The History of Sex: Berlin -- Ashamed and Open -- (Chapter IX, Part 17)

No one knows how many homosexuals were killed in the Holocaust: estimates range from tens of thousands to over half a million.

Incredibly, the Nazi version of Paragraph 175 was one of Hitler's few laws to remain in force under the Allies: in postwar West Germany, at least as many men were prosecuted for being gay as had been during the Third Reich.

As a result, many gay survivors were afraid to speak out for fear of being treated as criminals. 

'Germans in general are very good at feeling guilty,' Stephan told me, explaining that in the gay community, this sense of shame often manifests itself in extreme behavior.

He's even seen some gays dress up as Nazis for theme parties or as skinheads wearing jackets over LONSDALE shirts so that the logo looks like NSDAP: the Nazi Party's initials.

'I find it very strange that we would dress up as people who were our predators,' he mused. 'You can be ashamed and open at the same time.'

* * *

The History of Sex: Berlin -- 'I Sometimes Wake Up Howling' -- (Chapter IX, Part 16)

In the camps, gay men were usually forced to wear pink triangles, making them targets for their fellow prisoners, as well as the guards and SS doctors, who injected gay men with hormones to try to 'cure' homosexuality.

Pierre Seel was a gay teenager in a French border town when the Nazis overran his country.

Although his boyfriend, 'Jo,' seemed to have escaped, Seel was arrested in 1941 and tortured along with other known homosexuals.

'Outraged by our resistance, the SS began pulling out the fingernails of some prisoners. In their fury, they broke the rulers we were kneeling on and used them to rape us. Our bowels were punctured. Blood spurted everywhere. My ears still ring with the shrieks of our pain.'

Worse came in the camp.

'One day the loudspeakers ordered us to report immediately to the roll-call. Two SS men brought a young man to the center of our square. Horrified, I recognized Jo, who was only 18. I hadn't previously spotted him…'

'The loudspeakers broadcast some noisy classical music while the SS stripped him naked and shoved a tin pail over his head. Next they set their ferocious German shepherds on him: the guard dogs first bit into his groin and thighs, then devoured him right in front of us.'

'His shrieks of pain were distorted and amplified by the pail in which his head was trapped. My rigid body reeled, my eyes gaped at so much horror, tears poured down my cheeks. I fervently prayed that he would black out quickly. Since then I sometimes wake up howling in the middle of the night.'

The History of Sex: Berlin -- 'Such Nice, Pretty Boys' -- (Chapter IX, Part 15)

However, sex was so much a part of Gad's survival that you wonder whether a straight man in his position would have lasted as long as he did.

One of Gad's saving graces, for lack of a better term, was that he had few qualms about having sex with his male protectors.

He got an office job thanks to some help from his Uncle Paul—'which didn't limit itself to the typewriter:' 'we exchanged intimacy deliberately, intentionally, for the first time… It's amazing when you think that at the time he was pushing sixty.'

SOMETHING TO OFFER

And on his twentieth birthday, Gad's German boss took him for ice cream and offered him a place to hide illegals.

'Of course he wanted something in return. He wanted me. I wasn't totally uninterested… I had already noticed he had something to offer in his pants. He was wearing light gabardine slacks that brought out his anatomy nicely.'

One day Gad was told to get in touch with an engineering official named Paul Dreyer who'd helped one of his Jewish lovers escape to Switzerland (another of Gad's unlikely helpers was a middle-aged prostitute who claimed to be an aristocrat).

Ultimately, though, it was a turncoat for the other side who snared him: Stella Kubler, a Jewish femme fatale who hunted Jews in hiding.

The Nazis called Jewish traitor
Stella Kubler 'Blonde Poison'

One of her fellow 'catchers' snared Dreyer in March 1945.

This book was written by one of
Kubler's former classmates at a Jewish school

'He tried to improve his situation during the questioning by claiming he didn't know we were Jews,' Gad wrote.

Instead, Dreyer told his interrogators he'd helped them "because they were such nice, pretty boys."

A few months after the war, Gad saw Dreyer.

'He looked absolutely terrible. They had set two trained dogs on him—specialists in testicles and ears. There wasn't the slightest trace of outer ear to be seen, and he was virtually deaf. With regards to the other body part, he said all that was left was a hole for peeing.'

In the Seventies, Gad bumped into him again.

'He told me—he was around seventy to my fifty-five—that he had by no means given up on sex; there was another spot that had a lot of sensation. I got chills thinking about it.'