The homosexual prisoners, called “pleasure boys,” were awaiting their execution, but the Germans
In 2001, a French historian named Dr. Isabelle Fontaine was conducting archival research at the Flossenbürg concentration camp in Bavaria. She was searching for documents about French prisoners who had been deported during the war. In a dusty cardboard box, she found a register that she had never seen mentioned in any study before. The register bore a strange title: “Lover’s List.”
In German, this meant “Register of Pleasure Boys.” Dr. Fontaine opened the register and found hundreds of names inside, mostly French. Next to each name was a hand-drawn pink triangle and a date—always only one date, never two. She didn’t immediately understand what she was looking at.
Only by comparing her information with other archives did she discover the truth. The “pleasure boys” were a specific group of French homosexual prisoners. They had been selected because of their youth, physical appearance, and certain characteristics that the SS considered desirable. And the date next to each name was not the date of their arrival at the camp; it was the date of their death.
But what made this discovery truly shocking was what happened between selection and execution. The sex boys didn’t die immediately. They lived for weeks, sometimes months, in a separate barracks. A barracks where they received radically different treatment than other prisoners. They were given real food, clean clothes, hot showers, cigarettes, and then, one day, they were executed without warning. Dr. Fontaine spent the following years reconstructing the history of this system. She found testimonies from survivors—not from the sex boys themselves, since none of them had survived, but from prisoners who had been near them and had seen what happened. What she uncovered was one of the most perverse and least documented forms of Nazi cruelty.
Before we continue with this video, I invite you to subscribe to the channel if you haven’t already. This story reveals an aspect of Nazi persecution that even historians have struggled to comprehend: a cruelty that didn’t merely kill, but toyed with its victims before destroying them.
If you believe these men deserve recognition, leave a comment below. I read all your messages. To understand the system of male prostitutes, one must first understand the twisted logic behind it. In Nazi ideology, homosexuals were considered degenerate, men who had renounced their masculinity, who had become effeminate, and who posed a threat to the purity of the Aryan race.
But this hatred coexisted with something else. Something the Nazis would never have officially admitted, but which was evident in their actions: a fascination. For although homosexuals were officially despised, some SS officers felt an unhealthy interest in them—an interest that mixed disgust and desire, hatred and attraction; an interest they could not express openly, but which they could satisfy in the lawless world of the concentration camps.
The system of male prostitutes was born out of this contradiction. It was created in Flossenbürg under the supervision of a deputy commandant named Obersturmführer Karl-Heinz Dietrich. Dietrich was a complex man: married, father of two, a convinced Nazi, but according to postwar accounts, also a repressed homosexual who hated what he was.
Dietrich had an idea—an idea that would allow him to satisfy his desires while remaining within the confines of Nazi ideology. Homosexual prisoners were doomed to die anyway. They wouldn’t survive the camp; that was a certainty. So why not use them before they died? Why not create a system in which some of them were selected, treated differently, and kept alive for the officers’ pleasure? And when they had served their purpose, they would be eliminated and replaced by others—a perpetual cycle of selection, use, and extermination. It was monstrous, it was logical in the twisted logic of National Socialism, and it was terrifyingly effective. The selection took place upon the arrival of the convoys. When a transport of French prisoners arrived at Flossenbürg, an officer would inspect the newcomers. He looked for specific criteria: young, under 30, pleasing appearance, relatively robust constitution.
Prisoners wearing a pink triangle who met these criteria were separated from the others. They were told they had been chosen for a special task. They were led to the pleasure boys’ barracks. What awaited them there was astonishing. Instead of the hell they had imagined, they discovered something that seemed almost like paradise.
Beds with real mattresses, clean blankets, plenty of food—white bread, meat, vegetables, sometimes even chocolate or cake. They received civilian clothes instead of striped uniforms. They could wash themselves every day. They didn’t have to work in the quarries like the other prisoners. For men who had just endured the hell of deportation, it was incomprehensible.
Why this preferential treatment? What did the Germans expect of them? They were soon to find out. This is the story of a man who witnessed the system of male prostitutes—not as a victim, but as an ordinary prisoner who saw what happened on the other side of the barbed wire. His name was Maurice Lefort.
He was a member of the French Resistance, arrested in 1943, and deported to Flossenbürg concentration camp for his activities against the occupiers. He wore the red triangle of a political prisoner. Maurice survived the war and, in 1998 at the age of 82, agreed to testify for the first time about what he had witnessed in the camp. His testimony is one of the few documents that describe daily life in Block 17.
