Paul Gerhard Vogel
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Paul Gerhard Vogel is a German man who was imprisoned by the Nazis for the crime of homosexuality.
Vogel was initially imprisoned for five years for refusing to be a Hitler Youth flag-bearer. He was released and subsequently re-arrested on charges of homosexuality. Sentenced to seven years hard labour in Emsland penal camp, he was made to work up to fifteen hours a day, seven days a week.
Vogel was also kept tied up much of the time:
Half a year I was kept bent over... My hands were tied to my ankles. When they brought the food, the bowl was on the floor; they poured it from above and it was spilled all over. I had to lick it up with my tongue. We couldn't go out, so your [[[sic]]] pants were soiled [1].
" Vogel also claimed that several of the guards at the penal camp were "sexual sadists":
The kapo was the worst; the SS guards were lazy. They didn't push us -- that was the kapo, the shit boss. He used a young fellow -- how to say it -- as a riding horse. With him, no one said anything, but when two prisoners were together, they were called faggots, pigs, and were beaten up. The kapos themselves all had their boys, their riding horses [2].
Gay prisoners, identified by the pink triangle, were also subject to violent assaults from other prisoners.
Vogel was eventually transferred out of Emsland and sent to Nazi-occupied Norway as a slave labourer, being forced to work barefoot clearing snow from roads.
On Vogel's release he was refused compensation by the German government, following a court ruling in 1957 that gay prisoners were "common criminals" who were legitimately imprisoned.
