In 1972, a doctor from Lyon named Doctor Michel Fournier received a patient who was going change his life. The man was 58 years old. He came to consult for pain chronic lower back and hip pain. Pain that prevented him from sit normally, squat, to climb stairs without suffering, pains that he had been carrying since over 30 years old.
Doctor Fournier examined the patient. What he discovered left him perplexed. The waters of the basin presented malformations old, no broken bones neat, something different, repeated multiple lesion marks as if someone had deliberately damaged this area of the body again and again again for a long time. “That happened to you?” asked the doctor.
The patient remained silent for a for a long time, then he said in a voice almost inaudible: “It hurts when I squat. It’s been hurting since 1943.” The doctor waited, feeling that there had more. “They called it Dason,” whispered the man. The ride. It was their way to punish us, to break us, to making sure we never could again. The man stopped, unable to continue.
Doctor Fournier was intrigued. He did research, he counted other doctors and over time month, he discovered something disturbing. This patient was not a case isolated. Throughout France, there were men, men of a certain age, all survivors of the Nazi camps, all bearers of the pink triangle, who suffered from the same symptoms, chronic pain in the pelvis, hips, coxis, difficulty to sit, to squat, to perform certain movements, after-effects permanent torture of which no one had never heard of it.
Doctor Fournier identified 10 cases over a period of three years. 10x men across France who carried the same invisible scars of the same procedure. When he tried to publish his discoveries in a medical journal, his article was rejected. The subject was too sensitive, he is told, too controversial.
Nobody wanted hear about what had been done to homosexuals in the camps. These notes remained in a drawer for 20 years old. It was not until 1998, after the death of Doctor Fournier, that his daughter, herself a doctor, discovered his father’s files and decided to make them public. She recounted historians, memory associations, journalists and for the first time, the world learned of the existence of Daon.
The Nazis did not want just kill homosexuals. If they had wanted to kill them, they could have do it quickly, efficiently, as they did it with other groups. For homosexuals, they wanted something more. He wanted them heal them, re-educate them, transform them. And when healing failed, what always happened because there is nothing to heal, he moved on to something else.
The punishment, humiliation, destruction systematics of body and mind. Das Ryon was one of these punishments. It was designed specifically for homosexual prisoners in a private camp by an officer particular and she was cruel calculated. The name meant the ride, but there was nothing noble or chivalrous in what this term designated.
This story is that of a man who suffered Das Riton. A man who bore the after-effects of this torture for more than 50 years. A man whose testimony gave some months before his death in 1999 made it possible to understand exactly what the Nazis were doing in this room torture. His name was Fernand Lecler and this is what happened to him at the camp Flossenburg between 1943 and 1945.
Fernand Lecler was years old when he was arrested in Paris in February he was a dancer, not a big star from the opera, no, a cabaret dancer in the small theaters of Pigal and Montmartre. A modest job but one that loved it. Dance was his life, his expression, his freedom. Fernand had the physique of a slim, supple dancer, graceful, long and fine muscles, a perfect posture, a way of movement that attracted attention.
He was also an attractive young man with black eyes and a smile that turned heads. It was precisely this smile which was going to cause his loss. One evening in February, after a spectacle, Fernand had smiled at a man in the street. An exchange of glances, nothing more. But this man was an indicator of the guestapu and this smile, this fraction of seconds of connection was enough as proof.
The guestapo came to pick him up next morning. They searched his small apartment, found some compromising photographs, portraits of friends, memories of evening and took him away. After two weeks of interrogation at the headquarters of the Guestapo, Avenue Foche, Fernand fut transferred to Germany. In March 1943, he arrived at the Flossenburg camp in Bavaria.
Flosenburg was a camp of forced labor specialized in the extraction of granites. Thousands prisoners died there every year, exhausted by work in the careers. But for the prisoners pink triangle, Flosenburg reserved something special. The camp had a deputy commander named Hans Schreber, an SS officer of a forty years old, former doctor who had developed a particular interest for homosexual prisoners.