Maurice arrived in Flossenbürg in September 1943. Like all new prisoners, he was initially subjected to the camp’s usual regime: the exhausting work in the granite quarries, the constant hunger, the exhaustion, the humiliation. After a few weeks, he was assigned to Block 14, a barracks for political prisoners near the center of the camp.
From his bunk, he could see Block 17, the barracks for the male prostitutes. The first thing he noticed was the difference. Block 17 was better maintained than the others. The windows had curtains; smoke came from the chimney, even when the other barracks were freezing cold. And the men who lived there didn’t look like prisoners.
“They looked almost normal,” Maurice recounted in his testimony. “They weren’t skeletal like us. They wore civilian clothes, shirts, trousers, sometimes even jackets. They walked without hurrying, without the constant terror you saw among the other prisoners. At first, I didn’t understand it. I thought they might be privileged prisoners, informers, collaborators, but they wore the pink triangle.”
They were homosexuals, the most despised of all the prisoners. And yet they lived better than we did. Much better. Maurice quickly learned the truth about Block 17. The other prisoners spoke of it in hushed voices, with a mixture of envy and horror. The male prostitutes were the toys of the SS officers. That evening, after roll call, some of them were summoned to the officers’ quarters.
No one explicitly said what happened there, but everyone understood. In exchange for his services, he received preferential treatment: food, clothing, and exemption from work—a life that was almost bearable in the hell of the camp. But there was a price, a price the male prostitutes discovered sooner or later. They were all condemned to death. Not immediately, not predictably, but inevitably.
When an officer grew tired of a male prostitute, when a prisoner became too ill or too old, when the block needed space for new arrivals, executions took place—without trial, without warning. One evening the prisoner was still there, the next morning he was gone. And the most gruesome, most perverse thing was what happened just before.
Maurice remembered an evening in December 1943. It was bitterly cold. The prisoners in Block 14 huddled together on their bunks to keep warm. Snow was falling outside. Suddenly, music—music that came in waves, real music, a gramophone playing French songs. Maurice dragged himself to the window.
What he saw marked him forever. Block 17 was brightly lit. Through the windows, he could see a party, a real party with food on the tables, wine bottles, cigarettes. The male prostitutes were dancing, laughing, and singing. SS officers were present. They drank with the prisoners, gave them gifts—watches, lighters, valuables confiscated from other deportees.
“It was surreal,” said Maurice. “On the one hand, we were dying of hunger and cold, on the other, this celebration, this apparent joy. It was like two different worlds.” The party lasted until late into the night. Then the lights went out. The next morning, Maurice learned that three of the male prostitutes who had participated in the party had been executed at dawn, shot behind the block and buried in a mass grave.
The party wasn’t a celebration; it was a farewell. A final meal offered to the condemned before their death. The Germans called it the “farewell feast.” The farewell feast was a codified, almost formal ritual. If a male prostitute was sentenced to death—a decision made by Dietrich or the officer to whom he was assigned—he received special treatment during those final 24 hours.
First, a meal—not just any meal, a feast. Meat, fresh bread, vegetables, wine, desserts—everything the prisoner could possibly want to eat. Then, the condemned man was given gifts and valuables, often confiscated from Jewish prisoners: watches, jewelry, high-quality clothing—items he would never be able to use, but which were given to him nonetheless.
Then the music. A gramophone played songs, often French songs, chosen to remind the prisoners of their homeland. Sometimes they were asked to dance. And finally, the night, a last night in the block with the other male prostitutes. A night when everyone knew what would happen, but no one spoke of it.
At dawn, the guards came to collect the condemned man. They led him behind the barracks, a shot rang out, and it was over. The body was buried in an unmarked mass grave without ceremony. The deceased’s belongings, including the gifts from the previous day, were collected and reused for the next condemned man. It was a cycle, a macabre cycle of false celebration and real death.
Why this ritual? Why offer men who were about to be killed a last meal? In any case, historians have proposed several explanations. Some believe it was a way for SS officers to ease their consciences. By offering their victim a pleasant last day, they could convince themselves that they weren’t being completely cruel. “Look, we offered him a good meal. He was treated with dignity.”
Others believe it was a form of refined sadism. The contrast between the feast and the execution made death all the more gruesome. It offered hope, or at least a moment’s reprieve, only to destroy it all the more thoroughly later. Still others believe it was a control mechanism. The pleasure boys, seeing their comrades enjoying a pleasant 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 this because they could—because in the world of the camps, they had absolute power over life and death. And this power allowed them to toy with their victims, like a cat with a mouse. Give, take back, give, take back. Until the very end.
