WALTER DEGEN
Walter Degen (nr 20285) was born on 4 January 1909 in Mörchingen – between 1871–1918 Mörchingen was located in Germany, today it is a commune called Morhange in North East France. Walter was a locksmith. He was transported to the camp within a group of 21 prisoners deported by the Stapo and Kipo from Vienna, Brünn, Prague, Troppau, Breslau, Schwerin, Frankfurt an der Oder and Kattowitz. They were registered in the camp on 29 August 1941. Walter Degen was registered both as a homosexual and a German political prisoner.
Paragraph 175 In Auschwitz, prisoners of German nationality designated by a pink triangle were arrested under Paragraph 175 of the German criminal code as “asocial parasites” for “endangering the morality and purity of the German race”. Paragraph 175 made homosexual acts between males a crime. The Nazis arrested an estimated 100,000 homosexual men, 50,000 of whom were imprisoned. The majority of the several thousand homosexuals arrested before the war ended up in concentration camps such as Dachau, Sachsenhausen, or Flossenbürg. According to the current state of knowledge, at least 77 prisoners of Auschwitz were persecuted for their homosexuality, of which at least 43 died. Homosexuals were among the most abused groups in the camps.
PERSECUTION OF HOMOSEXUALS
Conditions in the camps were generally harsh for all inmates, many of whom died from hunger, disease, exhaustion, exposure to the cold, and brutal treatment. Many survivors have testified that men with pink triangles were often treated particularly severely by guards and inmates alike because of widespread biases against homosexuals. As was true with other prisoner categories, some homosexuals were also victims of cruel medical experiments, including castration. At Buchenwald concentration camp, SS physician Dr. Carl Vaernet performed operations designed to convert men to heterosexuals: the surgical insertion of a capsule which released the male hormone testosterone. Such procedures reflected the desire by Himmler and others to find a medical solution to homosexuality.
The vast majority of homosexual victims were males; lesbians were not subjected to systematic persecution. While lesbian bars were closed, few women are believed to have been arrested. Paragraph 175 did not mention female homosexuality. Lesbianism was seen by many Nazi officials as alien to the nature of the Aryan woman. In some cases, the police arrested lesbians as “asocials” or “prostitutes.” One woman, Henny Schermann, was arrested in 1940 in Frankfurt and was labeled “licentious Lesbian” on her mug shot; but she was also a “stateless Jew,” sufficient cause for deportation. Among the Jewish inmates at Ravensbrück concentration camp selected for extermination, she was gassed in the Bernburg psychiatric hospital, a “euthanasia” killing center in Germany, in 1942.
Consequently, the vast majority of homosexuals arrested under Paragraph 175 were Germans or Austrians. Unlike Jews, men arrested as homosexuals were not systematically deported to Nazi-established ghettos in eastern Europe. Nor were they transported in mass groups of homosexual prisoners to Nazi extermination camps in Poland.
It should be noted that Nazi authorities sometimes used the charge of homosexuality to discredit and undermine their political opponents. Charges of homosexuality among the SA (Storm trooper) leadership figured prominently among justifications for the bloody purge of SA chief Ernst Röhm in June 1934. Nazi leader Hermann Göring used trumped-up accusations of homosexual improprieties to unseat army supreme commander Von Fritsch, an opponent of Hitler’s military policy, in early 1938. Finally, a 1935 propaganda campaign and two show trials in 1936 and 1937 alleging rampant homosexuality in the priesthood, attempted to undercut the power of the Roman Catholic Church in Germany, an institution which many Nazi officials considered their most powerful potential enemy.
After the war, homosexual concentration camp prisoners were not acknowledged as victims of Nazi persecution, and reparations were refused. Under the Allied Military Government of Germany, some homosexuals were forced to serve out their terms of imprisonment, regardless of the time spent in concentration camps. The 1935 version of Paragraph 175 remained in effect in the Federal Republic (West Germany) until 1969, so that well after liberation, homosexuals continued to fear arrest and incarceration. Source – United States Holocaust Memorial Museum
In May 1942 Walter Degen was transferred to Mauthausen concentration camp. It is not known if he survived.Paragraph 175 In Auschwitz, prisoners of German nationality designated by a pink triangle were arrested under Paragraph 175 of the German criminal code as “asocial parasites” for “endangering the morality and purity of the German race”. Paragraph 175 made homosexual acts between males a crime. The Nazis arrested an estimated 100,000 homosexual men, 50,000 of whom were imprisoned. The majority of the several thousand homosexuals arrested before the war ended up in concentration camps such as Dachau, Sachsenhausen, or Flossenbürg. According to the current state of knowledge, at least 77 prisoners of Auschwitz were persecuted for their homosexuality, of which at least 43 died. Homosexuals were among the most abused groups in the camps.
