In 1978, a proctologist from Munich named Dr. Friedrich Hartman received a patient who would change his understanding of history. The man was 68 years old. He came to consult for chronic pain—pain he had been carrying for over 35 years. Pain that made every trip to the bathroom an ordeal, pain he had never spoken about to anyone.
“It hurts when I have a bowel movement,” he said simply. “It has hurt since 1943.” Dr. Hartman proceeded with an examination. What he discovered left him speechless. The inside of this man’s body bore traces of ancient trauma: scars, deformations, damage that was not natural, damage that could only have been caused by deliberate, repeated, and methodical violence.
“What happened to you?” the doctor asked. The patient remained silent for a long moment. Then, for the first time in thirty years, he began to speak. What he told that day, and in the consultations that followed, revealed one of the most horrific and least documented forms of torture inflicted on homosexual prisoners in Nazi camps.
A torture designed not to kill, but to mark; to leave a permanent trace in the victim’s body to ensure that, even decades later, every day of his life would remind him of what had been done to him. Dr. Hartman, deeply moved by this testimony, began to look for other similar cases.
In five years, he found 23 men scattered throughout Germany and Austria who suffered from the same after-effects. 23 survivors of the same torture. His research was never published during his lifetime. The subject was too taboo, too indecent for the medical journals of the time. It was only in 2003, after his death, that his daughter discovered his notes and decided to make them public.
And for the first time, the world learned what the Nazis really did to homosexual prisoners in certain camps. To understand what happened to these men, one must go back long before the war. One must go back to 1930, when Germany was still a democracy—fragile, certainly, but a democracy.
At that time, Berlin was the capital of freedom in Europe. Despite Paragraph 175, the law that criminalized male homosexuality, the city had a flourishing gay scene: bars, clubs, magazines, organizations. Men could live relatively openly, at least in certain neighborhoods.
It was the era of Christopher Isherwood, Marlene Dietrich, cabaret, and sexual freedom. Berlin was a beacon for homosexuals from all over the world. But this freedom had enemies, and those enemies would soon take power. This story begins in 1930 with a young man named Wilhelm Braun. Not the same as the SS guard mentioned in other accounts, but a namesake.
Wilhelm was 20 years old. He lived in Berlin and he was in love. His lover was named Karl. They had met in a bar in the Schöneberg district, the gay quarter of Berlin. They lived together in a small apartment. They both worked in a textile factory. They dreamed of a future where they could live freely.
In 1930, that future seemed possible. Three years later, it would be destroyed. In January 1933, Adolf Hitler became Chancellor of Germany. For Wilhelm and Karl, as for thousands of German homosexuals, it was the beginning of the end. The Nazis had a particular hatred for homosexuals. For them, homosexuality was not just a sin or a disease.
It was an existential threat to the Reich. Homosexuals did not have children. They did not contribute to the growth of the Aryan race. In Nazi logic, they were “demographic saboteurs.” From the first months of the regime, measures against homosexuals began. In February 1933, homosexual bars and clubs were closed.
Magazines and newspapers of the community were banned. The Institute of Sexology, founded by Magnus Hirschfeld, a pioneer of homosexual rights, was ransacked and its archives burned. Wilhelm remembered all his life that day in May when he saw Hirschfeld’s books burning in the public square. Students in brown uniforms threw the works into the flames while singing.
Smoke rose toward the Berlin sky. “That day,” he later recounted, “I understood that our world was over, that everything we had built was going to be destroyed.” Karl wanted to flee. He spoke of Paris, Amsterdam, anywhere but Germany. But Wilhelm hesitated.
His parents were in Berlin. His work was in Berlin. His life was in Berlin. “It will calm down,” he would say. “The Nazis won’t stay in power for long. The Germans are a civilized people. They won’t let these barbarians lead the country.” He was wrong, terribly wrong. In 1935, the Nazis reinforced Paragraph 175.
The new version of the law was much more severe. From then on, a simple look or an ambiguous gesture could be considered a punishable homosexual act. Arrests multiplied. Thousands of men were arrested, tried, and condemned. The prisons filled up. But the prisons were only the beginning.
