In 2001, a French historian named Dr. Isabelle Fontaine was conducting research in the archives of the Flossenbürg camp in Bavaria. She was looking for documents on French prisoners deported during the war. In a dusty box, she found a register that she had never seen mentioned in any study.
The register bore a strange title: Lustknaben-Verzeichnis. In German, this meant “Register of Pleasure Boys.” Dr. Fontaine opened the register; inside were hundreds of names, mostly French names. Next to each name, a hand-drawn pink triangle and a date—always a single date, never two.
She did not immediately understand what she was looking at. It was only by cross-referencing this information with other archives that she discovered the truth. The Lustknaben, the “pleasure boys,” were a specific group of French homosexual prisoners. They had been selected for their youth, their physical appearance, and certain characteristics that the SS deemed desirable.
And the date next to each name was not the date of arrival at the camp; it was the date of their death. But what made this discovery truly chilling was what happened between the selection and the execution. For the “pleasure boys” did not die immediately. They lived for weeks, sometimes months, in a separate barrack.
A barrack where they received radically different treatment from the other prisoners: real food, clean clothes, hot showers, cigarettes. And then one day, without warning, they were executed. Dr. Fontaine spent the following years reconstructing the history of this system. She found testimonies from survivors—not from the “pleasure boys” themselves, for none had survived, but from prisoners who had been alongside them, who had seen what was happening. What she discovered was one of the most perverse and least documented forms of Nazi cruelty.
In Nazi ideology, homosexuals were considered degenerates—men who had renounced their masculinity, who had become “feminized,” and who represented a threat to the purity of the Aryan race. But this hatred coexisted with something else. Something that the Nazis would never have officially admitted, but which showed through their actions: a fascination.
For while homosexuals were officially despised, certain SS officers felt a morbid interest in them—an interest that mixed disgust and desire, hatred and attraction; an interest they could not express openly but could satisfy in the lawless universe of the concentration camps.
The “pleasure boys” system was born from this contradiction. It had been created in Flossenbürg under the supervision of a deputy commander named Obersturmführer Karl-Heinz Dietrich. Dietrich was a complex man: married, father of two children, a convinced Nazi, but also, according to post-war testimonies, a repressed homosexual who hated what he was.
Dietrich had an idea—an idea that allowed him to satisfy his desires while remaining within the limits of Nazi ideology. Homosexual prisoners were sentenced to death anyway. They would not survive the camp; that was a certainty. So, why not use them before their death? Why not create a system where some of them would be selected, treated differently, and kept alive for the pleasure of the officers? And when they had served their function, they would be eliminated and replaced by others—a perpetual cycle of selection, use, and destruction. It was monstrous, it was logical within the twisted logic of Nazism, and it was terribly effective.
The selection took place upon the arrival of the convoys. When a transport of French prisoners arrived at Flossenbürg, an officer reviewed the new arrivals. He looked for specific criteria: youth (under 30), a pleasant physical appearance, and a relatively robust constitution. The prisoners with the pink triangle who met these criteria were separated from the others. They were told they had been selected for “special work.” They were taken to the block—the barrack of the Lustknaben.
What awaited them there was confusing. Instead of the hell they had imagined, they discovered something that almost resembled paradise: beds with real mattresses, clean blankets, abundant food, white bread, meat, vegetables, sometimes even chocolate or cakes.
They received civilian clothes instead of striped uniforms. They could wash every day. They did not have to work in the quarries like the other prisoners. For men who had just crossed through the hell of deportation, it was incomprehensible. “Why this preferential treatment? What did the Germans expect from them?” They were soon to find out.
This story is that of a man who witnessed the “pleasure boys” system, not as a victim, but as an ordinary prisoner who saw what was happening on the other side of the barbed wire. His name was Maurice Lefort. He was a resistance fighter, arrested in 1943, and deported to Flossenbürg for his activities against the occupier. He wore the red triangle of political prisoners.
