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Chapter Six
Homosexuality in the Concentration Camps
We have now arrived atone of the most sensitive topics in our
discussion of homosexuality in Nazi Germany. Revisionists have
attempted to define homosexuals as a class of people who were
"targeted for extermination" by the Nazis. One homosexual group
went so far as to stage a high-profile "pilgrimage" to the Yad
Vashem Holocaust Memorial in Jerusalem in May of 1994. They
were met by a delegation of Jewish Holocaust survivors who were
so overcome with outrage that some of them had to be restrained
from physically assaulting the contingent of (mostly American)
political activists. One man cried "My grandfather was killed for
refusing to have sexual relations with the camp commandant. You
are desecrating this place (The Jerusalem Post, May 30, 1994).
Yet, as we have noted, many homosexuals did in fact die in
Nazi concentration camps. We do not diminish the tragedy of any
life lost under the Nazi reign of terror; however, we must reject
the implication that homosexuals as a class should be given moral
equivalency to the Jewish people and other victims of genocide.
There are five reasons why we must reject this claim of the revi-
sionists.
{See Comment 124-1}
First, regardless of Himmler's anti-homosexual rhetoric, ho-
mosexuals as a class were never targeted for extermination, as
their continued role in the Third Reich demonstrates. Second,
***{Below is Page: 124 }***
those homosexuals who died did so as the result of mistreatment
and disease in slave-labor camps -- not in the gas chambers. Third,
though we cannot condone the form of punishment meted out by
the Nazis, homosexuality was a legitimate crime of long-standing
for which individuals were being jailed both before and after the
Nazi Regime. This is in contrast to the internment of Jewish people,
whose ethnicity is morally (and in pre-Nazi Germany, legally) neu-
tral. Fourth, the actual number of homosexuals in the camps was
a tiny fraction of both the estimated number of homosexuals in
Germany and the estimate of the camp population. The camp
homosexual population, estimated at 5,000-15,000 by Joan
Ringelheim of the US Holocaust museum (Rose:40), contained
an undetermined percentage of non-homosexuals falsely labeled
as homosexuals (see section titled "Anti-homosexual Policies"
above). Homosexuals who died were "a small fraction of less
than 1 percent" of homosexuals in Nazi occupied Europe (S.
Katz: 146), compared to more than 85 percent of European Jewry.
Fifth and last, many of the guards and administrators responsible
for the infamous concentration camp atrocities were homosexu-
als themselves, which negates the idea that homosexuals in gen-
eral were being persecuted and interned.
*** {start comment 124-1}
Homosexuality had never been punishable by
internment in concentration camps in pre-Nazi
Germany. Anyone punished served a sentence in a
normal prison and was then released. Preventive
detention in concentration camps was an innovation
of the Nazis. Jews had at first been kept in camps
for similar reasons. There was no extermination of
Jews before the war, when their population in
Germany was small, and only limited numbers of
them were kept in camps. In contrast, homosexuals
who were caught increasingly faced the threat of
preventive detention. That so few homosexuals were
ever interned is due to the fact that so few were
ever caught.
The extermination of Jews and Gypsies came
only after Hitler's military success had brought
under his control millions of them. Originally the
extermination was to clear conquered areas of
potential enemies and to open up land for
resettlement by Germans. There was no such
extensive persecution and annihilation of
homosexuals only because they could not be found.
Had three million homosexuals suddenly fallen into
Nazi hands as a group, things would surely have
been quite different.
The number of homosexuals found in camps as
guards and administrators was minuscule. In
Treblinka, for example, only one has been clearly
identified, but then only about 30 Germans in
total were involved with that camp (along with a
couple hundred Ukrainian guards). See Steiner's
book, Treblinka, quoted by the Pink Swastika
author, for information. The homosexual commandant
at Treblinka was quickly replaced by a
heterosexual, who immediately set to work to
upgrade and perfect the efficiency of the killing
operation.
The great architects of the holocaust, Adolf
Eichmann and Heinrich Himmler, and the notorious
medical experimenter Dr. Josef Mengele were all
undisputedly heterosexual. Even Heydrich has never
convincingly been connected with any homosexual
activity, though his womanizing and his life with
his wife and children are will known.
*** {end comment 124-1}
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The Nazi system of concentration camps began with Dachau
in 1933, but by the fall of the Third Reich the number of sites
which had held prisoners in German occupied territory surpassed
10,000 (Parshall:57). It is not generally known that only six of
these camps were the notorious "death camps." In his introduc-
tion to Jean-Francios {sic} Steiner's Treblinka, Terrence des Pres ad-
dresses this distinction:
The first Nazi camps, which were set up soon af-
ter Hitler came to power in 1933, were designed
as places of detention and as training grounds for
the SS. Dachau and Buchenwald were among the
most notorious, and although we cannot forget that
thousands of people perished in these places, we
should keep in mind that camps of this kind were
***{Below is Page: 125 }***
not intended or equipped to be instruments of
genocide...however, as the Nazi policy of exter-
mination took shape with the Jews as primary tar-
get, the major "killing centers," as they came to be
called, began to operate...The great killing centers
were six: Auschwitz-Birkenau, Sobidor {sic}, Chelmno,
Belzec, Maidenek {sic}, and Treblinka (Steiner:x-xi).
We make this point simply to show that the internment of
homosexuals in the concentration camps was not equivalent to
that of Jews and other racial groups who were, under Nazi policy,
targeted for extermination. As terrible as life could be in the work
camps, it offered better chances than being herded into gas cham-
bers or shot in front of mass graves.
An additional point that deserves mention here is that the uni-
form pattern of brutality for which the camps are known was es-
tablished as a deliberate and calculated policy by the SA under
Ernst Roehm in 1933. Heiden writes that "[t]he S.A. had
learned...that the will of an imprisoned mass must be broken by
the most loathsome cruelty" (Heiden:565). He later adds that
"[t]rightening reports also trickled through from the concentra-
tion camps, and the public began to realize that the Fuhrer's picked
troops had organized artificial hells in Dachau...Rohm admitted
publicly that these things seemed unbearable to many people, but
said he saw no reason for stopping them" (ibid.:732f.). Though
Roehm was soon killed, his system of mass torture and degrada-
tion endured.
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The Guards and Kapos
There is one aspect of life in the concentration camps that is
seldom noted by historians, yet is profoundly significant in this
discussion. That aspect is the unique status of homosexuals in the
camps. For while any prisoner could be chosen as a Kapo (a slave
overseer), none other of the interned groups except homosexuals
had counterparts among the Nazi guards and administrators (for
example, there were no Jewish guards or administrators).
Examples of the homosexuality of the concentration camp
guards can be found in many of the personal accounts of Holo-
{See Comment 126-1}
caust survivors. Elie Wiesel, sent to the Buna factory camp in the
Auschwitz complex, for example, acknowledges this in his book
Night:
The head of our tent was a German. An assassin's
face, fleshy lips, hands like wolf's paws. He was
so fat he could hardly move. Like the leader of
the camp he loved children. (Actually this was not
a disinterested affection: there was a considerable
traffic in young children among homosexuals here,
I learned later) (Wiesel:59).
In Treblinka, the narrative account of the Treblinka uprising,
Steiner records the story of another Nazi administrator, taken from
interviews with survivors:
Max Bielas had a harem of little Jewish boys. He
liked them young, no older than seventeen. He
had a kind of parody of the shepherds of Arcadia,
their role was to take care of the camp flock of
geese. They were dressed like little princes...Bielas
had a little barracks built for them that looked like
a doll's house...Bielas sought in Treblinka only the
satisfaction of his homosexual instincts
(Steiner: 117f).
