Customer Reviews

The Pink Triangle: The Nazi War Against Homosexuals

5 star:		(2)
4 star:		(6)
3 star:		(2)
2 star:		(1)
1 star:		(1)

 

 

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.

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.

Unlike so many gay books which are just superficial or stupid, this one is real history and well written. This is harrowing reading. Plant has done us all a great service in bringing this complete account to life. Details the Nazi campaign against gay people. Those who forget history are doomed to repeat it. Don't miss it!

This is a really good look at a mostly ignored piece of Holocaust history. It was well written. It is an overview and dose not go too deep into specific tortures. The topic is disturbing but not as disturbing as I thought it might be. Excellent book.

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.

Under the Nazi regime, homosexual men were confined to death camps where they were forced to wear pink triangles as a symbol of their crime. They were at the bottom of the camp hierarchy, brutalized and abused past the point of human endurance. In this book, the horror of life in the Nazi's concentration camps is revealed through diaries, interviews with, and letters from survivors.

Every school child learns that the Nazis tried to exterminate the Jews. Few are told of the other segments of "undesirables" who were forced into the same fate. The Roma (Gypsies), political prisoners, and homosexual men were among those also targeted for extinction.

So many young gay people today don't realize the important significance of the pink triangle ~ they think it just another symbol of pride, and don't realize that it has been reclaimed from a horrific history in which many men died for their sexuality. This book helps the common reader understand why Hitler began his hateful anti-homosexual campaign.

Through the survivor's stories, it paints a vivid portrait not only of the despicable depths of hatred to which men can sink, but it also shows us the undefeatable spirit of the human race to withstand and move on from such adversity. I cannot recommend this book enough ~ it is only through realizing what we have been through that we learn what we will be able to overcome.

Lucky for everyone, Plant fled Frankfurt in 1933, when Hitler came to power. Many of his family members and friends weren't quite so lucky.
This book gives the background in which gay men were persecuted in Nazi Germany. Ironically, very few gay women were targeted, but life for a gay man was horrific.
The brutality and viciousness with which these men were treated was painful to read and I'm sure painful to write about.
Until recently, I've only seen the treatment of gay men as a footnote in dozens of other books I've read about the holocaust. It's too easy for whoever is writing to focus on one segment of this nightmare.
I would love to see a book written that gives homage to all the victims.

Plant shows us that not only were homosexuals targeted during the Nazi regime, he shows us how implied homosxuality was used as a weapon by Hitler, Himmler and others to 'do away' with those who did not adhere to the ideals of the Third Reich. He aslo reminds us that since homosexuality has been considered a crime, or in the least a sickness, for hundreds of years, many gay men who did survive the camps never lived to tell their stories out of fear of exposure. Those who did find a voice from the 1970's on spoke timidly about what had happened to them - many not wanting to dig up old painful memories. The author, however, does find enough information through records and interviews to give us a look - a sad one - on how these men were treated.

Most definately a must read. Don't forget Heinz Herger's "The Men With The Pink Triangle." One of the few books written by a gay camp survivor.

Plant's writing is, first and foremost, dry and ill-organized. He dances around subjects at random without making any points, and instead has just collected a hodge podge of information concerning Nazi persecution of homosexuals. Secondly, his research is typically not correct, and colored with an all too present bias. Plant's only qualification for having written such a book is that he was a homosexual man living in the Germany at the start of the Third Reich.

While there is always merit in reading any source, I would not recommend this book to scholars with many other sources at their disposal, or those with extensive knowledge on the Third Reich. The book's facts are nothing new, and are often better phrased and organized in other works.

I thought this book was good, however it lacked focus. It's difficult to be critical of a book in a field of study with so little additional research. It's one of a handful of other texts on the issue of gay persecution during the holocaust.

Plant's personal relation to the gay persecution certainly makes thebook emotional at times (and often hard to stomach). However, as I say, the book lacked focus. It discussed variosu circumstances and people surrounding the holocaust, but failed to make an attempt at why -- why were homosexuals, singledout along with the jews, communists, gypsies, ect...

Gunter Grau's "Hidden Holocaust" which is a collection of primary documents does take a stab at this question. SInce its not a narrative like Plant's book its tougher to sit and read, however, it was much more concise and structed.