In 2001, while reviewing under-indexed files in the
Bavarian State Archives, French historian Dr. Isabelle Fontaine
encountered a registry whose title did not appear in any standard inventory of
the Flossenbürg concentration camp. The cover was plain. The handwriting
precise. The heading read: Lustknaben-Verzeichnis.
Translated literally, the term means Register
of Pleasure Boys.
Inside were
hundreds of entries—predominantly French names—each marked with a pink
triangle and a single date. Not
an arrival date. Not a transfer notation. One date only.
It took months
of cross-referencing transport lists, infirmary logs, guard duty rosters, and
post-war testimonies to determine what that date represented. The conclusion
was stark and consistent across sources: the date of death.
What the
register documented was not an anomaly or rumor. It was evidence of a structured,
time-limited system of exploitation followed by execution,
operating within Flossenbürg under direct supervisory authority. The men
recorded there did not survive. Their absence from survivor rolls was not
accidental—it was designed.
Ideology, Prohibition, and a
Contradiction the System Exploited
Under Nazi
racial and social doctrine, men accused of same-sex relations were classified
as “degenerate” and subjected to punitive incarceration under Paragraph 175.
Official policy framed them as unfit, dangerous, and disposable.
Yet archival
evidence reveals a contradiction that the camp system exploited: the
same men condemned ideologically were selected administratively.
Youth, physical health, and appearance became criteria for a segregated
barracks—Block
17—that functioned outside the ordinary labor and punishment
regime.
This was not
mercy. It was instrumentalization.
The men
assigned to Block 17 were removed from quarry labor and received materially
better conditions—regular meals, clean clothing, indoor heating—not as
privilege, but as maintenance. Their treatment
preserved usefulness for a finite period. When that period ended, so did their
lives.
Selection Without Trial, Death
Without Record
Selections
occurred at arrival. SS personnel screened new transports, separating those
wearing the pink triangle who met specific criteria. The process left minimal
paperwork by design; orders were verbal, routinized, and embedded in camp
practice rather than formal decrees.
Once assigned
to Block 17, prisoners were absent from standard labor rolls.
Their presence appears instead in a narrow band of documentation: provisioning
lists, guard schedules, and the Lustknaben register itself. The absence of
survivor testimony from this group is not a gap—it is confirmation of the
system’s endpoint.
Executions
were carried out without judicial process and without notice. Bodies were
disposed of through camp cremation facilities or mass graves. Personal effects
were recovered and recirculated. The register closed the loop.
Witness Testimony From Outside
the Barracks
Because no
prisoner from Block 17 survived, historians rely on corroborated testimony from
men housed nearby. One such witness, Maurice Lefort, a
French political prisoner deported in 1943, described the visible disparities
that set Block 17 apart: civilian clothing, heated interiors, and the absence
of forced labor.
Lefort’s
account is notable not for speculation, but for pattern
recognition. He documented repeated disappearances—men present
one evening, absent the next—followed by the arrival of new occupants. Over
time, prisoners learned the rule: no one left Block 17 alive.
Another
witness, Heinrich
Baum, a German inmate assigned to the infirmary, provided
medical corroboration. He described treating men from Block 17 for exhaustion
and injury, noting both their awareness of impending death and the
psychological strategies they adopted to endure it—denial, resignation, and, in
rare cases, documentation.
Ritual as Control: The “Farewell”
Mechanism
Multiple
testimonies reference a ritualized final day preceding execution. This
practice—referred to by guards as an Abschiedsfest
(“farewell”)—included a meal, music, and the suspension of ordinary discipline.
From a control
perspective, the ritual served three functions:
1. Compliance: The promise of a calm final day
reduced resistance.
2. Distance: It reframed killing as procedure
rather than violence.
3. Normalization: It integrated death into
routine, minimizing moral friction for perpetrators.
Legal scholars
studying perpetrator behavior have identified such rituals as mechanisms that diffuse
responsibility within hierarchical systems—each participant
performs a role without confronting the outcome.
Command Responsibility and
Post-War Silence
The system at
Flossenbürg operated under the supervision of a deputy camp commander whose
post-war prosecution addressed other crimes but did not
include Block 17. The omission was not exculpatory; it
reflected evidentiary
absence, not innocence.
Archives had
been destroyed in the camp’s final days. Survivors from the targeted group did
not exist to testify. And for decades after the war, men persecuted under
Paragraph 175 remained criminalized in parts of Germany, discouraging witnesses
from coming forward.
Silence was
structural.
It was not
until the late twentieth century that historians could reconstruct the system
using triangulated
evidence: registers, secondary testimonies, and administrative
traces overlooked in earlier trials.
Why This History Matters Now
The Lustknaben
register is not merely a document of cruelty. It is a case study in how
bureaucratic systems can commit crimes while minimizing traceability.
No grand orders. No speeches. Just selection, maintenance, and
disposal—executed through routine.
For legal
historians, it raises enduring questions:
·
How
does command culpability function when crimes are normalized rather than exceptional?
·
What
constitutes sufficient evidence when victims are intentionally erased?
·
How
do societies memorialize crimes that challenge post-war narratives of heroism
and resistance?
In 2010, a
modest plaque was installed at Flossenbürg acknowledging the men of Block 17.
It does not list names. Most are unknown. But it affirms existence—and
responsibility.
Memory as Evidence
The men
recorded in the Lustknaben-Verzeichnis were condemned twice: first by a regime
that used them, and again by decades of omission. The rediscovery of their
history does not offer justice in the judicial sense. It offers something else:
documentation.
In the study
of mass atrocity, documentation is not secondary. It is foundational.
The register
remains in the archive. The dates remain unchanged. And the historical record
now includes what the system attempted to erase: proof that these men lived,
were exploited, and were killed—by design.
Remembering
them is not an act of sentiment.
It is an act of historical accountability.
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