*** {start comment 126-1}
Wiesel never really tells what he "learned
later," unless he means an incident he relates
about an act of sabotage. He says, "The Oberkapo
of the fifty-second cable unit was a Dutchman, a
giant, well over six feet….he had a young boy
under him, a pipel, as they were called - a child
with a refined and beautiful face, unheard of in
this camp. One day, the electric power station at
Buna was blown up….The Oberkapo was arrested
immediately. He was tortured for a period of
weeks, but in vain. He would not give a single
name. He was transferred to Auschwitz. We never
heard of him again. But his little servant had
been left behind in the camp in prison. Also put
to torture, he too would not speak. Then the SS
sentenced him to death, with two other prisoners
who had been discovered with arms….[At the
execution…] the third rope was still moving, being
so light, the child was still alive… For more than
half an hour he stayed there, struggling between
life and death, dying in slow agony under our
eyes." Whether this is what Wiesel meant, or
whether something else, the Bantam edition of his
book has nothing else about homosexuality or
possible homosexuality in it.
Steiner relates this information in
conjunction with the death of Max Bielas, who was
stabbed by a prisoner. In the ensuing
investigation Kurt Franz exposed Bielas's "harem"
of Jewish boys as stated above. He added that "The
boys were very happy. They called him Max and
seemed very fond of him. Whenever he came to see
them they rushed to meet him with cries of joy."
Steiner doesn't actually say that Bielas had
sexual relations with the boys. Franz also offered
some ideas on how to improve the operation of the
death camp, and as a result received a promotion
and complete authority to run the camp. Steiner
says "When he returned to camp, before lying down
for a few hours, Kurt Franz had his epaulettes
sewn on and Max Bielas' little boys executed. The
S.S. man who was assigned this task came back
sick. His name was Menda. Until that day he had
been a model executioner." The boys certainly
didn't fare very well under the heterosexual
Franz, but then the Pink Swastika author no doubt
thinks they were better off dead.
The heterosexual Franz paid attention to the
heterosexual inclinations of the camp inmates.
Steiner relates that just as Bielas had saved some
boys, so Franz began to save women with the idea
of improving the efficiency of the prisoners who
carried out the executions and did the other dirty
work around the camp. He kept twenty women in the
two sections of Treblinka. Steiner says "Their
arrival transformed the camp. Fights broke out
around these frightened women....he decreed that
deserving kapos and Hofjueden would be allowed to
marry these women." Later on mass orgies were
organized and Steiner says of the women "soon
their quarters lacked only a red light over the
door." A possible homosexual saved some boys from
the gas chamber, while the heterosexuals opened a
whorehouse at the same time they were killing
hundreds of thousands of people.
The heterosexual Franz's most memorable work,
however, was increasing the efficiency of the
killing process so that more Jews could be
handled. For example, he realized that people
would inhale more of the gas and die more quickly
if they were out of breath when they entered the
chamber. Accordingly they were now forced to run
from the undressing room to the gas chamber.
*** {end comment 126-1}
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***{Below is Page: 127 }***
Walter Poller, a German political prisoner who was interned
in the Buchenwald concentration camp, also noted the homosexu-
ality of certain guards. In Medical Block Buchenwald (1960)
Poller describes the camp practice of mass beatings, and reports
on the perverse pleasure these guards derived from the torment
of the prisoners:
If the camp doctor happened to pass by after a
mass whipping, and knew that a certain type of
homosexual Scharfuhrer [platoon leader] and SS
officer stood at a certain gate, he arranged a little
special entertainment for them, which he called a
medical examination (Poller: 103).
Poller leaves the details of these "medical examinations" to
our imagination. But this brief glimpse into the ranks of the SS
guards, however, reveals much about the camps. Poller's distinc-
tion between "types" of homosexual SS officers, for example,
implies that there were more than a few such guards. Further-
more, their homosexuality was a matter of public knowledge. Both
of these suppositions are supported in another passage which tells
of the retaliation against the Jewish prisoners following the at-
tempted assassination of Hitler in July, 1944:
Two Scharfuhrer came along the empty camp roads
at about nine o'clock. One of them was...an
Oberscharfubrer [commander of platoon leaders]
known to the prisoners by the nick-name of
"Anna," because of his undisguised homosexual-
ity. They entered one of the Jewish barracks, and
there indiscriminately chose five Jews and brought
them outside. From a second barracks they
brought out eight more. From a third they selected
another seven...the twenty Jews were...[marched]
off under Anna's orders...Some time later we heard
a burst of firing from the direction of the stone
***{Below is Page: 128 }***
quarry. It was now clear that the earthly existence
of our...Jewish comrades had ended (ibid,: 136f).
{See Comment 128-1}
Plant, a revisionist himself, also admits that "a few SS guards
were homosexual" and that they "made some younger inmates,
usually Poles or Russians, their dolly boys' (Pielpel)" (Plant: 166).
These homosexual antics were not carried out in secret. Plant
writes that such guards would "occasionally compete with Kapos
for these teenagers. They even drew lots to determine who should
go to whom" (ibid.:166). Primo Levi, in Survival in Auschwitz
notes that "young attractive homosexuals" had a much higher
survival rate than average prisoners (Levi:81). Though they con-
stituted one of the smallest numerical minorities in the camps
(Plant: 153), homosexuals apparently were disproportionately ap-
pointed as Kapos. Medical Doctor Edmund Bergler writes "[i]t
is.. well known that the capos in Hitler's concentration and exter-
mination camps were only too frequently recruited from the ranks
of homosexual criminals...I had firsthand information on this point
from a patient who had spent six years in the infamous camp at
Dachau (Bergler:279). Jan D. (now an American citizen whose
identity we wish to protect), prisoner #3514 in Auschwitz and
Gross Rosen from 1940-1945 said, "The most cruelty inflicted on
the Concentration Camps prisoners was done by they 'Capos' (work
detail supervisors), mostly German criminals and homosexuals"
(Private letter).
*** {start comment 128-1}
The misquotation from Plant is a classic
example of deliberate distortion by selective
quotation.
The Pink Swastika author quotes Plant thus:
Plant, a revisionist himself, also
admits that "a few SS guards were homosexual" and
that they
"made some younger inmates, usually
Poles or Russians, their 'dolly boys'
(Pielpel)"(Plant: 166)
What Plant actually say is:
First, a few SS guards were homosexual.
Although they risked everything, they
made some younger inmates, usually Poles
or Russians, their "dolly boys" (Pielpel).
The important difference is Plant's
acknowledgment that such behavior was not
condoned, and that such guards "risked everything"
(including death). The Pink Swastika author had to
hide that, for it would contradict the lie he is
trying to peddle, which is that the Nazis
condemned homosexuality only in public, while
indulging in it themselves in private because many
of them were homosexuals.
The fact that a man locked up and deprived of
women chooses younger men for sex partners doesn't
make him a homosexual. This is quite a common
reaction among heterosexuals, and is endemic in
prison systems. Their heterosexuality, their basic
desire for women, is what drives them to play the
active role and to choose for their victims
prisoners who are young and closest in appearance
to the women they actually desire.
Even outside prisons, in other societies and
in other ages in our own society, there was not
the great stigma attached to same-sex relations
that we have seen during 1500 plus years of rabid
fundamentalist Judeo-Christian homophobia.
Scientifically speaking, it's the man who's
incapable under any circumstances of having sex
with another male who is abnormal and unnatural.
Psychological conditioning imposed by a homophobic
society has changed the course of his nature.
It's simply not valid to conclude that
"capos" were homosexuals because they found male
sex objects.
In the death camps, the capos were Jews, as
were all other workers, and there were no
homosexuals that we know of. For this, see
Steiner's Treblinka, quoted by the Pink Swastika
author.
