Thread by @SorchaMacLennan

& a lot of “Queer” youngsters don’t know there was LGBT who suffered during the Holocaust & subject to inhumane treatment. Folk don’t bother learning history.

So here’s some history of homosexuality and Auschwitz, it can be brutal so fair warning

@ALLIANCELGB @FredSargeant

if you look at this prisoners “uniform” you’ll see a pink triangle, which was used to identify homosexual prisoners, a symbol used today to remember LGBT prisoners from Auschwitz & has since been reclaimed.

Link about the various marking from Auschwitz

en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nazi_conc…

“One Danish doctor, Carl Vaernet, joined the SS for the sole purpose of pursuing his research into “curing” gay men. Among the operations he carried out at Buchenwald was the inserting of artificial hormone glands into the groins of homosexual men”

“Heinrich Himmler once said that 8% cent of men in Germany were gay “If that’s how things remain, our nation will fall to pieces. Those who practise homosexuality deprive Germany of the children they owe her.”

His solution was to “convert” them by forcing them to have sex once a week with women forced into sex slavery at brothels. If that failed, they faced being sent to camps. Once there, they were brutalised, their testicles boiled in water and having wood shoved into their anus.

It is believed that of all gay men deported to camps, 60 per cent died. This compares with a figure of 41 per cent for political prisoners who perished and 35 per cent of Jehovah’s Witnesses.

The number is nowhere near the amount of Jews murdered but gay inmates were also subject to brutal treatment by fellow prisoners and often found themselves right at the very bottom of the camp hierarchy where they were abused by other prisoners.

“We were forbidden to approach within five metres of other blocks. Anyone caught doing so was whipped, with 15 to 20 strokes. We were to remain the damnedest of the damned, the camp’s ‘shitty queers’, condemned to liquidation”

Historians estimate the number of gay men arrested by the Nazis at 100,000, with some 15,000 being sent to concentration camps.

Re a gay man “They put him under a cold shower. It was a bitterly cold evening & he stood outside through the night. He was tied to a post & placed under a lamp until he began to sweat then under a cold shower again. By morning, his breathing had become a rattle & he died”

when 6 youths were arrested for stealing coal & sent to a concentration camp the boys ended up sharing a barracks w/ gay inmates. The SS were so shocked that they removed the youths & executed them to save their “morality & innocence”. Death was better than sharing space w/ gays

The pink triangles were constantly abused by the SS, camp officials & fellow prisoners. They were names like arse-holes, shitty queers or bum-fuckers. They were allowed to talk only to each other, they had to sleep with the lights on and & hands above their blanket.

The SS considered it great sport to taunt and torture the homosexuals. The camp commander at Flossenburg often ordered them flogged; as the victims were screaming, he “was panting with excitement, and masturbated wildly in his trousers until he came”...

...unperturbed by the hundreds of onlookers. A sixty-year-old gay priest was beaten over his sexual organs by the SS and told: “You randy old rat-bag, you can piss with your arse-hole in the future.” The priest died the next day.

Towards the end of the war, they were told that they would be released if they let themselves be castrated. The ones who agreed were shipped to the infamous Dirlwanger penal division on the Russian front.

Further reading for those interested, because it’s important we remember our history.

attitude.co.uk/article/holoca…

remember.org/witness/wit-vi…

encyclopedia.ushmm.org/content/en/art…

metro.co.uk/2019/06/09/gay…

slate.com/human-interest…

*Edited to add the Labrys.

The Labrys, which has the black triangle, was the symbol used for Lesbians (and non conformists). This has also been reclaimed to remember an important part of Lesbian history, which you’ll see on the flag here.

The Nazi Party considered Lesbians “anti-social” and a huge threat to the purity of German society, hence the badge was used to identify them. They also strangely believed Lesbianism was “temporary”.

Lol @ folk getting angry over the accurate telling of LGBT Auschwitz history.

If you read into this and get angry at things not even said, that’s not my problem. I’m here to teach our history in an accurate manner because not enough actually know about it.

The message is very simple: youngsters are massively unaware of what happened during WWII, the persecution of LGBT and Auschwitz. I’m here to teach this history to keep it alive so it can be remembered and respected.

Not all of our history is happy, some of it is downright depressing and heartbreaking, but it needs remembered so we can hold modern society to better standards than our brothers and sisters ever received.