An interest that had nothing medical or scientist. It was something something darker, more personal. Schreiber had created a program special for homosexuals in the camp. a program he called Umertsung from ourchmerz, pain rehabilitation. And at The heart of this program was Das Ron.
Fernand would soon discover this what that meant. The first days from Fernand to Flossenburg were a ordinary nightmare, if one can qualify anything in a camp concentration usually. He was shaved, disinfected, marked. We gave his striped uniform and his triangle pink. He was assigned to the blocks on homosexual barracks separated from rest of the camp.
A punishment additional. The work was exhausting. Every day, the prisoners of the block were sent in granite quarries. They broke stones, carried huge blocks, pushing carts loaded in the rain, under the sun, under the snow, without pause, without rest, without pity. Fernand with his body dancer, was not made for this work.
These long and flexible muscles did not have the necessary brute force to lift granite blocks. His delicate hands, accustomed to gestures graceful, covered themselves with blisters then of calosity. His back, so straight and proud, began to collapse under the weight of the stones. But it dyes by pure will, by refusal to die.
Three weeks later When he arrived, something changed. A morning, instead of being sent to the career, Fernand was summoned by a guard. He was taken to a building away from the camp. A building that other prisoners called Das Whouse, the home of horse riding. Inside, a large empty room with a concrete floor.
And in the center of the room, a strange object. It was a horizontal wooden beam mounted on two supports. She was about 2 m tall. long and 30 cm wide. The top of the beam was not flat. He was cut into an edge, forming a crest acute which ran along the entire length. It looked like a pommel horse gymnastics, but in version nightmarish, in a version designed for hurt.
An officer was waiting in the room, tall, slim, with hair gray and round glasses. He wore the SS uniform with the insignia of Aupsturm Fury. “I am Hans Schreibber,” he said. I was told about you. Fernand remained silent, his heart beating. You are a dancer, it seems. Schreiber approached, examined him in detail. head to toe.
Yes, I see the body of a supple, graceful dancer. He smiles, a cold smile. He pointed to the beam of wood. Do you see this device? We let’s call him from Aspferde, the horse. It’s a rehabilitation tool specifically designed for men like you. Fernand looked at the beam, the sharp edge on the on it. He began to understand with a growing horror to what this object was intended.
“The principle is simple,” Schreiber continued. “You will sit on the horse in Califorchon, stop it between the legs and you will sit as long as I can decide.” Fernand felt his legs weaken. For what ? Schreiber smiles. Because that’s where the problem lies, isn’t it? Between your legs. It’s there your perversion was born.
This is where we must strike to heal you. He gestured to the guards. Undress him. What followed, Fernand described in his testimony of 199 painful precision. He was forced to take off his clothes. Completely naked, he was led towards the wooden beam. They made him climb on it, one leg on each side, the sharp stop directly under his crotch.
Then we made him sit down. The pain was immediate. The wooden edge, hard and sharp blade sank into the flesh more sensitive in his body. His own weight, even if he was skinny, even if he did not weigh more than 60 kg, was enough to create unbearable pressure. Now, said Schreibber, you will stay like that.
If you try to lift, we will attach weights to your ankles. If you scream, we’ll bayonet you. If you pass out, we’ll wake you up. Fernand gritted his teeth. The pain radiated throughout his pelvis, went up along his spine spinal, went down to his thighs. Every second felt like an eternity. Schreiber sat down in a chair facing him. He took out a book.
and started to read as if nothing had happened. The Minutes passed, maybe hours. Fernand lost track of time. The pain became his whole world. There is no had nothing else left. No more thinking, no more memories, no more hope, just pain. At one point he faints. We woke him up with a splash of water cold. He was put back on the horse.