Maurice survived the war, and in 1998, at the age of 82, he agreed to testify for the first time about what he had seen in the camp. His testimony is one of the rare documents describing the daily life of Block 17. Maurice arrived at Flossenbürg in September 1943. Like all new prisoners, he was first subjected to the ordinary regime of the camp: exhausting work in the granite quarries, constant hunger, beatings, and humiliation.
After a few weeks, he was assigned to Block 14, a barrack for political prisoners located near the center of the camp. From his bunk, he could see Block 17, the barrack of the Lustknaben. The first thing that struck him was the difference.
Block 17 was better maintained than the others. The windows had curtains, and smoke came from the chimney even when the other barracks were freezing. And the men who lived there did not look like prisoners. “They looked almost normal,” Maurice recounted in his testimony.
“They weren’t skeletal like us. They wore civilian clothes—shirts, pants, sometimes even jackets. They walked without rushing, without the constant terror seen in other prisoners. At first, I didn’t understand. I thought they were perhaps privileged prisoners, Capos, or collaborators. But they wore the pink triangle. They were homosexuals, the most despised of all prisoners. And yet, they lived better than us. Much better.”
Maurice quickly learned the truth about Block 17. The other prisoners spoke of it in low voices with a mixture of jealousy and horror. The Lustknaben were the toys of the SS officers. In the evening after roll call, some of them were summoned to the officers’ quarters. What happened there, no one said explicitly, but everyone understood. In exchange for these “services,” they received preferential treatment: the food, the clothes, the exemption from work—a life almost bearable in the hell of the camp.
But there was a price, a price that the Lustknaben discovered sooner or later. They were all sentenced to death. Not immediately, not in a predictable way, but inevitably. When an officer grew tired of a “pleasure boy,” when a prisoner became too sick or too old, or when the block needed space for new arrivals, the executions took place without trial and without warning.
One evening, the prisoner was there. The next morning, he was gone. And the cruelest, most perverse thing was what happened just before. Maurice remembered an evening in December 1943. It was freezing cold. The prisoners of Block 14 were huddled on their bunks, trying to conserve a little heat. Outside, the snow was falling.
Suddenly, music—music coming from the block. Real music, a gramophone, French songs. Maurice crawled to the window. What he saw marked him forever. Block 17 was illuminated. Through the windows, he could see a party—a real party with food on the tables, bottles of wine, and cigarettes.
The “pleasure boys” were dancing, laughing, and singing. SS officers were present. They were drinking with the prisoners, offering them gifts: watches, lighters, valuable objects confiscated from other deportees. “It was surreal,” Maurice recounted. “On one side, us, dying of hunger and cold; on the other, this party, this apparent joy. It looked like two different worlds.”
The party lasted until late at night. Then the lights went out. The next morning, Maurice found out. Three of the “pleasure boys” who had participated in the party had been executed at dawn, shot behind the block, and buried in a mass grave. The party was not a celebration; it was a farewell. A last meal offered to the condemned before their death. The Germans called it the Abschiedsfest, the “farewell party.”
The Abschiedsfest was a codified, almost formal ritual. When a “pleasure boy” was sentenced to death—a decision made by Dietrich or the officer to whom he was assigned—he received special treatment during his final 24 hours.
First, a meal. Not just any meal—a feast. Meat, fresh bread, vegetables, wine, desserts; everything the prisoner wanted to eat within the limits of possibility. Then, gifts. Valuable objects, often confiscated from Jewish prisoners, were offered to the condemned: watches, jewelry, quality clothing—items they could never use but were given to them anyway.
Then, the music. A gramophone played songs, often French songs, chosen to remind the prisoners of their native country. Sometimes they were asked to dance. And finally, the night—a last night in the block with the other “pleasure boys.” A night where everyone knew what was going to happen but where no one spoke of it.
At dawn, the guards came for the condemned man. He was taken behind the barrack. A gunshot, and it was over. The body was buried in a nameless mass grave without ceremony. The deceased’s belongings, including the gifts from the day before, were recovered and reused for the next condemned man. It was a cycle—a macabre cycle of false celebrations and real deaths.