For the Nazis had another destination for homosexuals: the concentration camps. Dachau, Sachsenhausen, Buchenwald, Flossenbürg, Mauthausen—the names of hell. Wilhelm and Karl lived in fear during those years. They stopped seeing each other in public. They took separate apartments, meeting in secret like criminals.
They destroyed all their photos together, all their letters, everything that could prove their relationship. But fear was not enough to protect them. In March 1938, someone denounced them. A neighbor, perhaps, or a colleague. They never knew who. The Gestapo came to arrest them on the same day, a few hours apart.
Wilhelm at work. Karl at home. They never saw each other again. Wilhelm learned later that Karl had been sent to Buchenwald. He died there in 1940, officially of pneumonia. Wilhelm knew what that meant. Karl had been murdered. As for Wilhelm, he was sent elsewhere, to a camp he had never heard of.
A camp where the Nazis conducted specific experiments on homosexual prisoners: the Flossenbürg camp. Flossenbürg was located in Bavaria, near the Czech border. It was a forced labor camp specializing in granite extraction. Thousands of prisoners died there every year, exhausted by work in the quarries.
But for the prisoners with the pink triangle, Flossenbürg reserved something worse than labor. Wilhelm arrived at the camp in April 1938. He was 28 years old. He was in good health, strong, accustomed to physical labor. He thought he could survive. He did not yet know what awaited him. The first weeks were ordinary, if one can use that word to describe hell.
The work in the quarries, the beatings, the hunger, the cold, the exhaustion. Then one day, they came for him. He was led to a building set apart from the main camp, a building the other prisoners called “Das Haus,” the House of Healing. An ironic, cruel name for what happened there. Inside, Wilhelm discovered a room that looked like an infirmary: examination tables, medical instruments, men in white coats—doctors, or at least men who claimed to be.
He also discovered other prisoners with the pink triangle, terrified men waiting their turn. A man in an SS uniform approached Wilhelm. “Do you know why you are here?” he asked. Wilhelm shook his head. “You are here because you are sick. Homosexuality is a disease, and we are going to cure you.” He smiled.
“The method is simple. We are going to teach you to associate your impulses with pain. Every time your body reacts abnormally, you will suffer. And over time, your body will learn. It will stop reacting. You will be cured.” Wilhelm did not immediately understand what that meant, but he was soon to find out.
What followed, Wilhelm took 40 years to tell, and even then, he could not say everything. Some details were too horrible, too humiliating, too impossible to put into words. But here is what he told Dr. Hartman in 1978. The doctors at Flossenbürg had developed a “healing” method based on pain.
They believed, or pretended to believe, that homosexuality could be unlearned if sexual arousal was associated with sufficiently intense suffering. The method involved instruments, objects designed to cause maximum internal damage, and procedures repeated day after day, week after week.
“They made us undergo these treatments for three months,” he recounted. “They tied us to tables, they showed us images—images of men. And when our bodies reacted, they used instruments.” He stopped, unable to continue for several minutes. “The pain, I cannot describe it, but the worst was the humiliation.”
“To be treated like an animal, to be opened, penetrated, destroyed by men who claimed to be curing you.” The damage caused by these treatments was permanent. Internal tissues were torn, scarred, and deformed. Nerves were damaged. Muscles no longer functioned correctly. And the pain—that pain Wilhelm described to Dr. Hartman—never disappeared.
“It hurts when I have a bowel movement,” he said. “It has hurt since 1938, every day, every time. 40 years of pain. And I could never talk about it to anyone. Because how do you explain that? How do you tell someone what they did to me?” The treatments stopped after three months. Not because Wilhelm was cured—one does not cure what is not a disease—but because his body was too damaged to continue.
He was sent back to the main camp, assigned to work in the quarries. He could barely walk. Sitting was agony. Working was almost impossible. But he worked anyway, because the alternative was death. The following years were a fog of suffering. The work, the hunger, the constant pain, the freezing winters, the scorching summers, the deaths around him every day, every week.