PERSECUTION OF HOMOSEXUALS
Conditions in the camps were generally harsh for all inmates, many of whom died from hunger, disease, exhaustion, exposure to the cold, and brutal treatment. Many survivors have testified that men with pink triangles were often treated particularly severely by guards and inmates alike because of widespread biases against homosexuals. As was true with other prisoner categories, some homosexuals were also victims of cruel medical experiments, including castration. At Buchenwald concentration camp, SS physician Dr. Carl Vaernet performed operations designed to convert men to heterosexuals: the surgical insertion of a capsule which released the male hormone testosterone. Such procedures reflected the desire by Himmler and others to find a medical solution to homosexuality.
The vast majority of homosexual victims were males; lesbians were not subjected to systematic persecution. While lesbian bars were closed, few women are believed to have been arrested. Paragraph 175 did not mention female homosexuality. Lesbianism was seen by many Nazi officials as alien to the nature of the Aryan woman. In some cases, the police arrested lesbians as “asocials” or “prostitutes.” One woman, Henny Schermann, was arrested in 1940 in Frankfurt and was labeled “licentious Lesbian” on her mug shot; but she was also a “stateless Jew,” sufficient cause for deportation. Among the Jewish inmates at Ravensbrück concentration camp selected for extermination, she was gassed in the Bernburg psychiatric hospital, a “euthanasia” killing center in Germany, in 1942.
Consequently, the vast majority of homosexuals arrested under Paragraph 175 were Germans or Austrians. Unlike Jews, men arrested as homosexuals were not systematically deported to Nazi-established ghettos in eastern Europe. Nor were they transported in mass groups of homosexual prisoners to Nazi extermination camps in Poland.
It should be noted that Nazi authorities sometimes used the charge of homosexuality to discredit and undermine their political opponents. Charges of homosexuality among the SA (Storm trooper) leadership figured prominently among justifications for the bloody purge of SA chief Ernst Röhm in June 1934. Nazi leader Hermann Göring used trumped-up accusations of homosexual improprieties to unseat army supreme commander Von Fritsch, an opponent of Hitler’s military policy, in early 1938. Finally, a 1935 propaganda campaign and two show trials in 1936 and 1937 alleging rampant homosexuality in the priesthood, attempted to undercut the power of the Roman Catholic Church in Germany, an institution which many Nazi officials considered their most powerful potential enemy.
After the war, homosexual concentration camp prisoners were not acknowledged as victims of Nazi persecution, and reparations were refused. Under the Allied Military Government of Germany, some homosexuals were forced to serve out their terms of imprisonment, regardless of the time spent in concentration camps. The 1935 version of Paragraph 175 remained in effect in the Federal Republic (West Germany) until 1969, so that well after liberation, homosexuals continued to fear arrest and incarceration. Source – United States Holocaust Memorial Museum
This profile of Walter Degen appears on the site "Faces of Auschwitz", a collaboration between the Auschwitz-Birkenau Museum, a Brazilian photo colorization specialist Marina Amaral, and a dedicated team of academics, journalists and volunteers. The goal of the project is to honor the memory and lives of Auschwitz-Birkenau prisoners by colorizing registration photographs culled from the museum’s archive and sharing individual stories of those whose faces were photographed.
In this age where Fascism is once gain on the rise globally but most shockingly in the United States, at a time when xenophobic hate encouraged by the current President runs rampant, and the Supreme Court of the United States is about to install a justice whose extreme, radicalized ideas threaten the future of gay rights (among MANY other rights), we need to remember how far it can all go, now more than ever.
https://facesofauschwitz.com/gallery/walter-degen/
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