5 Feet of Fury

Bernie Farber spreads myth of gay persecution during the Holocaust

A commenter at Scaramouche beats me to it:

The reality is that the Nazi party _attracted_ a disproportionate number of homosexuals (especially the predatory kind; e.g., Erns Röhm, the head of the SA, who eventually lost his power struggle with the SS and was shot in prison). William Shirer, who wrote the magisterial _The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich_, as well as a fascinating first-hand account, _Berlin Diary_, of his time as an American correspondent in Nazi Germany before U. S. involvement in the War, attests to it; He was there, he knew these people.

While it is true that some political prisoners in the concentration camps were made to wear the infamous “pink triangles,” this was done to humiliate them (not least by marking them–and other male inmates who were deemed attractive–as targets for sexual assault by the “butch” homosexuals who were also disproportionately found among SS concentration camp guards and their auxiliaries. The novelist Leon Uris alludes to this disgusting footnote of Nazi history in _Exodus_.

BONUS: Earlier.