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Rating: 
Summary: Excellent gay history
Review: It's obvious that Richard Plant did his research before writing this book, there's a severe lack of information on this particular topic floating around out there. As I did a report entitled "Homosexuals in the Holocaust: The Forgotten Victims of the Third Reich," I found this to be the most complete book on the obscure topic. It may make for dull Sunday afternoon reading, but for all my intents and purposes, it was excellently detailed and precise.
Rating: 
Summary: Not much action
Review: OK, we know what the Nazis thought of Jews, so woowoo, it does not take a lot of imagination to figure out what they thought about Jewish homosexuals. With a title like "The Pink Triangle" one would expect a lot of antidotal stories of Third Reich horror. Unfortunately you will not get that here - not even the usual pictures unidentifiable starved dead bodies stacked up all over the place.This is more of a one man's search for his long lost childhood buddy. The author was separated from a dear friend in the early 1930's and began a search for him long after WWII ended. There is some well known high level history of the era thrown in just for filler. This book is a very easy read, but if you are truly interested in the history of the era, there are a lot of far better books on the market.
Rating:
Summary: Not much action
Review: OK, we know what the Nazis thought of Jews, so woowoo, it does not take a lot of imagination to figure out what they thought about Jewish homosexuals. With a title like "The Pink Triangle" one would expect a lot of antidotal stories of Third Reich horror. Unfortunately you will not get that here - not even the usual pictures unidentifiable starved dead bodies stacked up all over the place. This is more of a one man's search for his long lost childhood buddy. The author was separated from a dear friend in the early 1930's and began a search for him long after WWII ended. There is some well known high level history of the era thrown in just for filler. This book is a very easy read, but if you are truly interested in the history of the era, there are a lot of far better books on the market.
Rating:
Summary: A chapter of the Holocaust not to be ignored
Review: Plant gives incredible detail into the lives of those in charge of the persecution of homosexuals by the Nazis in World War II. In addition to a behind the scenes look into Nazi operations, including biographies of SS Himmler and Roehm, Hitler's top officials, Plant puts it all in the context of what gay Berlin/Germany was like at the time and leading up to WWII. Overall, this book is quite informative and eye opening, but a little dry. I expected to see shocking photos and gut wrenching first hand accounts of tragedy, etc but simply found a historical account that would be helpful as a textbook. I would recommend this for anyone interested in the subject matter, but not necessarily as free reading.
Rating:
Summary: Informative but a Little Dry
Review: Plant gives incredible detail into the lives of those in charge of the persecution of homosexuals by the Nazis in World War II. In addition to a behind the scenes look into Nazi operations, including biographies of SS Himmler and Roehm, Hitler's top officials, Plant puts it all in the context of what gay Berlin/Germany was like at the time and leading up to WWII. Overall, this book is quite informative and eye opening, but a little dry. I expected to see shocking photos and gut wrenching first hand accounts of tragedy, etc but simply found a historical account that would be helpful as a textbook. I would recommend this for anyone interested in the subject matter, but not necessarily as free reading.
Rating:
Summary: A chapter of the Holocaust not to be ignored
Review: The sheer number of victims of Hitler's Nazi Holocaust during the Third Reich is so numbing that piling on more numbers may not even register. But the numbers are higher than the 6 million usually given and almost always in reference to the Jewish victims. Some estimates are up to double that number when other categories of what Hitler decried as "degenerates" are added, and this book calls attention to one such group, either forgotten or ignored by history, but present nonetheless. "Men With the Pink Triangle ..." chronicles one survivor's eyewitness account of a then-young Viennese student remanded to an East German concentration camp and branded with a pink triangle, the sign of its bearers as homosexuals. Writer Heinz Heger miraculously survived six years (1939-'45) of concentration camp horrors: the ever-present smell of death, the sound of war, the filth, and the inhumanity from which more died than survived. Herger's first-hand account is chilling but embarrassing because it wasn't until the 1970's, when gay liberation gained a foothold in social rights movements, that Nazi persecution of gay people was even acknowledged. That vital component in probably the darkest chapter in human history coincidentally now, in 2003, is being threatened by a state legislator in Minnesota. Republican Arlon Lidner claims that no such persecution of gays in Nazi Europe ever occurred and is somehow tying that argument to his proposal to repeal his state's human rights amendment that protects gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgendered persons from discrimination. Lidner's proposing further legislation to remove sexual orientation as a protected class in the state of Minnesota's hate crimes laws. How he justifies his homophobic crusade based on his argument that gays weren't gassed by their Nazi captors is unclear. But this publication may well be more relevant now than ever because a crucial part of history may be fully discarded, and by ignoring it risks it happening again. More broadly, though, Heger's memories are less about his persecution because of his sexual orientation and more a shattering testament to the horror that was the Holocaust and to the evil that man can do. With the generation of Holocaust survivors steadily being silenced to death, the cries from the written accounts like Heger's and others should not and cannot cannot be denied.
Rating:
Summary: The silent holocaust
Review: This work is a great eye opener for those wishing to discover much of what I have come to call the 'silent holocaust'. The treatment of homosexuals by the Nazi army was harsh and cruel yet the names of the dead resound silent throughout much of history. Through this silence we can see how our society has not changed in it's compassion and cultural 'taboos' even when bigotry reaches into mass-killing of innocent peoples. Today the murder of innocent men and women for their sexuality continues as the mentality of ethnic (and thus "moral") superiority. This book should be read by anyone who desires to learn about this 'silent holocaust' and how to prevent history for repeating itself. Namaste and Peace to all!
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