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About Just out. (Portland, OR) 1983-2013 | View Entire Issue (Aug. 1, 1990)
T - A time of death JiU . rtór^zz:- [fie- atetan. íiatwe The Origin A Non*Smoking Establishment Mountains, Forost, Sandy Beach, Caves, Tide Pools, Trails, Suites, Studios, Kitchens, Fireplaces. Christopher Eskeli, Ph D, LMFCC.CAS Specializing In: • Recovering Alcohol & Drug Addiction • Co-dependency / Adult * Children • Interventions • Relationships / Intimacy 811 NW 20th, # 203 Portland, Oregon 97209 (503)635-6803 BEST Bikes. In Two CICL H Ml DAY fina nc in g NO INTEREST luPtRT SERVICE SPORT SHOP CX-D T O W N ^ ^ _ PO R TLAN O ^^. 35 NW Third Av« 237 3616 ^ LAKE OSWEGO VILLAGE CENTER s Slale SI « 3 « 1621 Æ Æ 91 D IA M O N D B A C K S U A N C H I ~ M U O iO T S M CIAU ItD 3 S&$x$S&& r\K’( )IY N I A M B I Kl M A K u .M A I III A l i i ) I Ml K AIMS I ' » J i l l N W I I A N D IK S . S U III l(M l*( )K 11 \NI ). ( )KI ( ,( *\ '» 7 J 111 . " r i I It. I \ I ) U I I ( I III D K I N < )l \ l ( ( » I K )l K S \ l >UI I S \ U )| I S 11 I ) A S ( I III I ) k l N I ( )\ ( i II KM I »SN ( I It I I I II R A I A i h m ssu >\ - Mi l I SI I I M ( ,l N I K M ( ( M N S | I | \ ( , just o u tT 12V August 1990 Pink Triangle enough to become infected with our perver sion. “It made no sense. Nothing did in those /fans, a gay survivor*)/Dachau, relates years. They said we were sick with contagious how his lover, Frederick was tortured, raped disease but they could rape us, have sex with and had his throat torn out... how helpless us, to prove their masculinity, to prove they and filled with pain Hans will always feel. weren’t homosexuals, weren’t sick like they He agreed to meet the next day with Terry said we were.” This applied not only to the SS, Boughner, who was f died with "a million but to many of thh straight prisoners as well. questions” and praying that Hans would be Anything .. .whatever was done to Pink willing to answer them. Triangles, anything at all, was alright. “You,” he told me, “live in a different world. You can not imagine how they hate— hated us and how they used us.” I remember how he looked nervously about the square. It was a lovely warm, sunny day with crowds enjoying themselves while waiting for the glockenspiel, high in the tower of the Rathaus, or old city hall, to play. “It has not been long since the law against us was removed,” he explained. ‘The same law, 175, that the Nazis used to kill us.” “You are young,” he told me. “You don’t have to fear. But that fear, that dread, will never leave me, never leave any of us as old as 1.1 think yet that someone will come for me, to take me again, to punish me for being homo sexual. I live with that.” “I have tried to explain to myself many times the people who did these things,” he said, “but I cannot. The people who allowed them to were just people who were told they THE STORY OF HANS happen were doing the right thing. We were a danger Part II: to the state, to society. Then it was the Jews Hans survives as thousands of gays and all the others, but we were first, the very butchered by Nazi fanatics first.” He paused and then said, “There were ans was as good as his word, showing up others, of course, sick ones, haters by nature, the next morning at the Cafe St. Peter true Nazis. they exist everywhere. The which sat to one side of Munich’s Marienplatz, Party allowed I think them to bring out all the worst arriving precisely at the appointed hour of thoughts, the ones that shame hell, that we all 10 am. I had slept little the night before, have, and gave them the chance to act on thinking about what he had said at the bar, them.” unable to get Frederick out of my mind. This One of the favorite “sports” at Dachau was man was a survivor, one of my own, and I use Pink Triangles for target practice, forcing needed to find out all I could about his experi to them to line up and then run back and forth in ences at Dachau. But how do you ask ques front of the bullseyes which had been set up for tions of the kind I wanted to ask? As it turned the purpose. out, Hans made it easy, treating me indulgently “Many beautiful young men died that way like an uncle would an eager young nephew. and many other ways as well. Like Frederick, “It was not easy to survive.”, he said, my poor Frederick, they were killed horribly, answering my first question unasked. terribly, in ways beyond belief.” “At first, you know, I did not even want to He had read a book, Hans said, on the do that. I wanted to die. But life is strange. Holocaust where the author had devoted one Even in a place like Dachau you want to keep to gays and then only to write that going, to live. I made that choice. But, at first, sentence Pink Triangles had the