Why this ritual? Why offer a last meal to men who were going to be killed anyway? Historians have proposed several explanations. Some believe it was a way for SS officers to give themselves a clear conscience. By offering a beautiful last day to their victim, they could convince themselves they weren’t completely cruel: “See, we offered him a good meal. We treated him with dignity.”
Others believe it was a form of refined sadism. The contrast between the feast and the execution made death even crueler. To give hope, or at least a moment of respite, only to take it away better afterward.
Still others think it was a control mechanism. The “pleasure boys” who saw their comrades receive a beautiful last day could tell themselves that their own death, when it came, would at least be preceded by a moment of peace. This made them more docile, more cooperative.
But perhaps the real reason was simpler. Perhaps the Nazis did it because they could—because in the universe of the camps, they had absolute power over life and death. And this power allowed them to play with their victims like a cat plays with a mouse. Giving, taking back, giving, taking back. Until the end.
Maurice Lefort’s testimony included the account of a particular Abschiedsfest he had witnessed indirectly. It was in February 1944. A young Frenchman—Maurice only knew his first name, Étienne—had been in Block 17 for four months. He was 19 years old. Étienne had become the favorite of an SS officer, a man named Untersturmführer Vogel.
For four months, he had benefited from even better treatment than the other Lustknaben: more elegant clothes, more abundant food, and protection against other guards. Then one day, Vogel grew tired. Perhaps Étienne had done something wrong. Perhaps Vogel had simply found another favorite.
No one really knew. What was known was that Étienne was sentenced to the Abschiedsfest. Maurice remembered that evening. It was snowing. From his window, he saw the lights of the block; he heard the music, “J’attendrai,” the song by Rina Ketty. And he saw Étienne dancing. “He was dancing alone in the middle of the room,” Maurice recounted.
“The others were watching; some were crying. He was dancing as if it were the last thing he would do in his life, which was the case. At one point, he stopped. He looked out the window. I think he saw me. Our eyes met, and I saw something in his gaze. Not fear, not sadness—something like peace, as if he had accepted what was going to happen.”
“The next morning, I heard the gunshot—a single shot—and then nothing more.” Étienne was 19 years old. He was the youngest of the “pleasure boys” executed at Flossenbürg. None of the “pleasure boys” survived the war. That was the principle of the system.
No one was to testify. The prisoners of Block 17 were all executed before the camp was liberated. The last ones died in April, only a few days before the arrival of the Americans. But other prisoners had seen. Men like Maurice Lefort, who had observed from afar, who had heard the stories, who knew what was happening in Block 17. And a few of these witnesses spoke.
The most detailed testimony comes from a man named Heinrich Baum. Heinrich was a German prisoner, a homosexual himself, who had been at Flossenbürg from 1941 to 1945. He had not been selected as a Lustknabe. He was too old, too ordinary in appearance. But he had worked as an orderly in the camp infirmary.
In this capacity, he had had contact with the “pleasure boys.” He saw them when they were sick. He treated them when they returned injured from their visits to the officers. And sometimes he spoke to them. In 1983, at the age of 60, Heinrich gave a long testimony to a German historian. This testimony, which remained in the archives for a long time, was rediscovered by Dr. Fontaine in 2003.
Heinrich described the daily life of the Lustknaben with unsettling precision. “They lived in a bubble,” he said, “a bubble of false normality in the middle of hell. They ate well, slept well, didn’t work. But they knew. They all knew they were going to die.”
“Some tried not to think about it. They enjoyed every day, every meal, every moment of respite. They said to themselves, ‘Maybe I’ll be the only one to survive. Maybe the war will end before my turn.’ Others became fatalistic. They accepted their fate with a resignation that broke my heart. They said, ‘At least I’ll die with a full stomach. At least I won’t die in the quarry, exhausted and starving.'”
“And still others, the rarest, found a form of resistance. They refused to submit completely. They kept a part of themselves intact, something that the SS could not touch.” Heinrich remembered one French prisoner in particular, a man in his thirties named, he thought, Gérard.
