Book Review of "Men with the Pink Triangle" by Heinz Heger

BOOK BLURB:
For decades, history ignored the Nazi persecution of gay people. Only with the rise of the gay movement in the 1970s did historians finally recognize that homosexuals, like the Jews and others deemed "undesirable," suffered enormously at the hands of the Third Reich.

Of the few gay men who survived the concentration camps, only one ever came forward to tell his story. This book tells the true story of an Austrian man who, because of the persecution that continued when he first broke his silence in 1971, chose to remain anonymous.

BOOK REVIEW:
Written in the first person, this book describes in vivid detail the horror of day to day life in a Nazi concentration camp. It's one man's eyewitness account of the camps, the death and degradation he faced on a daily basis, and how he clung to his humanity ~ and his life ~ against such unbearable odds.

Most telling ~ though not really very surprising, given the vast power differences between prisoners and their guards ~ was his recollection of camp politics. He managed to survive by taking advantage of a guard whose friendliness toward him turned into sexual interest.

This book is not for the faint of heart. The scenes of horror that play out ~ the executions, the torture ~ are not graphic in their description, but the stark, terse language in which they're conveyed, married with the sense of hopelessness you read between the lines, speak more to the brutality of the Nazis than a thousand descriptive paragraphs ever could.

But this was probably one of the best books I've read on the Holocaust. I wish it were required reading for every person, everywhere, as a testament of the human spirit in adversity and a warning to us all. Perhaps then we could begin to move past our differences to a more peaceful co-existance.