best chance of survival. there was the guilt, terrible guilt. That has That, he maintained, was not true. Oh, there never left me. Why, I asked then and have were a few priests, a minister or two, who were asked ever since, was it Frederick and not me? kind, but, for the most part, gays were fair And guilt because I did not commit suicide to game. Gays were the lowest of the low, filth of be with him. I still think about that some filth. “We were not even animals. Not even as times," he admitted. good as rats.” Older gays and gays who were “But I decided to try and live. It was not good looking had little chance for any kind perhaps an act of rebellion, the only thing I survival. They died of starvation and could do. You see, I could keep Frederick alive of overwork from beatings or from being used that way. I told myself that.. .and that is why I for medical or experiments, he said. But Hans am talking to you, why I will relive those years, was young, handsome, boyish even, and, as he to keep Frederick alive.” said, with a good body.” He could survive, at Hans, along with the other Pink Triangles least for awhile, by becoming a kept boy, a had been segregated away from the “normals” “piepel”, a little doll, the property of an SS in the rest of the camp. “Remember,” he man. explained, “we were thought to be carriers of Pink Triangles were the last to be fed, disease. The Nazis and others who believed having to line up to get whatever slop was left them, thought that just a touch would be after the others, “the real men,” had eaten. BY TERRY BOUGHNER, PH. D. ’5 0 3 ) 547*3329 942J 1 Hwy. 101 Vaolvatf. OS 974M of the There was an SS guard standing beside one of the pots of “soup” watching the prisoners go by. He spotted Hans and ordered him out of the line. “Come, assfucker, filthy queer.” “I had no choice,” Hans said. “I went. He turned my head this way and that, examining me,” he said, placing his fingers on his chin to demonstrate. “Like an animal, like some horse he was going to buy. Then he ordered me to get out of my uniform, the stripped cotton thing all prisoners had to wear, no matter what the weather. I was to be naked right there. You have to understand. There was no choice and so, no shame. I wasn’t human—only homosex ual. “The first time I sucked him was the worst. There was Frederick. I thought of Frederick, oh so much. Please believe that. No one had touched me since Frederick." But the SS man, Gunter, was young, not too bad looking and, as Hans said, being what the guard wanted, when he wanted, was a way— the only way he knew—to survive. “I knew if once I stopped thinking of survival, I would die.” He convinced himself that Frederick would understand. Gunter kept Hans with him, saw thafehe got decent food, warm clothing and a soft job in the camp. There was no shame for the guard in keeping Hans. Gunter was not gay. He had a wife, children somewhere. Certainly, as Hans said, he was not the only piepel in Dachau. Many SS guards had them. Straight prisoners, criminals, murderers, “Greens,” as Hans called them after the color of their badge, had little dolls. There was no shame attached to a “normal” who used a gay for physical release. None. It was the gay who bore all the disgrace. He was nothing but a perverted straight. Gunter was transferred out of Dachau. Hans never learned where and never saw him again. But, he was sad to see the SS man go. “It was more than only a question of survival. I had become attached to him, and I think he was to me—a little bit.” Even after all these years, Hans said, he sometimes thought of Gunter and wondered about him. He was, he admitted, grateful to him. After Gunter, there were others. He was passed on from one man to another, fortunate that he was able to keep his looks. That’s how he survived, by being a whore. How many Pink Triangles were in the camp? Hans shook his head. He did not know. Hundreds, thousands, it varied from time to time. But every week, then every day new transports would be brought in—more filthy queers to be stripped of their clothes, their hair, their names, everything that had meant anything to them. “In the outside, these were respected people, good and decent people, doctors, teachers, sons of fine families. But in Dachau, they were nothing—worse than nothing.” He told me, it had to be remembered that Dachau, though the first camp, was hardly the last. Others, dozens of others were set up to hold gays, Jews and all the others who the Nazi Reich had determined to extinguish from the face of the earth. Many times, transports loaded with Pink Triangles left Dachau. A selection would be held, prisoners picked to go. At those times, he was more afraid than at any other, for it was common knowledge that there were