*** {end comment 128-1}
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{See Comment 128-2}
These testimonies are supported by Raul Hillberg {sic}, author of
The Destruction of the European Jews and former member of the
(U.S.) President's Commission on the Holocaust. Rector cites a
December 10, 1979 Village Voice article in which Hillberg {sic} said
"that homosexuals were highly valued prisoners, and that many
kapos -- inmates who administered the barracks and dispensed
instant discipline (beatings and killings were common) were gay"
(Rector: 139). Because of this Hillberg {sic} believes that any inclusion
of homosexuals in any memorialization of Holocaust victims
"would be a travesty" (Hillberg {sic} in Rector: 139).
*** {start comment 128-2}
First it should be noted that the "scholar"
who wrote The Pink Swastika can't even spell Raul
Hilberg's name correctly.
The above passage is a deliberate distortion
of Rector's book and of Hilberg's position. The
Pink Swastika author hides the fact that Rector
says in the very same passage that Hilberg
submitted a letter of clarification after the
cited article. Rector quotes from Hilberg's
letter: "The unqualified assertion that
homosexuals were highly valued prisoners is not an
accurate recapitulation of my thinking.
Concentration camp inmates were not highly valued
by definition. It may be said, however, that even
misery is relative. Apart from the question of the
position of homosexuals in the hierarchy of the
camp population, and without regard to such
subsidiary points as homosexuals in work gangs and
homosexuals among 'prominents,' it may be safely
be concluded that homosexuals as a group were
better off than the Jews." Rector quotes Hilberg
elaborating on the "travesty" comment: "I have no
precise statistics of practicing homosexuals at
the time of the Nazi regime, but it is evident to
me that only a relatively small percentage of them
could have been arrested, let alone mistreated to
death. In no sense may it be claimed, therefore,
that they were being 'exterminated,' and any
attempt to consider them, along with the Jews, as
victims of the Holocaust is, I repeat, a
travesty."
Hilberg denies that homosexuals were "highly
valued prisoners." He says they were only
relatively better off than Jews. He directly
contradicts the Pink Swastika author on the reason
he doesn't consider homosexuals victims of the
Holocaust: not because of what they allegedly did
in the camps, but because he believes there was no
attempt to exterminate homosexuals as a group.
The Pink Swastika author covered up Hilberg's
letter explaining his Village Voice comments in
order to deceive the reader on Hilberg's position,
and actually put false words in Hilberg's mouth.
*** {end comment 128-2}
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{See Comment 129-1}
There seems to have been a great dichotomy between the
***{Below is Page: 129 }***
experiences of homosexuals in the camps. While on the one hand,
Lautmann reports that 44% of homosexuals received desk jobs
(Lautmann in Plant: 168), Plant claims that homosexuals were
treated more harshly than the members of other groups, citing
Kogon's Dachau memoir, The Theory and Practice of Hell. To
some extent this may simply reflect the differences between camps
and the philosophies of their administrators. But the enduring
"Butch/Femme" conflict clearly had a substantial bearing on the
treatment of homosexuals. Plant writes of one survivor who re-
ported that "the guards lashed out with special fury against those
who showed 'effeminate traits'" (Plant: 172). And Rector records
an interview with a former Pink Triangle named Wolf (a pseud-
onym) in which the issue of effeminacy was raised. "The ones
who were soft, shall I say, were the ones who suffered terribly,"
said Wolf. Rudolf Hoess, the infamous commandant of Auschwitz,
who may himself have been a "Butch" homosexual, defined "genu-
ine homosexuals... [by their] soft and girlish affectations and fas-
tidiousness, their sickly sweet manner of speech, and their alto-
gether too affectionate deportment toward their fellows" (Hoess
in Rector: 137f.). These "genuine homosexuals" were considered
incorrigible and held in special barracks, while many non-effemi-
nate homosexuals were released (ibid.: 137).
*** {start comment 129-1}
What was at work in the camps was just plain
heterosexual homophobia. The fictitious
"Butch/Femme" conflict is being confused with the
actions of heterosexual men who despised
effeminate males (even if they didn't know whether
they were heterosexual or homosexual) and felt
they could dehumanize them further by using them
as sex objects, conveniently obtaining sexual
release for themselves in the process. We see this
heterosexual hatred of effeminate mannerisms in
males today, all around us.
Alleged favoritism in jobs can probably be
explained simply by the skills the prisoners
brought to camp with them. The brawny construction
worker is less likely to be suited to an office
job than is an effeminate man who worked in an
office in civilian life.
There's no evidence to suggest that Hoess was
in any way homosexual. That's a fantasy of the
Pink Swastika author, who surely would have
presented evidence if he had found any --
apparently even his favorite "historian" Samuel
Igra didn't have any rumors about Hoess. Historian
Robert Wistrich, in "Who's Who in Nazi Germany,"
says that Hoess was, "to all appearances a kindly,
unselfish, introverted family man and animal-
lover," and that "he had lived with his wife and
five children" at Auschwitz.
*** {end comment 129-1}
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{See Comment 130-1}
Wolf's testimony about the homosexual behavior of the SS
guards also reveals the sadistic characteristic of the "Butches."
"In the cell next to mine was a young male prostitute from Steglitz
who the SS forced into [sexual acts]" (Rector: 156). he also de-
scribed a game the SS played each evening. "There were holes in
the walls and they would reach through the holes and play with
the genitals of the men sleeping close to the holes. Then they
would say that they had caught them jacking off, and they would
beat them" (ibid.:l56). During his imprisonment Wolf was also
forced to witness an execution of six political escapees who had
been recaptured by the guards. "They were stripped naked, tied
to the table spread-eagle face up, and beaten to death with clubs,
one by one," he reported. "You could see that the SS execution-
ers became sexually stimulated while beating the screaming
***{Below is Page: 130 }***
prisoners to death" (ibid. :157).
*** {start comment 130-1}
"Wolf" is not testifying about the
"homosexual behavior" of the SS guards. That is a
deliberate lie on the part of the Pink Swastika
author. It is a lie because in that very place,
Wolf is asked "Were there any gay SS guards?" by
his interviewer, to which he responds "No, they
were more-or-less straight, I think. They were all
rotten people, except for one SS leader." An
experienced homosexual such as Wolf is certainly
more able to pick out genuine homosexual behavior
than a deliberate liar such as the Pink Swastika
author has shown himself to be over and over
again.
Another salient fact covered up by the Pink
Swastika author is that during the events related
above Wolf was in Lichtenburg Prison, where he
says the prisoners were all homosexual except for
some political ones. Wolf relates that they were
routinely subjected to special brutality, but the
Pink Swastika author seems to consider that
irrelevant.
Nobody denies that the SS had more than its
share of sadists, but that has nothing to do with
homosexuality. The anecdote regarding the
political prisoners shows that the motive was
sadism, not homosexuality. The most famous sadist
of all time, the Marquis de Sade, was a
heterosexual. In the mid-1990s a famous Canadian
murder trial involved a man and wife who engaged
in sadistic murders of young women. The typical
adult bookstore of the late twentieth century
stocks large amounts of heterosexual sadistic
pornography.
*** {end comment 130-1}
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{See Comment 130-2}
This extreme savagery exhibited by the Butch homosexuals
of the camps was not rare, but some accounts of brutality are
more gruesome than others. At Auschwitz, for example, Kapo
Ludwig Tiene became the most prolific mass murderer of all time
by strangling, crushing and gnawing to death as many as 100 boys
and young men a day while he raped them (ibid.:143). It is not
clear if Auschwitz's Commandant Hoess was homosexual, though
we know that he had at one time been a close friend of Edmund
Heines (Snyder:301), the procurer of boys for Roehm's pederastic
orgies.