When Schreber finally decided that it was enough, Fernand could no longer move. They carried him out of the room and thrown into a cell. He remained lying on the concrete floor, unable to close legs, unable to sit, unable to do anything, except moan pain. The next day, a prisoner doctor came to examine him. He noted severe bruising, tissue damage, damage to basin waters.
“Nothing that will heal not,” he said, “my nothing that will heal completely either. You will be in pain your whole life. That’s what they want. That you remember, that every time that you sit down, every time you you squat, you remember this what they did to you.” Fernand was sent back to block 17 after 3 days. He could barely walk.
Sitting down was impossible. He had to remain standing or lying down. But this was just the beginning. Over the following weeks, Fernand discovered that the wooden horse was not a single punishment. It was a program. Schreber had developed a system of progressive session. Homosexual prisoners were submitted to the horse regularly.
Once per week, sometimes more. Each session lasted longer than the previous one. The damage was accumulating and there had variations. Sometimes we attached weights to the ankles of prisoners, increasing the pressure on the wooden edge. Sometimes we did swing the horse, creating movement of excruciating friction.
Sometimes we replaced the wooden beam by an even more metal beam hard, even more painful. Schreber took meticulous notes. He measured the time that each prisoner could endure before faint. He documented the injuries, after-effects, reactions as if he was conducting an experiment scientific. Maybe he believed really that he healed the homosexuals? Maybe he thought that pain could change sexual orientation, or perhaps, more likely, he didn’t believe it at all everything and it was all just an excuse to satisfy his own sadism.
Whatever his motivation, results were the same. Men broken, damaged bodies, trauma that would last an entire life. Fernand undergoes the wooden horse seven times during his first year in Flosenburg. this session of pure torture. This time where his body was broken and poorly repaired, that time when he thought he would die and sometimes wished to die.
But he didn’t die and over time, something in him changed. At the beginning, each session left devastated, unable to think, unable to feel anything other than pain, unable to be anything else than a victim. Then gradually, he developed a form of resistance. Not physical. His body was becoming more more and more fragile, more and more damaged.
But mental, spiritual. During the sessions on the horse, he learned to escape. Not physically, it was impossible, but mentally. He closed his eyes and he danced. In his mind, he was back on stage. The lights were shining. Music played and he danced free, light, graceful. The movements he knew by heart, which he had repeated thousands of times passed through its memory.
His muscles remembered, even though his body was immobilized on this beam of torture. It was his way of resisting, of not give them his soul, even if he destroyed his body. Schreiber noticed this change. One day, during session, he observed that Fernand had the eyes closed, face almost serene despite the obvious pain.
“Where are you?” he asked. Fernand did not answer. He was elsewhere, on an imaginary scene dancing a solo that he had created years ago. Schrebert stood up, approached, slapped him violently. “I asked you a question. Where are you?” Fernand opened his eyes, looked at him and smiled. Somewhere where you can’t reach me, it was the only time Fernand openly challenged Schreiber and he paid dearly for this audacity.
The session was extended by two hours additional. We attack him, he had to be carried out of the room. He could no longer use his legs everything, but something had changed in Schreiber’s gaze, a form of respect perhaps or frustration. He hadn’t succeeded in breaking this man completely. The months passed, war continued.
The news that filtered into the camp were more even worse for Germany. In block 17, the prisoners supported as best they could. They shared their rations, cared for their wounds, watched over the most weak. It was a community of suffering, but it was a community. Fernand befriended a man named Klaus, a German homosexual, former music teacher in Munich.
Klaus was older, wiser and he had survived three years in the camp. He knew the rules, the dangers, the means to stay alive. One evening, after a particularly session brutal, Klaus came and sat down next to Fernand or rather lie down next to him, because neither of them could sit down.
“You know why Schreiber does that?” Klaus asked. Fernand shook his head. Speaking was difficult. The pain radiated into his whole body because he is like us, said Klaus. Fernand looked at him incredulous. I saw it 2 years ago Klaus continued before he became what he is now. He came to block 17 at night. Sometimes he looked the men slept, he did nothing.