Maurice Lefort’s testimony includes an account of a particular farewell party he indirectly witnessed. It was in February 1944. A young Frenchman named – 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 Sturmführer Vogel.
For four months he had received even better treatment than the other male prostitutes: more elegant clothes, more plentiful food, protection from the other guards. Then, one day, Vogel grew tired of him. 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 at the farewell party. Maurice remembered that evening. It was snowing. From his window, he could see the lights of the block, he could hear the music. “I’m waiting for Rina Ketty’s song.” And he saw Étienne dancing. “He was dancing alone in the middle of the room,” Maurice said. “The others were watching, some of them crying.”
He danced as if it were the last thing he would ever do in his life—which it was. At one point, he paused. He looked out the window. “I think he saw me. Our eyes met, and I saw something in his gaze. Not fear, not sadness, but something like peace, as if he had accepted what was going to happen.”
The next morning I heard a single shot and then nothing more. Étienne was 19 years old. He was the youngest of the male prostitutes executed in Flossenbürg. None of the male prostitutes survived the war. That was the principle of the system. No one was supposed to be able to testify. The prisoners in Block 17 were all executed before the camp was liberated.
The last ones died in April, just days before the Americans arrived. But other prisoners had seen it. Men like Maurice Lefort, who had observed from afar, who had heard the stories, who knew what was happening in Block 17, and some of these witnesses came forward. The most detailed testimony came from a man named Heinrich Bum.
Heinrich was a German prisoner, himself homosexual, who had been in Flossenbürg from 1941 to 1945. He had not been chosen as a male prostitute. He was too old, looked too ordinary, but he had worked as a nursing assistant in the camp’s infirmary. In this capacity, he had contact with the male prostitutes.
He saw them when they were ill. He treated them when they returned injured from their visits to the officers. And sometimes he spoke with them. In 1983, at the age of 66, Heinrich gave a lengthy testimony to a German historian. This testimony, which had remained in the archives for a long time, was rediscovered by Dr. Fontaine in 2003.
Heinrich described the daily lives of the male prostitutes with disturbing precision. “They lived in a bubble,” he said, “a bubble of false normality in the midst of hell. They ate well, slept well, didn’t work, but they knew, they all knew, that they were going to die.” Some tried not to think about it.
They made the most of every day, every meal, every moment of reprieve. He thought to himself, “Maybe I’ll be the only one to survive. Maybe the war will end before my time.” Others became fatalistic. They accepted their fate with a resignation that broke my heart. He 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 of them, found some form of resistance. They refused to submit completely. They kept a part of themselves intact, something the SS couldn’t touch. Heinrich remembered one particular French prisoner, a man in his thirties named—he thought—Gérard.
Gérard had been in Block 17 for over six months, which was exceptional. Most male prostitutes only lasted a few weeks. Gérard had found a way to survive, Heinrich explained. He was intelligent. He knew how to please the officers, how to manipulate them, how to make himself indispensable. He spoke perfect German. He was knowledgeable about literature and music.
The officers valued him for his conversational skills as much as for everything else. But what truly made him special was what he did for others. Gérard had established a kind of system of mutual support within Block 17. He advised newcomers on how to behave, what to say, and what to avoid.
They negotiated with the officers to protect the most vulnerable prisoners. He shared his food with those who needed to regain their strength, and above all, he kept a diary—a secret diary, hidden in a crack in the wall of his barracks. A diary in which he documented everything that happened in the block: the prisoners’ names, arrival dates, death dates, and details of the farewell parties.
“He showed it to me once,” said Heinrich. “He told me, ‘When I die, someone has to know. The world has to know what they did to us.’” Gérard was executed in March 1945, a month before the camp was liberated. His diary was never found. Heinrich himself almost became a male prostitute.
In 1945, a new officer arrived at Flossenbürg. This officer noticed Heinrich in the infirmary and requested his transfer to Block 17. The request was denied. Heinrich was too useful in the infirmary. He spoke several languages and could communicate with prisoners of various nationalities. “I was lucky,” Heinrich used to say.
“If I had been transferred, I would have died like everyone else. But sometimes I wonder if I would 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 is all I know.”
In April 1945, the American army approached Flossenbürg. The SS knew the end was near, and they also knew they had to erase all traces of their crimes. On April 14, a week before the camp’s liberation, all the remaining sex slaves were gathered in the courtyard of Block 17. There were 17 of them, the survivors of years of selection and execution.