*** {start comment 130-2}
Of course, the case has not been made that
any homosexuals were involved in the "extreme
savagery." Only those who want to believe and to
be led in their belief by the Pink Swastika
author's lack of proof will think that brutality
was a homosexual activity. Homosexuals were
overwhelmingly the victims of homophobic
heterosexual sadists. That is the simple fact
supported by the evidence presented by the cited
authors. The entire "Butch/Femme" fantasy has been
invented precisely to try to provide a rationale
for denying the truth of the sadist's
heterosexuality.
Rector says that Tienes was a notorious sex
murderer, who was deliberately and "gleefully"
installed in the highest position of the prisoner
hierarchy at Auschwitz. The SS sadists were
greatly entertained by his gory deeds in the camp.
Plant continues after that anecdote with the
following:
"That was but one example of SS humor. Jews,
to cite another example, were regularly appointed
as kapos because the SS was bemused by the sight
of a Jew beating other Jews with a club, whip, or
truncheon. The beatings were frequently fatal.
This occurred daily, month in and month out, year
after year in all the KZs {Concentration camps}
except Theresienstadt."
Would the Pink Swastika author, himself
Jewish, conclude the same things about "sadistic
Jews" that he tries to make the reader believe
about "sadistic homosexuals"?
*** {end comment 130-2}
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{See Comment 130-3}
Perhaps the most grotesque story of all, however, is told by
Rector in his chapter on the camps, grotesque not because it is
bloodier, but because it reveals how widespread and acceptable
this level of perversion had become among the Nazi elite. He
writes,
As for the SS, their behavior was typical among
those who engaged in sexual bestiality An ex-
ample is a film, in color with a sound track, that
was secretly made for the pornographic enjoyment
of a select coterie of Nazis showing a wild drunken
orgy of beautiful boys and handsome young men
being whipped, raped and murdered by the SS
(Rector: 144). (Note: Rector adds that this film is
still today "very discreetly and very privately shown
to only an inner circle of certain homosexuals in
Europe").
*** {start comment 130-3}
If true, this is good evidence of sadism, but
not of homosexuality. Homosexuals make love to
other men, they don't beat, rape, and murder them.
*** {end comment 130-3}
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{See Comment 131-1}
No study of homosexuality in the Nazi concentration camps
would be complete without mentioning a book called The Men
with the Pink Triangle. In recent years this book has become a
standard text for revisionists because it is purportedly the only
autobiography written by a former pink triangle prisoner. The
book itself, however, written by Heinz Heger, cannot be consid-
ered reliable. It is presented as an autobiography, yet translator
***{Below is Page: 131 }***
David Fernbach admits in his introduction that Heger's account is
not his own but is the story of "an anonymous victim of the Nazis,
an Austrian" (Heger:9). And though it contains quite a number
of anecdotes about homosexuality among the SS guards which
would otherwise be useful in this discussion, these stories have a
distinct quality of sexual fantasy to them. We are asked to believe
that nearly every male authority figure whom "Heger" encounters
requires him to perform oral sex, for example. Other ostensibly
true-life histories of camp survivors are sober chronicles of en-
slavement and degradation, but "Heger's" account is almost whim-
sical in places and includes numerous implausible scenes, such as
one in which "Heger's" Kapo lover countermands an order to
punish "Heger" which comes from the camp commandant him-
self. For this reason we will not credit the many examples of
homosexual sadism reported in this work.
*** {start comment 131-1}
There is no indication in the copy of the
book seen that it claims to be Heger's
autobiography. The fact that the translator notes
that it is not Heger's own story belies that
charge by the Pink Swastika author. If Heger
claimed the work as his autobiography, how would
the translator know that it was actually the
experience of an anonymous camp inmate?
Heger doesn't say that his protagonist is
forced into oral sex by "nearly every male
authority figure" he encounters. Quite the
contrary, he's fortunate enough to be protected by
criminal capos in return for satisfying their
sexual needs. (In much the same way some Jews
prolonged and eased their lives in the death camps
by doing the dirty work. They aren't to be blamed
for what they did, and neither is Heger's
protagonist.) Heger does relate an incident in
which his protagonist was forced to perform oral
sex, but that was by two fellow prisoners on a
transport train who were being sent up for murder.
And they beat him to force him to do it. The Pink
Swastika author has a peculiarly warped idea of
morality if he considers murderers to be "male
authority figures."
The Pink Swastika author is a rabidly
homophobic Jew living in Jerusalem. That's
mentioned because it probably explains his
venomous fury at Heger's book. Heger's protagonist
relates that Jews and homosexuals were grouped
together and treated equally badly in the camps
where he was. For example, on page 50, he relates
of stone quarry at the Flossenbuerg camp, "The
work of quarrying, dynamiting, hewing and dressing
was extremely arduous, and only Jews and
homosexuals were assigned to it. The quarry
claimed very many victims, with the SS and Capos
often deliberately contributing to the large
number of accidents." It must rankle the Pink
Swastika author in the extreme to be classified
with people he hates so passionately.
It's too bad the Pink Swastika author is
suddenly so concerned about the credibility of
sources that he merely tantalizes his readers with
the idea of salacious anecdotes. Needless to say,
his crying is all crocodile tears. Elsewhere he
accepts the wildest rumors, such as those of
Samuel Igra, when they support his case, but
becomes very scrupulous with anything that might
contradict him. Of course this charade of
denouncing "false" scholarship is excellent for
enhancing his own reputation for "reliability."
Despite the obvious absurdity of the Pink
Swastika author's game-playing, his allegation of
"homosexual sadism" can't be allowed to stand.
Randomly opening Heger's book presents on page 83
an account of SS torture of a homosexual prisoner:
"He's a bum-fucker, isn't he, let him have what he
wants", growled one of the SS men, taking up a
broom that stood in the corner and shoving the
handle deep into the prisoner's anus."
There's nothing "homosexual" about such
sadism. The "homosexuality" is totally within the
mind of the Pink Swastika author. And that is a
very warped mind, for from other comments above it
appears that he does not consider forced oral sex
a form of degradation or enslavement.
*** {end comment 131-1}
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{See Comment 131-2}
Before we leave the subject of guards and Kapos, we can find
one of the few mentions of lesbians in Nazi history connected
with the prison system. In Paris Under the Occupation, Histori-
ans Perrault and Azema describe the activities of the French Ge-
stapo. They identify "Sonia Boukassi, a drug addict, and Violette
Morris, onetime French weight-lifting champion, both lesbians,
[as] the chief women's interrogators" in the notorious torture
chambers of La Carlingue (Perrault and Azema:38).
*** {start comment 131-2}
Perrault doesn't specifically accuse the lesbians of
torture, whereas the others he mentions in his list are
accused of direct torture. Since he was careful to identify
the two lesbians but doesn't identify anyone else as
homosexual, may we dare to presume that all the others, the
real torturers, were heterosexual?
*** {end comment 131-2}
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{See Comment 131-3}
The Prisoners
Homosexual prisoners did not integrate well into the prison
populations, writes Eugen Kogan {sic}. The prisoners ostracized "those
whom the SS marked with the pink triangle" (Kogan:44) (sic). Kogan (sic)
attributes this dislike to the fact that the homosexual population
included "criminals, and especially blackmailers...Hostility toward
them may also have been partly rooted in the fact that homosexu-
ality was at one time widespread in Prussian military circles, as
well as the SA and the SS" (ibid:44). Kogan {sic} implies that the
prisoners associated homosexuality with their tormentors and thus
*** {start comment 131-3}
It should first be pointed out that the
author's name is "Kogon," not "Kogan."
Kogon's comments are made in a different
order from that presented by the Pink Swastika
author. He mentions ostracism by other prisoners
last, not first. When he begins talking about
homosexuals in the camps, within five sentences he
says "Hostility toward them may have been partly
rooted in the fact that homosexuality was at one
time widespread in Prussian military circles, as
well as among the SA and the SS, and was to be
mercilessly outlawed and erased." The implication
is that he is talking about the official position
against homosexuals, not about the attitudes of
other inmates. It will be noted that the critical
wording has been left out by the Pink Swastika
author, who tries in his book to deny that the
Nazis wanted to eliminate homosexuals.