Gérard had been in Block 17 for more than six months, which was exceptional. Most Lustknaben only lasted a few weeks. “Gérard had found a way to survive,” Heinrich recounted. “He was intelligent. He knew how to please the officers, how to manipulate them, how to make himself indispensable. He spoke German perfectly.”
“He knew literature, music. The officers appreciated him for his conversation as much as for the rest. But what made him truly special was what he did for the others.” Gérard had established a sort of mutual aid system within Block 17. He advised the new arrivals on how to behave, what to say, and what to avoid.
He negotiated with the officers to protect the most fragile prisoners. He shared his food with those who needed to regain their strength. And above all, he kept a journal—a secret journal hidden in a crack in the wall of his barrack. A journal where he documented everything that happened in the block: the names of the prisoners, the dates of arrival, the dates of death, and the details of the Abschiedsfest.
“He showed it to me once,” said Heinrich. “He told me, ‘If I die, someone must know. The world must know what they did to us.'” Gérard was executed in March 1945, one month before the liberation of the camp. His journal was never found. Heinrich himself almost became a Lustknabe. In 1944, a new officer arrived at Flossenbürg.
This officer noticed Heinrich at the infirmary and asked for him to be transferred to Block 17. The request was refused. Heinrich was too useful at the infirmary. He spoke several languages and could communicate with prisoners of different nationalities. “I was lucky,” said Heinrich. “If I had been transferred, I would be dead like all the others.”
“But sometimes I wonder: would I have preferred their few weeks of comfort, even knowing how it would end, or my own survival? Four years of misery and fear. I have no answer. I am alive and they are dead. That’s all I know.” In April 1945, the American army was approaching Flossenbürg.
The SS knew that the end was near, and they also knew they had to erase the traces of their crimes. On April 14th, a week before the liberation of the camp, all the remaining “pleasure boys” were gathered in the courtyard of Block 17. There were 17 of them—the survivors of several years of selection and execution.
Dietrich, the man who had created the system, was there. He himself supervised what followed. They were not offered an Abschiedsfest. There was no longer time for rituals. They had to act fast. The seventeen men were led behind Block 17. They were lined up against the wall and executed one by one.
It took less than 10 minutes. Then, the bodies were burned in the camp crematorium. The archives of Block 17 were destroyed, or at least the SS believed they were. The register that Dr. Fontaine would discover decades later had been forgotten in a neglected cellar in the haste of the final days.
On April 23, 1945, American troops entered Flossenbürg. Block 17 was empty. No “pleasure boy” had survived. Dietrich was captured by the Americans in May and was tried for war crimes at Nuremberg. But during his trial, the Lustknaben system was never mentioned. The prosecutors did not know it existed, and Dietrich did not speak.
He was sentenced to death for other crimes and executed in 1946. He took his secrets to the grave. Maurice Lefort was liberated from Flossenbürg on April 23, 1945. He returned to France and resumed his life. He married, had children, and worked as an accountant in Paris. He never spoke of what he had experienced in the camp. “How to explain? How to tell the story of Block 17 to someone who wasn’t there?” It was so bizarre, so twisted.
“Prisoners treated like princes before being shot like dogs. Who would have understood?” For decades, Maurice kept silent. He lived with his memories, his nightmares, his images of Étienne dancing in the light of Block 17. It was only in 1998, after the death of his wife, that he agreed to testify.
He was 82 years old. He knew he didn’t have much time left. “I speak for them,” he said, “for Étienne, for Gérard, for all the others. They died without anyone knowing what had been done to them, without anyone knowing their names. The least I can do is tell the truth, even if it’s too late, even if no one can be punished anymore. At least someone will know.”
Maurice Lefort died in 2003 at the age of 87. His testimony was integrated into Dr. Fontaine’s research, published in 2005. The “pleasure boys” of Flossenbürg remained forgotten by history for a long time. Several reasons explain this silence: the archives had been largely destroyed; no direct survivor could testify; and the subject itself was taboo.
