“Lower your trousers” — a German order dreaded by homosexual prisoners.

Ondron pull down your pants. Three words in German spoken by a man in white blouse with round glasses and a smile that had nothing human about it. 37 men lined up in a room concrete felt their blood run cold. They knew what this order meant. They had heard the rumors. They had seen those who returned when they were returning from their exams.

Some do not walked straighter for days, some no longer worked at all and some never returned. We Runter. Now the first man of the line, a 34-year-old Frenchman named Gabriel the king closed his eyes. His hands were shaking so much that he could not undo the buttons his striped pants. Behind him, six other men were waiting their turn.

Or the last one. Stop for a moment. What is did you just hear? A Nazi doctor ordering homosexual prisoners to drop their pants. What is this what do you imagine? What are you fear? I’ll tell you what’s going on actually happened. And it’s worse, well worse than anything you can imagine. Pull down your pants.

This sentence, hundreds of homosexual prisoners heard it in the Nazi camps and every time they heard it, he feared worse because the worst in his camps had no limit. This what I’m going to tell you today is the story of what was happening after this order. The history of exams medical, treatments, experiences that the Nazis inflicted to homosexuals.

It’s a story of shame, of pain and survival. A story that we don’t almost never tells because she is too hard to hear, but she must be told for those who have it lived, for those who did not survive, so that no one forgets. If you have the courage to stay until the end you will understand why did these three words lower your pants pursued survivors even in their nightmare until their last breath.

Saxonhausen, Germany, November. Saxonhausen concentration camp was one of the most brutal in the Reich. Located kilometers from Berlin, it served camp, a place where the SS tested new methods of torture, forced labor and extermination. And among the most prisoners mistreated, there were triangles roses, homosexuals.

In November 1943 there were approximately 180 pink triangles in Saxanhausen. The Most of them were German, but there were also French, Belgian, Dutch, all those that machine Nazi had collected across Europe busy. Among them there were five men I’m going to tell you about the story. Gabriel Lerois, years old, architect in Paris.

Gabriel was arrested in June 1943 during a raid in an apartment in 16th district. There was a party that evening, a private, discreet party between men. Someone had spoken. The Guestapo had come. Gabriel was arrived in Saxanusen in August. Tr month more later, he had lost 15 kg and all illusion about human nature.

Antoine Mercier, 28 years old, dancer at Moulin Rouge. Antoine had the body of an athlete or rather he had it before the camp, before the end, before the blows. Now he was just one skeleton who vaguely remembered what it was like to dance. Henry Vassur, 45 years old, doctor from Lille. Henry was the oldest of the group.

He was also the only one who understood really what was happening in the block camp medical. He had read before war articles on Nazi experiments. He knew what lowering your pants meant and this knowledge terrified him more than everything. Julien petit, twenty years old student at Bordeaux, the youngest, the most innocent.

Julien had been arrested for having written love letters to a classmate. Letters that the comrade’s father had found and denounced. At the age of 20, Julien discovered that love could be a crime, a crime punished with death. Raymond Duval, 52 years old, former priest. Raymond had left the church in 193, unable to continue lying about this that he was.

He had lived 8 years of freedom, 8 years of finally being himself before the Nazis caught him. Now, in this camp, he wondered if God really existed and if so, where it was. These five men did not know each other before Saxanausan, but the camp had them gathered in the same barracks, in the same suffering, in the same fear. And that morning in November 1943, they were renewed once again in the same go to the same doctor with the same order which reasoned in their ears.

On Runter, lower your pants. The Saxanhausen medical block was officially a center of the self. Unofficially, it was a laboratory horror. This is where doctors SS were conducting their experiments on the tyfus, on malaria, on burns chemical, on the limits of the body human. And that’s where the doctor was Ernst Hoffman. Hoffman was not a doctor ordinary, he was a specialist, a specialist in homosexuality.

He believed, like many Nazis, that homosexuality was an illness, a disease that could be diagnosed, studied and potentially cured. Its diagnostic method was simple. Pull down your pants. Gabriel was the first. He stood in front of Hoffman, his pants around his ankles bare from the waist to the knees. His legs were trembling.