In addition to mentioning that homosexuality
was to be "mercilessly outlawed and erased" in
text suppressed by the Pink Swastika author, Kogon
says with reference to the attitudes of the other
prisoners, "Homosexual practices were actually
very widespread in the camps. The prisoners,
however, ostracized only those whom the SS marked
with the pink triangle." In no way does Kogon
imply that the other prisoners "saw the pink
triangles as objects of fear and hatred" as the
Pink Swastika author asserts. Quite the contrary.
They were simply afraid of guilt by association.
They ignored, and perhaps themselves participated
in clandestine homosexual activity, but were
careful to make a public show of condemning those
publicly marked by it in order to please their
captors and ward of accusations against
themselves.
*** {end comment 131-3}
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***{Below is Page: 132 }***
{See Comment 132-1, -- text is below comment }
*** {start comment 132-1}
The Plant quote below is out of context. But
then Plant himself is guilty of some inadvertent
distortion in leaving the impression that a guard
who masturbates while torturing an inmate is
homosexual. Likewise it is just an assumption that
a guard who has sex with an effeminate young male
is homosexual rather than a heterosexual taking
advantage of the only sexual outlet he can find in
a place where "race-mixing" -- sexual relations
with local Slavic women -- was also a terrible
crime punishable either by death or by being sent
to a concentration camp. Here is Plant's text at
this point, which should be contrasted with what
the Pink Swastika author presents below:
"There were additional factors complicating
the lives of gay prisoners. First, a few SS guards
were homosexual. Although they risked everything,
they made some younger inmates, usually Poles or
Russians, their 'dolly boys' (Pielpel). They would
also occasionally compete with Kapos for these
teenagers. They even drew lots to determine who
should go with whom. Naturally, it enraged the
other inmates to watch as these youngsters
received extra food rations and were exempted from
tough work assignments in exchange for sexual
favors. There were also some SS guards who took
special pleasure in occasionally masturbating
while torturing prisoners. For such acts, the gay
inmates were, so to speak, held accountable by the
non-gay inmates: homosexual guards, however
hostile, were seen by non-gay prisoners as
belonging to the homosexual underclass. Thus,
homosexual prisoners were often tainted by the
crimes of homosexual guards -- even though they
themselves were often the victims."
*** {end comment 132-1}
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{See Comment 132-1,above}
saw the pink triangles as objects of fear and hatred. Plant sup-
ports this view, noting that "homosexual prisoners were often
tainted by the crimes of the homosexual guards -- even though they
themselves were often the victims" (Plant: 167). There is evidence,
{See Comment 132-2}
as well, that the homosexuals in the camps alienated their fellow
prisoners because of the predatory nature of their sexual drive.
Polish sociologist, Anna Pawelczynska, in Values and Violence in
Auschwitz, describes this situation:
Sometimes a confirmed homosexual would lead a
prisoner of normal inclinations into homosexual
practices. Such relationships were usually deeply
immoral or deeply demoralizing. A prisoner-
functionary's [Kapo's] desire to satisfy his or her
pederastic sexual needs could also manifest itself
in various brutal forms of terror and blackmail used
to bring the partner into compliance
(Pawelczynska:98).
*** {start comment 132-2}
Here's what Pawelczynska actually says:
"Spatial segregation of the sexes also led to
the spread of homosexuality among the healthier
and better nourished prisoners in the camp.
Authentic, emotional relationships of a homosexual
nature developed and in camp conditions it was
possible to actualize them. Through an erotic
union loving couples consummated all their
mutually protective feelings, expressed through
mutual concern and often great risk-taking in
defense of the beloved. Besides the sphere where
eroticism constituted an element of mutual love,
numerous situations arose that resembled ordinary
marriages of convenience. In such marriages the
emotionally committed partner often took care of
the uncommitted partner. Sometimes a confirmed
homosexual would lead a prisoner of normal
inclinations into homosexual practices. Such
arrangements were usually deeply immoral or deeply
demoralizing. A prisoner-functionary's desire to
satisfy his or her pederastic sexual needs could
also manifest itself in various brutal forms of
terror and blackmail used to bring the partner
into compliance."
*** {end comment 132-2}
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{See Comment 132-3}
Pawelcznska's {sic} record also refutes Plant's suggestion that ho-
mosexual prisoners were "utterly disunited" and therefore pow-
erless. She cites the use of prostitution as a form of currency
among the homosexual prisoners. This was likely a common means
of getting favors from the homosexual guards as well. She writes,
...paid prostitution existed in the camp and the
choice of erotic partners was dictated by one's
ability to pay -- either in the form of help in gain-
ing a better place in the camp structure or, at each
visit, in the form of food or better clothes. Homo-
sexual erotic availability became a coin of incom-
mensurate worth, in return for which the chance
of biological survival could be won depending on
the client's possibilities (ibid. :99).
*** {start comment 132-3}
Here is seen the extreme depth of distortion
to which The Pink Swastika will sink. Here's how
this paragraph from Pawelczynska actually begins:
"Besides couple-relationships, paid
prostitution existed...."
The homophobia of the Pink Swastika author,
himself a Jew, is so extreme that he will even
falsify the history of Auschwitz, a hallowed venue
of the Holocaust, in order to smear homosexuals by
denying all existence of loving relationships in
the camp. How extreme it is to leave off just
three words.
In addition to pointing out the egregious
distortion of the text, it should be noted that
the "chance of biological survival" is what kept
many Jews alive longer than their fellows they
helped exterminate in the death camps. Is it to be
held against those Jews that they carried bodies
from the gas chambers to the crematoria and
extracted gold teeth from the corpses in order to
live a little longer? Is prostitution somehow
worse than cutting the hair off women you know are
in a few minutes to die a horrible death in a gas
chamber?
Of course the point the Pink Swastika author
really wants to make is not about prostitution,
but that there were Kapos and a few guards who
were willing to have sex with males. In the case
of the Kapos, men deprived of all female
companionship, this can't be considered evidence
of homosexuality, since many heterosexuals have
engaged in homosexual activity in certain
circumstances. In some cases guards might be
similarly motivated, but in any event all the
authors stress that the number of guards involved
in homosexual activity was very small.
It's worth including another of
Pawelczynska's comments on camp sexual activity
that follows the paragraph just misquoted by the
Pink Swastika author. She says:
"A unique situation developed during the
period when rather numerous male work crews would
come to work in the women's camp. More or less
permanent bisexual relationships started up among
the women prisoner-functionaries (especially the
Blockaeltesten [block elders]), who had food
supplies and separate quarters, and the men who
were interested in the material aid (regardless of
the allure of an erotic relationship). These
liaisons played yet another role which was very
important for improving relations within the
women's camp. The group of prisoner-functionaries
in the women's camp allowed their sexual partners
to acquire a very large influence over them. The
men used their influence to shelter the mass of
women prisoners from the functionaries' aggression
and also to see that camp functions were handed
out to the prisoners."
Sex occurred in Auschwitz wherever the
opportunity was present, and the type of sex
depended on the type of opportunity available.
This was not the special province of homosexuals.
*** {end comment 132-3}
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***{Below is Page: 133 }***
There is one other distinction between homosexual and other
prisoners. Toward the end of World War II, many homosexuals
were released from the concentration camps and drafted into the
Wehrmacht (Shaul :688). Researcher Steven Katz cites records
that "indicate that 13% of all homosexual camp inmates were re-
prieved and released" (S. Katz: 146). This, of course, happened
as the Nazis frantically increased their "production" in the death
camps, trying to exterminate every last Jew in Europe before the
Allies could liberate the camps.