It touched on sexuality, exploitation, and realities that many preferred to ignore. Even after the war, when Nazi crimes were documented and judged, homosexual victims were often forgotten. Paragraph 175 remained in force in West Germany until 1969. Former homosexual deportees did not dare to testify.
They risked being persecuted again for who they were. It was only from the 1980s that things began to change. Historians, activists, and survivors—finally free to speak—began to document the persecution of homosexuals during Nazism. And it was in this context that Dr. Isabelle Fontaine made her discovery.
Dr. Fontaine’s book, published in 2005, was titled The Pleasure Boys: A Forgotten History of Nazi Persecution. It was the first academic study dedicated to the Lustknaben system of Flossenbürg. It documented the existence of Block 17, the ritual of the Abschiedsfest, and the testimonies of survivors like Maurice and Heinrich.
The book provoked mixed reactions. Some historians welcomed Dr. Fontaine’s work. They recognized that entire sections of Nazi persecution remained to be explored and that homosexual victims had been particularly neglected. Others were skeptical. They found certain aspects of the story difficult to believe.
“The parties, the gifts, the contrast between preferential treatment and execution. It seemed too perverse, too elaborate, too novelistic to be true.” Dr. Fontaine responded to her critics with the evidence she had gathered: the register of the Lustknaben with its hundreds of names and dates, the corroborating testimonies of several survivors, and administrative documents mentioning Block 17 and its special status.
“I understand that it’s difficult to believe,” she said. “It’s difficult to believe because it’s monstrous. But Nazism was monstrous, and our job as historians is to document this monstrosity even when it exceeds our imagination.” In 2010, a commemorative plaque was installed at Flossenbürg at the site of the former Block 17. The plaque bears the inscription:
“Here stood the block where French homosexual prisoners were exploited and murdered by the Nazi regime. They were called the Lustknaben, the ‘pleasure boys.’ None of them survived. May their memory be honored.” It is a modest, discreet plaque. Most visitors to Flossenbürg do not notice it.
But it is there; it exists. It says that these men existed. What does the story of the “pleasure boys” teach us? It teaches us that Nazi cruelty knew no bounds—that it was not content with just killing. It played with its victims, it used them, it created elaborate systems of domination and exploitation.
It also teaches us that memory is fragile—that crimes can remain hidden for decades simply because no one wants to talk about them, because witnesses are ashamed, because archives are destroyed, because the subject is taboo. And it teaches us the importance of testifying. Maurice Lefort waited fifty years before speaking, but when he spoke, his words gave a voice to those who no longer had one.
Étienne, Gérard, the final 17—all these men whose names we will never know. The “pleasure boys” waited for their execution. They knew they were going to die. But before dying, the Germans offered them a last meal, a last party, a last moment of false humanity. It was cruel, it was perverse, it was Nazi.
And now, we know. The homosexual prisoners nicknamed “pleasure boys” waited for their execution. But the Germans… the Germans offered them a party, a meal, gifts, a night of music and dance—a sham of happiness before death. It was not kindness; it was the ultimate form of cruelty.
To give in order to better take back; to offer hope in order to better destroy it. And yet, in this horror, there was resistance. Men like Gérard who kept journals; men like Étienne who danced one last time; men who refused to let themselves be completely destroyed even when they knew death was inevitable.
They did not survive. But their story… it survives thanks to witnesses like Maurice, thanks to historians like Dr. Fontaine, and thanks to you who are listening to this story today. If this story touched you, leave a comment to tell me where you are watching from. Each message is a way of saying:
“We remember the pleasure boys. We refuse oblivion.” Subscribe to the channel to discover other forgotten stories. Stories of victims we wanted to erase. Stories that deserve to be told even when they are difficult to hear. The “pleasure boys” of Flossenbürg died without anyone knowing their names.
But today, we know they existed. We know what was done to them, and we refuse to forget them. Thank you for listening. Thank you for not forgetting.