Wilhelm survived. He didn’t know how. Perhaps out of pure stubbornness, perhaps because a part of him refused to give the Nazis the satisfaction of seeing him die, or perhaps because death would have been a release and the Nazis did not want to grant him that release.
They wanted him to suffer, to continue suffering, so that every day of his life would be a reminder of what they had done to him. In April 1945, the Flossenbürg camp was evacuated as the Americans advanced. Wilhelm was among the prisoners forced to march westward. The death march. Thousands of men died during that march.
Wilhelm almost died too, but he held on. He marched step by step in pain, in exhaustion, in despair. On April 23, 1945, American soldiers liberated the group of prisoners. Wilhelm was free, but the pain—that would never be liberated. After the war, Wilhelm returned to Berlin. The city he had known no longer existed.
Ruins everywhere, collapsed buildings, unrecognizable streets. The Schöneberg district, the gay quarter where he had met Karl, was largely destroyed. And even if the buildings had been intact, the world they represented had vanished. The bars, the clubs, the community—everything had been annihilated by the Nazis. Wilhelm found himself alone, without family.
His parents had died during the war. He was without friends. Most had been deported or had fled. Karl was dead at Buchenwald. And he had a constant pain that reminded him every day of what he had undergone. He found work as a laborer in the reconstruction of Berlin. Physical work, difficult, painful, but he had no choice.
He had to live, and he had to remain silent. For post-war Germany did not want to hear about homosexual prisoners. Paragraph 175 was still in effect. It would not be repealed until 1969 in West Germany and 1968 in East Germany. Homosexuals were still criminals.
To confess why he had been deported was to expose himself to arrest, scandal, and shame. So Wilhelm kept quiet. He never spoke of what had happened to him. Not to his colleagues, not to his neighbors, not even to the doctors he consulted for his chronic pain. When asked why he had been deported, he lied.
He said he was a political prisoner, that the Nazis had arrested him for his opinions. It was an acceptable explanation, even respectable. The truth remained buried. Years passed. Berlin was rebuilt. Germany rose again. The world changed, but Wilhelm remained frozen in his silence. He lived alone. He worked.
He went home. He suffered in silence every time he went to the bathroom, every time he sat too long, every time his body reminded him of what had been done to him. He consulted doctors sometimes for the pain, but he never told them the truth. He made up explanations: an accident, an illness.
The doctors didn’t really understand what they were seeing. They prescribed painkillers, treatments that didn’t work, useless advice. No one knew; no one could know. In 1969, Paragraph 175 was finally repealed in West Germany. Homosexuality was no longer a crime.
For the first time in 36 years, Wilhelm could legally exist. But it was too late. He was 59 years old. He had spent more than half his life hiding, lying, feeling ashamed. He no longer knew how to be any other way. And the pain was still there, every day, every time. In 1978, the pain became unbearable.
Wilhelm was 68. His body was aging, and the damage caused 40 years earlier was worsening. He could no longer bear it. In silence, he consulted Dr. Friedrich Hartman, a Munich proctologist recommended by another doctor. He was a specialist, someone who might be able to help him.
Dr. Hartman examined Wilhelm. He saw the scars, the deformations, the traces of ancient trauma. He understood this damage was not natural. “What happened to you?” he asked. And for the first time in 40 years, Wilhelm spoke. He told everything: his arrest, the camp, the treatments, the pain that had never left him.
Dr. Hartman listened in silence. He did not judge. He did not show disgust; he simply listened. When Wilhelm finished, the doctor remained silent for a long moment, then he said: “I am sorry. I am deeply sorry for what you have endured, and I am sorry that you had to carry this alone for so long.”
It was the first time someone had said those words to him, the first time someone had acknowledged his suffering. Wilhelm cried for the first time since 1938. Dr. Hartman could not cure Wilhelm. The damage was too old, too deep, but he could do something else.
He could document his story. Over the following months, Dr. Hartman recorded Wilhelm’s complete testimony. He documented his injuries, took medical photographs, and wrote detailed reports. He began to look for other similar cases. He contacted fellow doctors. He placed discreet ads in medical publications.