He just looked with a look that I know well. You mean he I want to say that he is exactly like us, but he chose the other path. He has chose to hate what he is, to hate him destroy in others because he cannot destroy it in him. Klaus fit a break. That’s why he’s so cruel. It’s not pure hatred, it’s self-hatred directed towards the exterior.
Fernand remained silent, thinking to his words. If Klaus was right, then Schreiber was not a monster incomprehensible. He was a broken man, broken by his own nature that he could not accept. This did not make his actions less horrible, but it made them somehow sadder. “How do you survive?” asked Fernand. After three years of this, Klaus smiles weakly.
I remember who I am, not what they say I am, a degenerate, a sick person, a criminal. But who am I really? A man who loves music, a man who taught to hundreds of students, a man who loved and who was loved. He turned the head towards Fernand. They can destroy your body. They can hurt you. every time you squat for the rest of your life, but they can’t touch who you really are unless you let them do it.
In 1944, some Things changed in the camp. The war turned out badly for Germany. The allies had landed in Normandy. The Red Army was advancing to the east. The Reich was collapsing. In Flossenburg, conditions are deteriorated further. The rations decreased, work intensified, executions increased and Schreiber became more eratic.
His torture sessions became more frequent, longer, more brutal, as if he was trying to do his best damage before the end or as if it was looking for something, an answer, a satisfaction that he did not find never. One day in November, Schreiber summoned Fernand for a private session. But this time something thing was different.
The room was empty. No guard, no witness, just Schre and Fernand. And Schreiber was not wearing his uniform. He was in civilian, simple pants and a shirt. He looked tired, old, diminished, assiettoid. he said pointing a chair. A real chair, not the wooden horse. Fernand obeys with precaution. Sitting still hurt but on a normal chair, it was bearable.
Schreiber sat down opposite him. He remained silent for a long moment, looking at him. “Are you wondering why you’re here?” he finally said. Fernand did not respond not. The war is lost, Schriber continues. We all know it, even if we let’s not dare say it. In a few months, maybe a few weeks, Americans will be there and everything will be over.
He paused. When they arrive, they will find evidence of what we did. They will find the registers, witnesses. You, he looked Fernand intensely, you will testify against me, right? You will tell what I did to you. Fernand supports his look. Yes. Schreiber nodded slowly the head. I suspected it. You are resistant. You never really gave in.
Despite everything I did to you, it got up, walked to the window, looked outside. You know what I wanted really? Not punish you, not you re-educate. I wanted to understand, understand how you can be what you are. and don’t not be ashamed of it. How can you accept your nature while I stopped.
His shoulders shook slightly. I hated you because you had something that I didn’t have. Peace with yourself. And I tried to take it from you because if I couldn’t not have it, no one should have it. Fernand listened to him in silence. He doesn’t didn’t feel pity. It was impossible. after all he had suffered.
But he felt something on the other, a form of understanding. Schreiber was not a monster inexplicable. He was a man destroyed by his own shame. “Why are you telling me all this?” asked Fernand. Schreiber turned around. “Because I wanted you to know before the end that it wasn’t a personal, that you weren’t just a number.” He opened the door.
Go back to the block, I won’t summon you more. Fernand got up with difficulty. Sitting down and getting up was always painful and he went out. It was the last time he saw Schreiber. 3 months later, the camp was liberated by the Americans. Schreiber had disappeared, probably flees with others SS officers. He was never found.
On April 23, 1945, American troops entered Flosenburg. Fernand was still alive. It was a miracle, or rather the result of 2 years fierce struggle to survive. He weighed 43 kg. He could barely walk and each movement of his pelvis, every attempt to sit up or squatting caused him pain excruciating. But he was alive.
In the weeks following the release, American doctors examined the survivors. They documented the injuries, malformations, after-effects. They tried to understand what had been done to these men. When they examined Fernand, they were stunned by the state of his basin. The waters were distorted, the scar tissue, nerves damaged.