{See Comment 133-1}
The Final Solution
There is perhaps no more terrible expression in human speech
than the "Final Solution." In it is contained an evil so profound as
not to be easily assimilated by the human mind. How could people
be so filled with hate, we wonder, that they would seek to exter-
minate whole races of fellow human beings from the face of the
earth? In our struggle to answer this question, we find science
inadequate and must look to a deeper source of human knowl-
edge. Only in a spiritual context can we truly understand the
meaning of the "Final Solution," the Holocaust of the Jews. It is
not surprising, then, that the roots of Nazi evil are found in the
neo-pagan revival of the late 1800's, which manifested itself in
the glorification of occultism and the subversion of the Judeo-
Christian foundations of German culture.
We have addressed many elements of the neo-pagan revival
in previous chapters, but to find the specific roots of the Holo-
caust we must revisit the occult figure, Jorg Lanz von Liebenfels.
As we learned, Lanz, the homosexual male supremacist, was called
"the man who gave Hitler his ideas," by Austrian psychologist
Wilhelm Daim. Anti-Semitic pamphlets by Lanz and Guido von
List shaped Hitler's early hatred of the Jews. It was Lanz who
originated the concept of Himmler's Lebensborn, the Aryan breed-
ing colony. And it was Lanz, again, who can be seen behind Hitler's
answers to "the Jewish question." Goodrick-Clarke writes,
*** {start comment 133-1}
If the Pink Swastika author could look in a
mirror and see from a distance the attitude toward
homosexuals that springs from every page of his
book, he would know how people could "be so filled
with hate...that they would seek to exterminate
whole races of fellow human beings...." As Jews
were demonized by the Nazis, so homosexuals are
being demonized by fundamentalists, including
those of the Jewish and Protestant Religious Right
responsible for The Pink Swastika.
The Anti-Semitic pamphlets that shaped
Hitler's early hatred of the Jews are no different
from the anti-gay pamphlets of Paul Cameron and
others of the Religious Right that are circulated
today to inspire hatred of homosexuals. The only
difference is the target.
*** {end comment 133-1}
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***{Below is Page: 134 }***
{See Comment 134-1}
The similarity between Lanz's proposals... and the
Nazi plans for the disposal of the Jews and the
treatment of the enslaved Slav populations in the
East [is unmistakable]. Lanz's specific recommen-
dations for the disposal of racial inferiors were
various and included: deportation to Madagascar;
enslavement; incineration as a sacrifice to God; and
use as beasts of burden. Both the psychopathol-
ogy of the Nazi Holocaust and the subjugation of
non-Aryans in the East were presaged by Lanz's
grim speculations (Goodrick-Clarke: 97).
*** {start comment 134-1}
Goodrick-Clarke says "....to the enslaved
Slav populations in the East, indicate the
survival of these mental reflexes over a
generation." Whether that is equivalent to the
[is unmistakable] substituted by the Pink Swastika
author is left for the reader to decide.
*** {end comment 134-1}
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{See Comment 135-1}
We are all too familiar with the Nazi enslavement of "non-
Aryans" and with their incineration of the Jews in the death camps,
but these atrocities, though they agree perfectly with his ideas, do
not by themselves prove any special influence by Lanz. In the
Nazis' "Madagascar Plan" (which was nothing more than a pro-
posal to put all the Jews on the island of Madagascar), however;
we find an indisputable connection to Lanz. In Harvest of Hate:
The Nazi Program for the Destruction of the Jews of Europe,
historian Leon Poliakov writes about the "Madagascar Plan," but
reveals that he was unaware of Lanz' influence:
Goering had mentioned the "Madagascar Ques-
tion" during the.. .meeting of November 12, 1938.
Himmler had been dreaming of it since 1934, as
one witness testified. Putting all the Jews on a
large island -- moreover; a French island -- would
satisfy the Nazi love of symbolism. At any rate,
the idea was put forth by the Minister of Foreign
Affairs... [and] was accepted by Himmler as well
as by the Fuehrer himself. Great inventions al-
ways have several originators; other more or less
famous dignitaries can claim the honor of father-
ing this "philanthropic solution." For example,
Philip Bouhier; Chief of the Fuhrer's {sic} personal
***{Below is Page: 135 }***
chancellery...hoped to become the governor of the
island (Polialov {sic}:43).
*** {start comment 135-1}
This attempt to lay everything at the door of
Lanz is ludicrous.
At first, the Nazis didn't try to incinerate
the Jews, certainly not as a sacrifice to any god.
They simple buried them. The burning started when
the Nazis began to worry that the mass graves
would be discovered. Steiner's Treblinka, cited
elsewhere by the Pink Swastika author, has details
of this for that camp.
While some specific Nazi might at an early
date have thought about Madagascar as a place for
the Jews, the official position was that the Jews
should leave Germany and go to Palestine. The
German slogan wasn't always just "Juden raus!" but
"Juden raus nach Palestine!" During the April 1,
1933, boycott of Jewish businesses, Nazi pickets
handed out an imitation "one way ticket to
Palestine" to Jewish-looking passers-by. The Nazis
worked with the Zionists toward that end in the
1930s, and even maintained some contact during the
war. Kurt Tuchler, an executive of the German
Zionist organization, took Baron Leopold Itz Edler
von Mildenstein of the SS on a six-month tour of
Jewish settlements in Palestine. When Tuchler
visited Mildenstein's office after the tour, in
1934, he was welcomed by Jewish folk tunes played
by Mildenstein, who had on his wall maps showing
the increasing strength of Zionism in Germany.
Mildenstein wrote a report about the Jewish
settlements in Palestine which Goebbels ran as a
twelve-part series in his newspaper, Der Angriff.
Mildenstein wrote: that Palestine was "the way to
curing a centuries-long wound on the body of the
world: the Jewish question." "The soil has
reformed him and his kind in a decade. This new
Jew will be a new people." Goebbels had a medal
struck to commemorate Mildenstein's trip. On one
side was the swastika, on the other the Zionist
star.
It seems the "Palestine solution" is what
Hitler might have attempted had England
surrendered. As it was, he was blocked by
remaining British Power, both airplanes in the
Middle East and especially the British fleet,
which also prevented the implementation of the
Madagascar plan, something that seemed more
plausible after the French surrender in 1940.
There were other Nazi ideas for the disposition of
the Jews, including South America. (When quick
victory escaped his grasp, it's quite likely that
he gave up all plans of deportation and settled on
extermination, holding the Jews responsible for
his diplomatic and military reverses.)
The contention that the Nazis got their ideas
for a "Solution" to the "Jewish question" whether
Madagascar or burning, from Lanz, is utterly
preposterous.
*** {end comment 135-1}
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Guido von List targeted his hatred more specifically against
Christians, and developed an elaborate mythology to justify at-
tacks against Christianity. Goodrick-Clarke explains List's ideas:
[List developed] a conspiracy theory that identi-
fied Christianity as the negative and destructive
principle in the history of the Ario-Germanic race.
If it could be shown that Christian missionaries
had been intent upon the destruction of Armanist
culture, its actual non-existence in the present could
be related to empirical events...List's account of
Christianization in the historic German lands reit-
crated the debilitation of Teutonic vigour and mo-
rale and the destruction of German national con-
sciousness. He claimed that the Church's gospel
of love and charity had encouraged a deviation
from the strict eugenics of 'the old Aryan sexual
morality'...it was he who had demonized the Church
as the sole source of evil in the pan-German scheme
of belief (Goodrick-Clarke:68f.).
Sadly, the occult dimension of the Nazi history is overlooked
by many historians, who must attempt, therefore, to find materi-
alist answers to moral questions. And if the occult dimension has
been ignored, this is doubly true of the homosexual dimension.
