Commentary by Filip Titlbach: If you applaud Trump (with the pink triangle), you are also applauding one of the most horrific ordeals in human history
Is there a way back?
"If I was scared before, now I'm scared to death. The President of the United States just released this. I've never been more scared in my life than I am right now. It's a sign of things to come," user @onlyausername says in a shaky voice in the video. His video has been seen by over two million people in just a few days.
The reply that has garnered the most likes - over 55,000 - is: "Hello from Germany. We saw it and a lot of us are scared too. But you must be mad! You have to fight because otherwise there is no way back. Our history doesn't have to be your future," wrote user @liisaa1503.
It's a response to user @realDonaldTrump on Truth Social. The US president posted an article on his account by the conservative Washington Times titled "Military recruitment ads look a lot different under Trump." The opinion piece argues that the Pentagon under Trump is shifting away from social and cultural themes to an emphasis on the military's readiness and lethality. The article is accompanied by a television graphic in which a pink triangle appears behind the ban sign.
Screen of Donald Trump's postPhoto: @realDonaldTrump/Truth Social/se svolením
Nazi "window"
During the Nazi regime, same-sex love was considered a threat to the "Aryan race." Like Jews, communists, or "criminals," gay men were forcibly affixed to their uniforms by concentration camp guards with divisive symbols, in this case a pink triangle. Prisoners were particularly cruel to homosexuals. This marking made many men targets in shooting galleries. In addition, the Nazis used them for their cold-blooded "medical" experiments to find a "cure for homosexuality".
One SS-funded experiment, for example, involved cuts to the groin, where a doctor implanted a metal tube that released testosterone into the body. The Nazis believed that the cause of homosexuality was a lack of testosterone. The main centres of human experimentation on gay men were the concentration camps of Dachau and Buchenwald.
Between 1933 and 1945, approximately 100,000 men were arrested for homosexuality, about half of whom were officially convicted. Most served their sentences in regular prisons. It is estimated that around ten thousand people ended up in concentration camps. The exact number of victims is not known, but it is estimated that the death rate for these prisoners was higher than for other groups such as political prisoners or Jehovah's Witnesses. According to researcher Rüdiger Lautmann, the death rate for gay men was as high as sixty percent.
In addition to medical experiments, homosexuals in the concentration camps were also subjected to extreme abuse, forced labour and sexual abuse. They were among the "lowest" group in the camp hierarchy and were often isolated from other prisoners.
Even after the war, the victims did not get any satisfaction. Indeed, homosexual survivors were not recognized as victims of Nazism and continued to face discrimination in the vast majority of countries. In Germany itself, homosexuality remained punishable until the late 1960s. Only a handful lived to see partial compensation. It was not until 2002 that the German Bundestag abolished Nazi sentences against homosexuals. And only in 2017 were victims offered compensation. The recognition came after decades of struggle for justice.
And a few years later comes Donald Trump's second term in office. Two of his men - Elon Musk and Steve Bannon - held up the right in front of the cameras. And the US president himself is not shy about sharing the crossed-out pink triangle, a patch worn on the chest by victims of the Nazi regime out of compulsion. Those who applaud Trump are applauding one of the most horrific and monstrous sufferings in human history. And with him, he opens the door wide to hatred.