Dietrich, the man who had created the system, was there. He personally oversaw what was to follow. They were not offered a farewell ceremony. There was no time for rituals. They had to act quickly. The men were led behind Block 17. They were lined up facing the wall and executed one by one.
It took less than 10 minutes. Afterward, the bodies were cremated in the camp’s crematorium. The records of Block 17 were destroyed—or so the SS believed. The register, which Dr. Fontaine would discover decades later, had been forgotten in a neglected cellar in the rush of the final days. On April 23, 1945, American troops entered Flossenbürg. Block 17 was empty.
Not a single male prisoner survived. Dietrich was captured by the Americans in May and tried for war crimes in Nuremberg. But during his trial, the system of male prostitutes was never mentioned. The prosecutors didn’t know it existed, and neither did Dietrich. 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 about what he had experienced in the camp. How could he have explained it? How could he have described Block 17 to someone who hadn’t been there? It was so bizarre, so twisted.
Prisoners treated like princes before being slaughtered like dogs. Who could have understood that? For decades, Maurice remained silent. He lived with his memories, his nightmares, his images of dancing in the light of Block 17. Only in 1998, after his wife’s death, did he agree 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 incorporated into the research of Dr. Fontaine, published in 2005. The Flossenbürg sex slaves remained largely forgotten by history for a long time. Several reasons explain this silence. The archives had been largely destroyed. No direct survivors could testify, and the subject itself was taboo.
It touched on sexuality, exploitation – realities that many preferred to ignore. Even after the war, when Nazi crimes were documented and prosecuted, 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 wasn’t until the 1980s that things began to change. Historians, activists, and survivors, finally able to speak freely, began to document the persecution of homosexuals during the Nazi regime. 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 Flossenbürg prison’s system of male prostitutes. It documented the existence of Block 17, the ritual of the farewell feast, and the testimonies of survivors such as Maurice and Heinrich. The book elicited mixed reactions. Some historians praised Dr. Fontaine’s work.
They acknowledged that entire aspects of Nazi persecution remained to be researched and that homosexual victims had been particularly neglected. Others were skeptical. They found certain aspects of the narrative hard to believe: the parties, the gifts, the contrast between preferential treatment and execution. It seemed too perverse, too elaborate, too romantic to be true.
Dr. Fontaine responded to her critics with the evidence she had gathered: the male prostitutes’ register with its hundreds of names and dates, the consistent testimonies of several survivors, and the administrative documents that mentioned Block 17 and its special status. “I understand that it’s hard to believe,” she said.
“It’s hard to believe because it’s monstrous. But National Socialism was monstrous, and our task as historians is to document this monstrosity, even when it surpasses our imagination.” In 2010, a memorial plaque was installed in 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 pleasure boys. None of them survived. May their memory be honored.” It is a modest, unassuming plaque. Most visitors to Flossenbürg don’t notice it. But it is there; it exists. It tells us that these men existed.
What does the story of the male prostitutes teach us? It teaches us that the Nazis’ cruelty knew no bounds, that they were not content with simply killing. They toyed with their victims, they used them, they 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 wanted to talk about them—because the witnesses were ashamed, because the archives were destroyed, because the subject had been exhausted.
And it teaches us the importance of bearing witness. Maurice Lefort waited fifty years before he spoke, but when he did, his words gave a voice to those who had none left. Étienne, Gérard, the last 17, all those men whose names we will never know—the male prostitutes awaited their execution. They knew they were going to die. But before they died, the Germans offered them one last meal, one last celebration, one last moment of false humanity.
It was cruel, it was perverse, it was Nazi. And now we know. The homosexual prisoners, called pleasure boys, were awaiting execution. But the Germans offered them a celebration, a meal, gifts, a night of music and dancing—a semblance of happiness before death. It wasn’t kindness; it was the ultimate form of cruelty.
Giving only to take away; offering hope only to destroy it. And yet, in this horror, there was resistance. Men like Gérard, who kept diaries; men like Étienne, who danced one last time—men who refused to be utterly destroyed, even knowing that death was inevitable. They did not survive. But their story lives on, thanks to witnesses like Maurice, thanks to historians like Dr. Fontaine, thanks to you, who hear this story today.
If this story touched you, leave a comment and tell me where you’re watching from. Every message is a way of saying: We remember the male prostitutes. We refuse to let them be forgotten. Subscribe to the channel to discover other forgotten stories. Stories of victims some wanted to erase.
Stories that deserve to be told, even if 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. Thank you for listening. Thank you for not forgetting.
