Plant did his research before writing this book, there's a severe lack of information on this particular topic floating around out there. As I did a report entitled "Homosexuals in the Holocaust: The Forgotten Victims of the Third Reich," I found this to be the most complete book on the obscure topic. It may make for dull Sunday afternoon reading, but for all my intents and purposes, it was excellently detailed and precise.

13 of 17 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Informative but a Little Dry, November 5, 2001

By 

Lauren Williams (Claremont, CA USA) - See all my reviews

This review is from: The Pink Triangle: The Nazi War Against Homosexuals (Hardcover)

Plant gives incredible detail into the lives of those in charge of the persecution of homosexuals by the Nazis in World War II. In addition to a behind the scenes look into Nazi operations, including biographies of SS Himmler and Roehm, Hitler's top officials, Plant puts it all in the context of what gay Berlin/Germany was like at the time and leading up to WWII. Overall, this book is quite informative and eye opening, but a little dry. I expected to see shocking photos and gut wrenching first hand accounts of tragedy, etc but simply found a historical account that would be helpful as a textbook. I would recommend this for anyone interested in the subject matter, but not necessarily as free reading.

15 of 22 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars A chapter of the Holocaust not to be ignored, March 12, 2003

By A Customer

This review is from: The Pink Triangle: The Nazi War Against Homosexuals (Paperback)

The sheer number of victims of Hitler's Nazi Holocaust during the Third Reich is so numbing that piling on more numbers may not even register. But the numbers are higher than the 6 million usually given and almost always in reference to the Jewish victims. Some estimates are up to double that number when other categories of what Hitler decried as "degenerates" are added, and this book calls attention to one such group, either forgotten or ignored by history, but present nonetheless. "Men With the Pink Triangle ..." chronicles one survivor's eyewitness account of a then-young Viennese student remanded to an East German concentration camp and branded with a pink triangle, the sign of its bearers as homosexuals. Writer Heinz Heger miraculously survived six years (1939-'45) of concentration camp horrors: the ever-present smell of death, the sound of war, the filth, and the inhumanity from which more died than survived. Herger's first-hand account is chilling but embarrassing because it wasn't until the 1970's, when gay liberation gained a foothold in social rights movements, that Nazi persecution of gay people was even acknowledged. That vital component in probably the darkest chapter in human history coincidentally now, in 2003, is being threatened by a state legislator in Minnesota. Republican Arlon Lidner claims that no such persecution of gays in Nazi Europe ever occurred and is somehow tying that argument to his proposal to repeal his state's human rights amendment that protects gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgendered persons from discrimination. Lidner's proposing further legislation to remove sexual orientation as a protected class in the state of Minnesota's hate crimes laws. How he justifies his homophobic crusade based on his argument that gays weren't gassed by their Nazi captors is unclear. But this publication may well be more relevant now than ever because a crucial part of history may be fully discarded, and by ignoring it risks it happening again. More broadly, though, Heger's memories are less about his persecution because of his sexual orientation and more a shattering testament to the horror that was the Holocaust and to the evil that man can do. With the generation of Holocaust survivors steadily being silenced to death, the cries from the written accounts like Heger's and others should not and cannot cannot be denied.