Testimony, memory and the biopolitical continuity of homosexual persecution in Heinz Heger's The Men with the Pink Triangle

Abstract

This article deals with a key text in the recovery of the memory of sexual dissidence, Die Männermitdem rosa Winkel (1972) by Heinz Heger. Written on the basis of interviews between Heinz Heger and Josef K between 1965 and 1967, it is the first testimony of the Nazi persecution of homosexuals based on the experience of an inmate with the pink triangle in the camps of Sachsenhausen and Flossenbürg. This testimonial account shows how it took almost thirty years for history to recognize the homosexual victims of Nazism. But, at the same time, it is a somewhat late text, in which sexuality is seen in a clearly essentialist way and crossed by very marked questions of morality and normality. Although published in 1972, it is clearly a text enunciated by an earlier generation, still marked in its normativity by the Nazi extermination plan.