There appears to have been an additional, deep-rooted folkloric dogma at work that doomed efforts by gays to associate with one another or with their fellow-sufferers [in Nazi concentration camps]. In his reminiscences, Hoess observed that "even if they were in poor physical shape, they always had to indulge their vice."

It wasn't only Hoess and other SS rulers who presumed that homosexuals always had sex on their minds and were forever bent on seducing heterosexuals. The inmates themselves also tended to regard gays as men for whom nothing was more important than their genitalia. After all, that was why they were jailed, that was what distinguished them from all other prisoners.In the camps, with no women present, even the political prisoners worried that the situation offered the gays too many opportunities to approach sex-starved males. Such contact, in turn, was likely to lead to private relationships, perhaps with Kapos or even guards, which might endanger the solidarity of the antifascist coalition. Thus, when gay inmates tried to join the clandestine camp committee, they were rejected. Both Nazi overseers and their prisoners took it for granted that the men with the pink triangles were somehow biologically programmed to seek nothing but sexual satisfaction. Homophobia flourished everywhere, making it nearly impossible for gays to join any effort by prisonners to improve conditions in the barracks. They were suspect as a class. Whatever assistance they might offer was thought to mask a sexual motive.

This widely accepted dogma had long been a staple of German folklore. It was taken as gospel not only by ordinary workers but also by lawmakers, educators and politicians. From the start, the Nazi regime shrewdly exploited the antihomosexual sentiments of large segments of Germany's populace, much as it had played on the anti-Semitic attitudes of most classes. Nevertheless, while Himmler had branded homosexuals enemies of the state, as he had labeled Jews, Communists, and other contragenics, this honor did not necessarily mean that non-gay prisoners were particularly willing to accept homosexuals as victims.

From The Pink Triangle, Richard Plant, published by Henry Holt and Company, Inc. - 1986.