From Jeb and Dash--A Diary of Gay Life, 1918-1945
Edited by Ina Russell

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But on the table lay State Department documents, the top paper marked "classified." I saw enough of the page to read Hans Vermehren's name. Other pages described other men.

I was reading the material when Dash and Max returned. Max, seeing what I held in my hand, disappeared into his room. Dash hung up his coat, watching me. "That's classified," he said. I asked, "Are Hans and these others incarcerated for the same reason?" Dash said briefly, "Pretty obvious." I went to the window and gazed out into the darkness ...When I left, I felt almost as sick-hearted as I can remember.

Homosexuality in Nazi Germany.
What happened to Hans is not known. Homosexual practices among men were illegal in Nazi Germany, though lesbianism was not. Under Hitler, thousands of homosexual men were imprisoned in German concentration camps. When the camps were liberated by U S. troops, individuals who were incarcerated because of German laws, as opposed to individuals who had been placed in concentration camps for political or ethnic reasons, were not freed. A brief grainy black-and-white piece of film footage from the era, available in a documentary film called Pink Triangle, shows a homosexual man, his starved legs dangling, being carried by two U S. soldiers back into a prison.

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