He looked for survivors. In five years, he found 23 men. 23 survivors of the treatments at Flossenbürg and other camps. 23 men who bore the same scars, suffered the same pains, and had kept the same silence for decades. Dr. Hartman compiled their testimonies. He documented their injuries.
He wrote a complete report on what the Nazis had done to these men. But when he tried to publish his research, no one wanted to accept it. Medical journals refused. The subject was too sensitive, too controversial. Publishers also refused. Who would want to read a book on such a subject? Dr. Hartman died in 2001.
His research remained in his drawers. It was only in 2003 that his daughter, herself a doctor, discovered her father’s files and decided to make them public. She contacted historians, memory associations, and journalists. In 2005, the testimonies were finally published in a collection titled The Invisible Wounds.
For the first time, the world learned what the Nazis had done to these men. Wilhelm had died in 1986, at the age of 76. He never saw his testimony published. He never knew that his suffering would one day be recognized. But before he died, he had said something to Dr. Hartman, something the doctor had noted in his files.
“You know, the hardest part isn’t the physical pain. You get used to the pain in a certain way. The hardest part is the silence. For 40 years, I carried this secret. I could never tell anyone what they did to me. It was too shameful, too intimate, too indecent.”
“But the silence is what they wanted. They designed this torture so that we couldn’t talk about it, so that shame would reduce us to silence, so that we would carry their crime in our bodies without ever being able to denounce it. By talking to you today, I am breaking this silence for the first time. And even if no one else ever hears it, at least someone knows.”
“At least I am not taking their secret to my grave.” “It hurts when I have a bowel movement.” This simple, everyday, almost banal sentence summarizes decades of invisible suffering. For that was the cruel genius of this torture. It targeted a part of the body one doesn’t talk about, a function one doesn’t talk about, a pain one cannot explain without shame.
The Nazis knew exactly what they were doing. They didn’t just want to make these men suffer; they wanted to reduce them to silence. They wanted their torture to be so intimate, so humiliating, that the victims could never speak of it. And for decades, it worked.
These men suffered in silence. They carried their pain without ever being able to share it. Most died without anyone knowing what they had lived through. Wilhelm Braun broke that silence. By speaking to Dr. Hartman, he did what the Nazis did not want him to do. He testified. He told the truth.
He refused to let their crime remain hidden. Thanks to his courage and the courage of 22 other survivors, we know today what happened. This story begins in 1930 in the free and vibrant Berlin of the Weimar Republic. It ends in a Munich hospital with the death of a man who had carried his pain for nearly fifty years.
Between those two dates, there was love and fear, hope and despair, torture and survival, silence and, finally, speech. Wilhelm Braun loved; he was loved. He saw his world destroyed. He suffered the unspeakable and he survived. His pain was real, physical, daily, permanent—but his resistance was real too.
Every day that he lived was a victory over those who had wanted to destroy him. And by speaking, finally, after 40 years of silence, he won the ultimate victory. He told the world what they had done. He refused to let their crime be forgotten. “It hurts when I have a bowel movement.” It is a sentence one does not say in society, a shameful, embarrassing, indecent sentence.
But that is precisely why we must hear it—because that shame, that embarrassment, was the weapon of the Nazis. And the only way to defeat that weapon is to break the silence. Wilhelm broke the silence. And now, it is up to us to pass on his word. If this story touched you, leave a comment to say where you are watching from.
Every message is a way of saying: we hear these men. We recognize their suffering. We refuse the silence. Subscribe to the channel to discover other forgotten stories. Stories of those people tried to silence. Stories too intimate, too painful to be told, and which yet deserve to be heard.
Wilhelm Braun suffered in silence for 40 years, but he finally spoke, and now his voice resonates. “It hurts when I have a bowel movement. It has hurt since 1938.” It is a sentence of pain, but it is also a sentence of truth. And the truth, even the most difficult, deserves to be told. Thank you for listening. Thank you for not forgetting.