A doctor asked him what that had happened to him. Fernand tried to explain “The wooden horse, the sessions, repeated torture. But words seemed insufficient. How to explain cruelty too calculated, also methodical, also personal?” The doctor noted what he could in his report. Trauma repeated pelvic, torture origin. This is what is likely to be permanent.
That was a colossal understatement. Fernand returned to France in July 1945. He returned to Paris to the district where he had lived before the war. But he there was nothing left for him there. Sound apartment had been requisitioned then rented to others. His things were gone. His friends, those who had survived the war, didn’t want to see him anymore.
They had learned why he had been deported. And in France in 1945, being homosexual remained a crime and a shame. And he couldn’t dance anymore. This was perhaps the worst of all. Sound body, this body that he had trained for years he had transformed into an instrument of art and beauty. was broken.
He could no longer make the movements that had been his life. Squatting for a plie was impossible. Jumping was unthinkable, even walking normally was a effort. It hurts when I squat down. This sentence became summary of his life after the war. Each day, several times a day, he was confronted with this pain. Every time that he had to sit down, get up, go up stairs, pick up something on the ground.
Every time the pain reminded him of what Schreyber had done. He couldn’t forget her. Sound body wouldn’t let him forget. Fernand found work as a salesman in a clothing store, a job standing which did not require sitting too often. a job anonymous where no one asked him questions about his past. He lived alone in a small apartment in the die district.
He did not seek to companions, did not associate with anyone. Intimacy had become impossible, no only physically difficult because of his injuries, but also psychologically unbearable. What had been done to him had created associations, traumas, blockages that he could not overcome. The years passed, France changed, but Fernand remained frozen in his silence, in his pain, in his memories.
He never spoke of what had happened to anyone, ever. When alumni associations deportees were formed, they were not did not join. These associations did not welcome pink triangles. Anyway, homosexuals were not recognized as victims of deportation. When historians began to take an interest in the camp, he did not testify.
Who would like to hear its history and how to explain what had been done to him. When homosexuality was decriminalized in 1981, he did not celebrate. It was too much late for him, too late to do it again life, too late to heal, too late to be something other than this survivor broken that he had become. In 1976, the pain became unbearable.
of decades of accumulated damage, osteoarthritis, bone deterioration. Fernand consulted a doctor, Doctor Fournier, in Lyon, where he had moved to escape Paris and its memories. It was the first time in 31 years that he talked about what happened to him. The Doctor Fournier listened to him with mixture of amazement and horror.
He examined his body, documented his injuries, tried to understand the mechanism of torture which had caused such damage. “Why didn’t you never seen it before?” he asked. Fernand shrugged his shoulders, a gesture which hurt him like all gestures. Uh, to say what? That the Nazis gave me tortured because I was gay? that German doctors did to me sit on a wooden beam until break my pelvis.
Who would have believed me? Who would have wanted to listen to me? The doctor Fournier had no response to this question because Fernand was right. For 30 years, no one would have wanted listen to it. The doctor did what he could. Of painkillers, exercises rehabilitation, tips for managing daily life with a damaged body. But he couldn’t fix what had been destroyed.
You will hurt for the rest of your life, he said finally. I’m sorry, there is no of solution. Fernand nodded. He already knew it. He lived with this reality for 31 years. Fernand Leclerc lived another 23 years after this consultation. years of daily pain. Avoided sitting, squatting, do the simplest movements. 23 years brought in his body the traces of what Schreiber had done to him.
But something changed in him over the years years. The world was changing, attitudes towards homosexuals changed, associations were formed, voices rose. And for the first time, historians were really interested in the fate of pink triangles. In 1998, the daughter of Doctor Fournier, who became herself a doctor, published the research of his father on the survivors of Das Ron.
