The Men with the Pink Triangle

If you've ever wondered why gays use the pink triangle as a symbol, read this excerpt from Heinz Heger's book:

While I was there [Flossenbürg concentration camp], a prisoner with a pink triangle, from Innsbruck in Austria, was tortured to death in the bunker. He was stripped naked and his hands tied to a hook in the wall so that his body hung in the air, and he couldn't touch the ground with his feet. Two or three SS men who were assigned to the cell block, as the bunker was officially known, stood around and waited for the "performance" to start - that is the torture of the Tirol lad.

The first game that the SS sergeant and his men played was to tickle their victim with goose feathers, on the soles of his feet, between his legs, in the armpits, and on other parts of his naked body. At first the prisoner forced himself to keep silent, while his eyes twitched in fear and torment from one SS man to the other. Then he could not restrain himself and finally he broke out in a high-pitched laughter that very soon turned into a cry of pain, while the tears ran down his face, and his body twisted against his chains. After this tickling torture, they let the lad hang there for a little, while a flood of tears ran down his cheeks and he cried and sobbed uncontrollably.

But the depraved SS men were set on having a lot more fun with this poor creature. The bunker Capo had to bring two metal bowls, one filled with cold water and the other with hot. "Now we're going to boil your eggs for you, you filthy queer, you'll soon feel warm enough," the bunker officer said gleefully, raising the bowl with hot water between the victim's thighs so that his balls hung down into it. The prisoner let out a shattering scream for help, the pain hurt him so much. He tried to struggle free or roll to one side, but the ties on his hands and feet held him tight.

"Give him the cold water, then, he's already hot, the filthy swine," one of the SS men laughed brutally, whereupon the SS butchers took up the cold water and placed this bowl between their victim's thighs. Again he screamed in agony, for the cold water must have been excruciating after the extreme heat. Time and again he tried to break free from his chains, but he just exhausted himself fruitlessly.

This procedure was repeated several times, until the tormented victim lost consciousness, after he had screamed himself hoarse and could now only emit a kind of gurgle. A bucket of cold water was thrown over him to bring him round, then the torture was started again, with bits of skin now hanging visibly down from the victim's scalded scrotum.

While carrying out these tortures, the SS monsters got through a bottle or two of spirits that they passed round. They were already quite drunk when they hit upon a new torture that could only have been thought up in the brain of someone totally perverted.

"He's a butt-fucker, isn't he, let him have what he wants," growled one of the SS men, taking up a broom that stood in the comer and shoving the handle deep into the prisoner's anus. He was already incapable of screaming anymore - his voice had simply seized up with pain - but his body jerked and tore at the chains; there was still a lot of life left in the lad. But the SS men only laughed the louder at the "filthy queer," who moved his lips as if to cry out without any sound emerging.

Finally they cut the fainting man down and let him fall to the floor, where he lay in a heap without stirring, his limbs bent under him. The drunken SS men staggered out into the open, but the last of them stumbled over the martyred prisoner who was still lying on the ground. Angrily he kicked the victim with the toe of his boot, and he began to stir again.

"The filthy queer's still alive," he burbled, taking up a wooden stool that was standing next to the wall and bringing it down with all his force on the victim's head. This finally freed the poor martyr from his pains, for now he was really dead.

You can't forget that, ever. You shouldn't.