Heinz Heger (1917–1994)

So different from David Koker's 400 page At The Edge of the Abyss: A Concentration Camp Diary, 1943-1944 ... composed as diary entries sent surreptitiously to friends in Holland, and altogether different from cousin Odd Nansen's book: From Day To Day: One Man's Diary of Survival in Nazi Concentration Camps ... both books published after the fact ... Koker's long after his death on the way from Auschwitz to Dachau, near the end of the war, but primarily composed during his interment at Konzentrationslager Herzogenbush,, located near a small Dutch village called Vught.
Koker managed to make a life in what eventually became a transit camp, by becoming "useful', both as a teacher of the children in the camp ... and as a worker at the Phllips Electronic Corporation workshop.

Nansen, of course, wasn't Jewish, but he was arrested at his home in Norway, when it became known that he had helped German Jews escape Germany ... (actually, before the war even started).. Compared to some concentration camp inmates, he was an "Aryan", and the son of Fridtjof Nansen, world famous Arctic explorer (and recipient of the Nobel Peace Prize),, Odd Nansen was somewhat privileged during his internment at prison camps in Grini, near Oslo, at Veidal, north of the Arctic Circle ... and later, at Sachsenhausen, the notorious German Concentration Camp north of Berlin. Nansen managed to keep an almost daily diary ... each page of which was spirited out of those camps to his wife in Oslo. As his diary was written to his wife, Nansen must have concealed much of the truth of what he experienced and saw ... if only to spare her feelings. His book was published after his return to Norway. Later translated into English, Nansen's book fills more than 600 pages.

On the other hand, Joseph Kohout's slim 120 page remembrance: The Men With The Pink Triangle, was compiled years after the war by Hans Neumann, based on a series of interviews with Kohout. Free by then to say exactly what he thought and experienced ... Kohout's brief narrative pulls no punches.

After being arrested in March 1939 by the SS,at his Austrian home, Kohout spent his first six months imprisoned in Austria, after which he was transferred to the Sachsenhausen Concentration Camp .. and though, like Nansen, not Jewish, Kohout, being a despised "homosexual" ... (despised not only by their Nazi overlords, but by every other concentration camp inmate), he saw and experienced many of the particularly brutal horrors inflicted by the SS upon his kind.(Note: The play BENT was based on his experiences at Sachsenhausen)

In May 1940 Kohout was transferred to Flossenburg Concentration Camp, located just west of the Czech border. Young, intelligent, and educated,, Kohout quickly learned that survival depended upon bending his moral principles to conform to the needs of those few who were in positions of power ... whether they be SS or a CAPO ... a prisoner in charge of work details. Six long years later ... Joseph Kohout and all the other prisoners at Flossenburg were told they were to be marched out under SS guard ... on their way (like David Koker) to Dachau. After walking for three days and nights, the prisoners awoke to find their SS guards had mysteriously vanished ...After spending the next night in a farmer's barn, they awoke to the sound of American tanks ... and freedom.

The only quibble I have with Hans Neumann's book is that apparently Joseph Kohout did not edit the manuscript. Neumann's rendition of the horrors witnessed and experienced by Joseph Kohout seems all too matter-of-fact ... Neumann's version lacks a certain force of "I was there This is what I saw and experienced, and this is how those things affected me."… (mehr)

This is a recent translation of a book which is a statement of a homosexual man who was sent to the concentration camps during the Second World War, as told to another person.

It is very well written, contains much information on the day-to-day life of "the men wearing pink triangles" - the pink triangle symbolising that the wearer is homosexual - in a concentration camp.

Being homosexual, they were considered as bad as Jews and Romani people, and even worse than the pedofiles and convicted criminals (not that being convicted during the nazi regime actually meant something).

All in all: naturally very upsetting, but not written as a scare tactic, but very upfront. The afterword is especially interesting, while Jonas Gardell's self-serving foreword is quite bad.… (mehr)