- Paul Gerhard Vogel
Paul Gerhard Vogel (born 1915 in
Leipzig ,Germany ) is a German man who was imprisoned by the Nazis for the (then) crime ofhomosexuality .Vogel was initially imprisoned for five years for refusing to be a
Hitler Youth flag-bearer. He was released and subsequently re-arrested on charges of homosexuality. Sentenced to seven years ofhard labour inEmsland penal camp, he was made to work up to fifteen hours a day, seven days a week.Vogel was also kept tied up much of the time:
Half a year I was kept bent over... My hands were tied to my ankles. When they brought the food, the bowl was on the floor; they poured it from above and it was spilled all over. I had to lick it up with my tongue. We couldn't go out, so your ["sic"] pants were soiled [http://www.pink-triangle.org/ptps/PGV-imprison.html] .]
Vogel also claimed that several of the guards at the penal camp were "sexual sadists":
The kapo was the worst; the SS guards were lazy. They didn't push us -- that was the kapo, the shit boss. He used a young fellow -- how to say it -- as a riding horse. With him, no one said anything, but when two prisoners were together, they were called faggots, pigs, and were beaten up. The kapos themselves all had their boys, their riding horses [http://www.pink-triangle.org/ptps/PGV-kapo.html] .]
Gay prisoners, identified by the
pink triangle , were also subject to violent assaults from other prisoners.Vogel was eventually transferred out of
Emsland and sent to Nazi-occupiedNorway as a slave labourer, being forced to work barefoot clearing snow from roads.On Vogel's release he was refused compensation by the German government, following a court ruling in 1957 that gay prisoners were "common criminals" who were legitimately imprisoned.
ee also
*
Karl Gorath
*Friedrich-Paul von Groszheim
*History of gays in Nazi Germany and the Holocaust References
External links
* [http://www.petertatchell.net/history/hidden%20from%20history.htm Hidden from History: The Gay Holocaust]
* [http://www.pink-triangle.org/ptps/witness.html In Their Own Words]
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