As Duberman, Vicinus and Chauncey have stated with the title to
their "gay studies" text, the role of homosexuals and pederasts
has been Hidden from History. They, of course, imagine the influ-
ence of homosexuality to be positive. Yet the rise of homosexu-
ality in a Judeo-Christian based culture necessarily represents the
diminution of Biblical morality as a restraint on human passions.
Consequently, where Judeo-Christian ideals decrease, violence and
depravity increase.
***{Below is Page: 136 }***
It was the pederasts of the Community of the Special who, in
large part, sponsored the revival of Hellenic pagan ideals in Ger-
man society. These men were fanatically anti-Jew and anti-Chris-
tian because of the injunctions against homosexuality inherent in
the Judeo-Christian sexual ethic. Homosexualist Warren Johansson
notes that Hans Blueher, one of the leading theoreticians of the
Community of the Special, "maintained that Judaism had sup-
pressed the homosexual aspect of its culture, with concomitant
hypertrophy [enlargement] of the family" (Johansson:816).
Benedict Friedlander, in an essay for Der Eigene titled "Seven
Propositions," chose as his first proposition an attack on Chris-
tianity. "The white race is becoming ever sicker under the curse
of Christianity, which is foreign to it and mostly harmful," writes
Friedlander. "That is the genuinely bad 'Jewish influence,' an
opinion that has proven true, especially through the conditions in
North America" (Friedlander in Oosterhuis and Kennedy:2l9).
For his part, Adolf Brand called Christianity "barbarism" and "ex-
pressed his desire to fight 'beyond good and evil,' not for the sake
of the masses, since the happiness of 'the weak' would result in a
'slave mentality,' but for the human being who proclaimed him-
self a god and was not to be subdued by human laws and ethics"
(Oosterhuis and Kennedy: 183). We should not forget Nietzsche,
who called Christianity "the lie of millennia" (Macintyre: 188).
Much has been made of the reported silence, and in some
cases complicity, of the supposed Christian churches during the
Third Reich. But few have noted the long period of "Biblical
deconstruction" that preceded the rise of Nazism, and fewer still
have chronicled the diabolical perversion of German religious
culture by the Nazis themselves. While the neo-pagans were busy
attacking from without, liberal theologians undermined Biblical
authority from within the Christian church. The school of so-
called "higher criticism," which began in Germany in the late
1800's, portrayed the miracles of God as myths; by implication
making true believers (Jew and Christian alike) into fools. And
since the Bible was no longer accepted as God's divine and iner-
{See Comment 137-1}
rant guide, it could be ignored or reinterpreted. By the time the
***{Below is Page: 137 }***
Nazis came to power, "Bible-believing" Christians, (the Confess-
ing Church of Barth and Bonhoeffer) were a small minority. Francis
Schaeffer writes of this phenomenon in The Great Evangelical
Disaster:
In the late nineteenth century it was these ideas
[the all-sufficiency of human reason and the false-
hood of supernatural religion] which began to radi-
cally transform Christianity...This started especially
with the acceptance of the "higher critical" meth-
ods that had been developed in Germany. Using
these methods, the new liberal theologians com-
pletely undercut the authority of Scripture...in spite
of the efforts of...[theologians Hodges, Warfield
and later Machen], the destructive methods of bib-
lical criticism came into power and control in the
denominations. By the 1930s liberalism had swept
through most of the denominations and the battle
was all but lost (Schaeffer:34).
*** {start comment 137-1}
The above clearly exposes the fundamentalism
of the Pink Swastika authors and their connection
to the Religious Right. The implication is that
liberal churches that don't agree with the
fundamentalists share the blame with the
homosexuals for the rise of the Nazis and the
Holocaust. In fact, it was American
fundamentalists, such as William Bell Riley, who
supported Hitler and helped make his rise and the
Holocaust possible.
Here the true agenda of The Pink Swastika and
its authors and promoters is revealed. They aren't
just after homosexuals. That group is just the
first step, an easy target. Their real, hidden
agenda is to convert the whole world to
fundamentalism. Religious people who don't agree
with fundamentalists, and all non-religious people
should take note of that. They are themselves
targets, and they shouldn't ignore the
fundamentalist attacks on gays as if the matter is
no concern of theirs. Their turn is coming.
*** {end comment 137-1}
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Replacing biblical Christianity in Germany was a pseudo-Chris-
tian "pietism" that grew increasingly more bizarre as devotion to
the social ideals of traditional Christianity was divorced from its
source. In The Twelve Year Reich, social historian Richard
{See Comment 138-1}
Grunberger writes of Nazi-sponsored "charity" drives, for example,
in which collectors of surplus goods for the poor became irratio-
nal fanatics:
[Collectors] indefatigably pounded the staircases
of apartment houses in the large towns, rooting
out the last possible donor...Small rural communi-
ties erected what were known as Boards of Shame,
listing those who, 'despite financial ability, refuse
to make donations.' Not infrequently, 'selfish ele-
ments' were victims of organized physical violence:
***{Below is Page: 138 }***
'Widow B. of Volksdorf, who had only contrib-
uted ringboots {sic} to a Winter Relief collection of
clothing, had to ask the police to take her into pro-
tective custody after a threatening crowd gathered
outside her house and started to smash her green-
houses.' Hereditary farmer, Bernard Sommer
Kempdorf, who had told the collectors that if they
wanted any fruit from him they were at liberty to
pick it off the trees themselves, had to be taken
into protective custody when a crowd of hundreds
gathered around his farm chanting demands for his
imprisonment. (Grunberger: 88).
*** {start comment 138-1}
The reader who might want to check these
references is advised that the 1971 Holt, Rinehart
and Winston edition of Grunberger's book has
different pagination from the edition used by the
Pink Swastika author. For example, the quotation
above is found on page 80. The widow actually gave
"ridingboots," not "ringboots."
*** {end comment 138-1}
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They developed a "purely German i.e. de-Romanized and de-
Judaicized form of Christianity," writes Grunberger, while con-
currently "New Heathenism" rejected Jesus entirely and substi-
tuted "either Wotan worship or a cult of nature centered on the
Sun" (ibid.:482). Soon, this neo-paganism had entered the weak-
ened churches. "German Christianity [began to focus] on the Aryan
savior Jesus... [and theological studies appeared] under such titles
as 'Wotan and Jesus,' 'Baldur and the Bible,' and 'The German
Savior'" (ibid.:482). Despite all this, however, it would be a mis-
take to believe that the German church, as liberal and heretical as
it had become, would have supported Hitler's total agenda on its
own. On the contrary, Hitler and the Nazi elite were forced to
conduct a slow and methodical take-over of the German churches
to silence their dissent.
In March of 1935 seven hundred Protestant priests were ar-
rested by the Gestapo in Prussia "for issuing condemnations of
neo-paganism from the pulpit," and later a similar number of clergy
in Wurttemberg had their teaching credentials stripped for "vio-
lating the moral instincts of the German race' by references to
Abraham, Joseph and David in the course of their
teaching"(ibid. :494). The Nazis confiscated Protestant seminar-
ies in Wurttemberg and Catholic convents and monasteries in the
Rhineland (ibid. :500).
