My name is Klaus Müller, I'm the European representative of the Holocaust Museum,
and I'm based in Berlin, Germany. I started to work for the Museum
a year before its opening, in 1993, collecting
information and objects relating to the Nazi persecution of homosexuals
and consulting on the inclusion of these materials in the Museum's
Permanent Exhibition.
In the course of time, I brought several collections of gay survivors
into our collections. We are going to talk about one of these special
collections
today in Curators Corner.
To give a brief overview, in 1935
the Nuremberg Laws depriving Jews of their civil rights were published,
and in the same year the Nazis revised the old sodomy law,
Paragraph 175, which had been on the books since 1871.
The gestapo and SS wanted to broaden this in their view
inefficient law. Under the new 1935
version of Paragraph 175, already the mere suggestion of homosexuality--
kissing another man, gossip, a letter from a friend--
could become evidence. In Nazi racist ideology, male homosexuality was no
longer just a criminal offence.
It was considered a threat to the racial health or Germany
and to the main goal of Nazi population politics, raising the birth rate
of the German people.
Historians estimate that approximately 100,000 men were arrested
as homosexuals. Half of them were sentenced and sent to prison.
An estimated ten to fifteen thousand of these men
were deported to concentration camps, mainly in Germany and Austria,
and an estimated sixty percent were killed.
Persecution did not end in 1945.
The Nazi Paragraph 175 stayed on the books in West Germany
until 1969. East Germany
returned to the old version. Due to the ongoing persecution in post-war Germany,
very few gay survivors ever came forward to tell
their story
In 1994 I was in Vienna and
heard of a gay survivor, Heinz Heger, who unfortunately had died just two months before
my visit.
Heger's testimony, The Men with the Pink Triangle, for the longest
time was the only testimony of a gay survivor. I think it was published in
Germany in 1972.
His book became the source for generations of gay men and women who
wanted to learn more
about this dark chapter. I was able to meet with Heger's long-term partner,
Wilhelm Kroepfl,
from whom I learned about Heger's real name, Josef Kohout,
and the story of his testimony. Meeting Josef Kohout's long-term partner, Wilhelm
Kroepfl, was very emotional for me because Josef had died two months before.
It was the first time that Wilhelm talked for such a long time about Josef.
We were sitting together for two hours having coffee and cake,
when Wilhelm said, "If you're so interested, I think I still have some documents that
related to Josef's time
in the camp. Do you want to see them?" I said, "Yes!
"Absolutely! Thank you!" Wilhelm came back with two boxes,
and the first thing he unpacked was Josef Kohout's pink triangle patch,
the camp marking for alleged homosexual prisoners. I couldn't believe it.
We had searched for a pink triangle for years,
one that would not only document the Nazi marking system but also could be
reconstructed as part of
one individual story, but due to ongoing persecution, gay survivors got rid of
their badges
as soon as possible. I remember Wilhelm said,
"If I would have known that there's still so much stuff in here,
I would have thrown some of it away, but honestly I didn't have yet to strength to
go through with it."
It took me a while to convince him that all of these documents were important.
I said, "Police don't throw anything away,
and if you're ready, please donate these materials to our collections."
For us this is a historic documentation.
Here you see hand-written letters by his parents,
camp documents. handwritten notes by Josef, postwar materials--
It is a unique collection.
This is a picture of Josef Kohout, probably taken in the late 1940s.
Josef was 24 when he was arrested in March 1939.
His Christmas card to his male lover had been intercepted.
He was sentenced to several months of prison under Paragraph 175.
After completing his sentence, he was taken into so-called protective custody and
deported to the Sachsenhausen concentration camp.
In May 1940 Josef Kohout was transferred to the Flossenbürg
concentration camp, of which you see a picture here. In the camp hierarchy, the
men with the pink triangle had to suffer the same
inhuman conditions as all other prisoners: brutal violence by the guards,
hunger, disease, slave labor.
Josef was incarcerated in Flossenbürg for five years.
During a death march from Flossenbürg to Dachau in April 1945,
he was finally liberated by a front unit of the US Army.
We learn from the collection that his parents inquire about their son in the camp
very early on. Here you see the response from the camp commandant
in Flossenbürg, dated July 1940.
informing his parents that their son is well.
Letters like these might have helped Josef to survive.
The letter you see here is very unusual and illuminates how
brave Josef's parents were and how much they must have missed him.
Dated December 28, 1943,
they request permission to visit their son
in the camp. In those times the request alone
was highly dangerous. The isolation of inmates
was part of the camp system. Nobody was allowed to visit family members.
They did not sign, as was custom then,
with "Heil Hitler," but just with their names.
We are looking at a frail, narrow piece of cloth, two inches long and
not more than an inch wide, with the numbers 1 8
9 6 on the right, Josef Kohout's badge number,
and a pink triangle on the left. In the background you see a chart of prisoner
markings the Nazi's developed
to different categories of prisoners, including the pink triangle
for alleged homosexuals. It's interesting
as we have no other pink triangles for comparison, we don't really know how
pink the prisoner badge for homosexuals looked like,
how that color changed in time through washing, exposure, or simply aging,
what chemical pigments were used, or if it differed from camp to camp.
In Kohout's testimony, an SS officer is quoted as describing
Kohout's lager badge as "pale red."
Kohout's badge is the only prisoner badge worn by a homosexual
prisoner we can identify through his testimony, the preserved camp and post-
war documents,
and the prisoner registration from Flossenbürg, where
entry on Josef Kohout lists him as being taken into protective custody
under Paragraph 175. You're looking at a unique sheet of paper,
a diary if you want, written during a death march.
On April 20, 1945, the Nazi guards began the forced evacuation
of more than 20,000 camp inmates of Flossenbürg
due to the advancing war front. Joseph managed to make
one-line notes per day. Many prisoners died on death marches,
but Josef was lucky. He and a smaller group of fellow inmates were liberated by a
front unit
of the US Army's 19th Infantry Division
70 kilometers south of Flossenbürg. The entry
on that Wednesday, April 25, 1945, simply said:
"Amerikaner gekommen." "Americans came."
When we document the Nazi persecution of homosexuals,
mostly we only have perpetrator records, records from the Gestapo or the police
or the camp administration.
We have very few testimonies of gay survivors themselves, very few objects.
The importance of this collection is that it
allows us to illustrate the story of one gay survivor
and to tell his story. When I was sitting with Wilhelm Kroepfl in Vienna and he was
opening the shoeboxes and
out of this came this amazing collection, I was also wondering later
how many collections we might have missed. People throw things away.
They might not realize the importance of such records.
While I'm not very hopeful that we might be able to find many more materials, I would
like to take this opportunity to emphasize the importance.
If you think you have anything that could relate to this story--
a document, a photo, a textile brought home by an American Liberator--
please do not throw it away. Believe us,
that this object might allow us to tell a story it has never been told before.