The article caused a stir in the academic circles. For the first times, this form of torture was documented, recognized, analyzed. Journalists contacted Fernand, historians too, associations from memory. Fernand hesitated for a long time. 55 years of silence weighed heavily. How break this silence now? How find the words to describe the indescribable? In the spring of 1999, he agreed to testify.
He was 81 years. His health was declining. He knew that he He didn’t have much time left. If I die without speaking, he said to the historian who questioned him. They will have won. Schreiber wanted me keep quiet, let me be ashamed, let me carry away his secret in the grave. I refuse to give him this satisfaction. The testimony was recorded on several sessions.
Between May and July 199, Fernand told everything. His arrest, the Schreiber camp, the wooden horse, the torture sessions, the pain that never left him. He also spoke of his life after the war, of silence, of loneliness, of the impossibility of dancing which had perhaps been the loss the cruelest of all. “They got me took my dance,” he said.
They took me the thing I loved most in the world. For two years I survived dancing in my head. It was my refuge, my resistance. And then when I was released, I realized that I don’t could never dance again true. My body wouldn’t allow me more. He paused, his eyes shiny. Perhaps this is the act more serious.
Not physical pain, we gets used to the pain of a certain way, but deprive myself of what made of me, me, transforming myself into a dancer in invalid, destroy not only my body but my identity. The historian asked him if he had any regrets. “Just one,” he replied. “I should have spoken sooner. I kept silence for 50 years because I was ashamed, not ashamed of what I am.
I’ve made peace with it since a long time, but ashamed of what had me been done, like it was my fault, like I deserved it. He squeaked his head. This is what he wanted, that we are ashamed, that we keep quiet, that we disappear and I played their game for 55 years. I should have resisted earlier. I would have had to speak, but he sighed.
He is not never too late, even now, even at one year old. It’s never too late to tell the truth. Fernand Lecler died on November, four months after completing his testimony. He was 81 years old. Sound testimony was published in a book collective in 2002 alongside the stories other Da Wrighton survivors found thanks to research by Doctor Fournier.
The book was titled The wooden horse, a forgotten torture. He caused a scandal. Many refused to to believe that such cruelty had existed. Others accused the perpetrators exaggeration, sensationalism, lie. The deniers are leaving were given to their heart’s content, but the evidence were there. medical records, concordant testimonies, traces physical on the bodies of survivors and above all the Nazi registers themselves who mentioned Das Ren as a rehabilitation method applied to homosexual prisoners.
In 2008, a commemorative plaque was installed in the location of the old Wheuse in Flossenburg. The building was demolished after the war, but the location was known. The plaque bears the inscription. In this place, men were tortured for their identity. They carried in their body the traces of this cruelty until their last breath.
That their suffering will never be forgotten. What their courage be honored. It hurts when I squat. This sentence pronounced by so many survivors has become a symbol of this that they endured. A simple sentence, daily, banal, but which contains a world of suffering. Every time one of these men sat down, stood up, climbed stairs, picked up something, he remembered.
His body forced him to remember. This was the purpose of torture. Not only hurt in the moment, but create a permanent inscribed memory in the flesh and the waters. These men transformed this curse into testimony. They carried their pain for decades and finally they spoke. They told the world what had been done to them.
They refused to disappear into oblivion. Fernand Leclerc could no longer dance with his body, but in the last months of his life, he danced with his words. He has told his story, his true story, with all its pain and all its beauty. And this story still dances years after his death. If this story touched you, leave a comment to tell me where you are from look.
Each message is a way to say to Fernand and the others: “We hear you, we do not turn away the look. Your pain was not vain. Subscribe to the channel for discover other forgotten stories. Stories of those we wanted silence. Stories that deserve to be heard even when they are difficult to listen to. Fernand Leclerc was in pain when he squatted for 56 years, but he found the strength to speak.
And now it’s up to us to pass on his word. It hurts when I squat down. It is a sentence of pain, but it is also a sentence of truth. And the truth, even painful, is the first step towards recognition. Thanks for listening. Please don’t forget.