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As Grunberger asserts, Nazism itself was a "pseudo-religion"
(ibid. :79) that competed, in a sense, with Christianity and Juda-
ism. The Nazi regime, attempting to usurp the role of the church
and eliminate its influence on German culture, "spawned an un-
ending series of relatively minor, but cumulatively effective, anti-
Church measures" (ibid. :500). Through its spiritual adjunct, the
"German Faith Movement," the Nazi Party maintained one of Sev-
eral fronts in this war on Christianity. Grunberger writes,
The movement.. could best be defined by its nega-
tive articles of faith of which the chief was enmity
to Christianity and the established churches. Plan-
ning to use neo-pagan "conversion" to comple-
ment its own more general anti-Church measures
(such as hamstringing communal and youth orga-
nizations, or attenuating religious instruction in
schools), the Party therefore launched a drive to
make individual parishioners withdraw from
Church membership. The "Church Secessionist
Campaign" was particularly effective among pro-
fessionals materially dependent on the regime: civil
servants, Municipal employees, teachers, [aud] full-
time party workers (ibid:491).
As soon as the Nazis came to power they replaced many Chris-
tian holidays with pagan celebrations: "The Day of the Summer
Solstice," "The Day of the Winter Solstice," and "Mothering Sun-
day" (which featured the so-called "Rune of Life" as a symbol to
honor births) (ibid.:80f.). Marriage ceremonies increasingly in-
voked "Mother Earth" and "Father Sky" as the deities by whom
the covenant was blessed (ibid. :492). Birth and death announce-
ments began to feature the life and death runes, respectively, as
part of a campaign to eliminate the star and the cross from public
life, and crucifixes were gradually removed from hospitals and
schools (ibid.:494). The Nazis made all religious activities which
were not centered in the churches dependent on official permis-
***{Below is Page: 140 }***
sion and confiscated lists of church goers who were on active
duty in the military (ibid. :500).
The schools were heavily targeted in the strategy to de-Chris-
tianize the young. Mandatory prayer in schools was stopped in
1935, and from 1941 onward, religious instruction was completely
eliminated for all students over fourteen years old (ibid.:494f).
The Nazi Teachers Association actively discouraged its members
from taking religious instruction, while at the same time many
teachers of religious studies (who were all required to be licensed
by the state) "inculcated neo-paganism into their pupils during
periods of religious instruction." Later, teachers were outright
prohibited from attending voluntary religion classes organized by
the Catholic church (ibid. :495).
In an obscene twist, the Nazis used former Christian religious
facilities, seized by the government, to establish schools in which
students were trained in male supremacist ideology, using teach-
ings from the works of homosexual theorists such as Otto
Weininger (Rosenthal:69). Igra writes,
[Weininger's Sex and Character] was revived as a
kind of text book in the Nazi Ordensburgen, those
schools for the training of future German leaders
which have been set up in the confiscated monas-
teries and convents. There they learn the doctrine
that 'the lowest type of male is infinitely higher
than the noblest woman,' and that 'by her very
nature, woman is deceitful, mentally inferior to man
and unmoral'" (Igra:99).
The de-Christianization of German society was carried out in
the Nazis' characteristically duplicitous style. Ever masters of
the euphemism and of political sleight-of-hand, they kept the gen-
eral population confused about their true motives. When Hitler
needed the support of the churches in the early days of the re-
gime, for example, the SA attended Sunday services en masse,
creating "veritable SA church parades" (Grunberger:485). But
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just months later these same troops marched in the Nuremberg
Party Rally alongside the Hitler Youth as they sang anti-Christian
songs. "No evil priest can prevent us from feeling that we are the
children of Hitler," the children sang. "We follow not Christ, but
Horst Wessel. Away with incense and holy water...The swastika
brings salvation on earth" (ibid. :489). For their part the SA sang,
"Storm Trooper Comrades, hang the Jews and put the priests
against the wall" as the refrain to one of their favorite tunes.
In Hitler and I, Strasser records a conversation he had with
Hitler, in which Strasser criticized Nazi propagandist Alfred
Rosenberg for his pagan ideals. "Hitler stopped and looked me in
the eyes," writes Strasser, "'Christianity is, for the moment, one
of the points in the programme I have laid down. But we must
look ahead. Rosenberg is a forerunner, a prophet. His theories
are the expression of the German soul'" (Strasser, 1940:96). Much
later, as Hitler's religion of hate appeared to have completely over-
whelmed the German culture, he proclaimed, "Do you really be-
lieve the masses will ever be Christian again? Nonsense, that tale
is finished" (Newton: 16).
From the early years, leading Nazis openly attacked Chris-
tianity. Joseph Goebbels declared that "Christianity has infused
our erotic attitudes with dishonesty" (Taylor: 20). Himmler is re-
ported to have considered Christianity "the greatest plague deliv-
ered by history, and demanded that it be dealt with accordingly"
(Ziegler:85). Martin Bormann, who replaced Hess as Deputy
Fuehrer, issued a decree to the Party Gauleiters titled, "The Re-
lations Between National Socialism and Christianity" in which he
said "National Socialist and Christian conceptions are incompat-
ible. The Christian churches build upon men's ignorance...The
people must be increasingly wrested from the churches...Never
again must the churches be allowed any influence over the leader-
ship of the people. This must be broken totally and forever" (Fest,
1970: 132f). The Nazis {sic} ultimate goal was the elimination of all
the Christian churches. Grunberger points out that "[j]ust as the
genocide programme provided for certain areas to be made 'free
of Jews' before others, so the Warthegau was envisioned as the
***{Below is Page: 142 }***
first region to be 'free of churches' in the Reich" (Grunberger:498).
It is in this campaign against Judeo-Christian morality that we
find one of the reasons for the German people's acceptance of
Nazism's most extreme atrocities. Their religious foundations
had been systematically eroded over a period of decades by pow-
erful social forces. By the time the Nazis came to power, German
culture was spiritually bankrupt. Historians have largely ignored
the spiritual element of Nazi history, but if we look closely at
Hitler's campaign of extermination of the Jews, it becomes clear
that his ostensible racial motive obscures a deeper and more pri-
mal hatred of the Jews as the "People of God."
The probable reason for Hitler's attack on Christianity was
his perception that it alone had the moral authority to stop the
Nazi movement. But Christians stumbled before the flood of evil.
As Poliakov notes, "[W]hen moral barriers collapsed under the
impact of Nazi preaching...the same anti-Semitic movement that
led to the slaughter of the Jews gave scope and license to an ob-
scene revolt against God and the moral law. An open and impla-
cable war was declared on the Christian tradition...[which un-
leashed] a frenzied and unavowed hatred of Christ and the Ten
Commandments (Poliakov:300).
{See Comment 142-1}
There is no question that homosexuality figures prominently
in the history of the Holocaust. As we have noted, the ideas for
disposing of the Jews originated with Lanz. The first years of
terrorism against the Jews were carried out by the homosexuals
of the SA. The first pogrom, Kristallnacht, was orchestrated in
1938 by the homosexual Reinhard Heydrich. And it was the some-
time transvestite Goering who started the "evolution of the Final
Solution...[with an] order to the Heydrich (Jan. 24, 1939) con-
cerning the solution of the Jewish question by 'emigration' and
'evacuation'" (Robinson:25). Still, despite their disproportion-
ate role, homosexuals did not cause the Holocaust. They, along
with so many others who had lost their moral bearings, were merely
instruments in its enactment. The Holocaust must be blamed on
the one whom the Bible compares to "a roaring lion, seeking whom
he may devour" (NKJ:I Peter 5:8).
*** {start comment 142-1}
This is quite ridiculous, of course. As
stated above, the original Nazi ideas for settling
the "Jewish question" had nothing to do with
Lanz's ideas. Heydrich was, as far as can reliably
be determined, entirely heterosexual, and Goering
was neither a transvestite nor in any way anything
other than a strict heterosexual. The Pink
Swastika author has very conveniently failed to
mention indisputably heterosexual monsters such as
Adolf Eichmann and Dr. Josef Mengele.
It is hoped the reader will have seen enough
of the inaccuracies and deliberate falsifications
of The Pink Swastika exposed by these comments
that its author has no credibility left and that
the book will be taken for what it's worth.
*** {end comment 142-1}
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