His hands that he kept along the body were tight in point. Hoffman examined it with interest. clinic like a butcher examining a piece of meat. Turn around! Gabriel obeys. He had no choice. Fish forward. Gabriel felt the shame welled up in him. This position, the one he had known in private, in pleasure, in love, was now used to humiliate him, degrade, destroy it.

He heard Hoffman putting on rubber gloves. remains still. What followed, Gabriel didn’t want to remember it, but he would remember it for the rest of his life life. The exam lasted 5 to 10 minutes. Hoffman claimed to be looking for signs physical symptoms of homosexuality, anatomical differences which, according to him, distinguished homosexuals from moms normal.

It was pseudoscience, madness disguised as medicine. But for the prisoners who suffered these examinations, scientific validity didn’t matter. What mattered was the pain, the humiliation, the violation. After Gabriel, it was the turn of Antoine. The dancer stepped forward, trembling legs. He had seen what we had done to Gabriel.

He knew what he was waiting. Faster, Hoffman said. I I don’t have all day. Anthony lowered his pants. Her thighs, once muscled by years of dance, were nothing more than covered of skin. Hoffman frowned. This one is too skinny. It will not be used useless for the tests. He gestured to his assistant. Send him back to work. Give him an extra ration for a week.

I want him regain weight. Antoine did not understand. A ration additional? For what ? What is this What did Hoffman mean by test? He didn’t have time to ask. A guard pushed him outwards, pants lowered again. Henry, the doctor, was the third. Him immediately understood what was happening. When Hoffman examined it, he recognized the gestures, he recognized the technique and he recognized the objective.

“Are you looking for evidence of this half-passive?” asked a calm voice. Hoffman stopped, surprised. You are a doctor ? I was before. Hoffman sat up, looking at him with a new interest. And what do you think my research? Henry hesitated. Say it truth could kill him. Lying could save him. But he was tired of lie.

He had lied all his life about what he was, what he wanted, about what he liked. He didn’t want to lie anymore. I think it’s pseudoscience. Homosexuality is not an illness physical. There are no signs anatomical. You won’t find anything because there is nothing to find. The silence that followed was terrible. Hoffman looked at him for a long time.

Then he smiled. You have courage for a degenerate. It’s rare. He gestured to his assistant. This one I’m saving for advanced experiences. Take him to block 46. Henry felt his blood run cold. Block 46. Everyone knew what it was. It was the place from which we never returned not. Julien, the youngest, was the 4th.

At 19, he had never been examined in this way. He had never been touched by this way. nor by a doctor, nor by person. When Hoffman ordered him to lower his pants, Julien started to cry. Please, please, I didn’t do anything. You never have what? I never I’ve never done this with a man. All I did was write letters, love letters to another boy.

It’s what your file says. It was just words. I have never It never does no difference. You are here because you are a degenerate. Whether you acted or not doesn’t change anything. He made a sign to Julien to turn around. Now do what we tells you. where the guards will make you obey. Julien obeys, crying, trembling, by losing a part of himself that he never found again.

Raymond, the elder priest, was the last. At 50 years old, he had experienced a lot. He had experienced faith and doubt, love and loneliness, hope and despair. But he had never experienced this. When Hoffman examined it, Raymond closed the eyes and prayed. not to be saved. He doesn’t believed more in salvation, but to have the strength to endure what he was arriving.

“This one is old,” said Hoffman to his assistant, “my could used for comparative tests. Keep him on the list.” “What Are you going to do us?” asked Raymond. “Hoffman smiles. Heal you or at least try. And if we don’t want be cured? It’s not a question to want, it’s a question of science.” He gestured to the guards: “Take them, I’ll see them tomorrow.

” Part: Tests. The next day, they were summoned again, not all 37, only some, those that Hoffman had selected. Gabriel, Henri, Julien, Raymond and eight others. di men, cobais. They were led in a different room this time bigger, better equipped. There was examination tables, machines strange, cupboards full of vials and syringes.

And in the middle of everything that, Doctor Hoffman in his coat immaculate white. “Welcome !” he said. “Today we begin the treatment.” “What treatment?” asked Gabriel. “The treatment for your illness, against your perversion. He took a syringe from a table. We let’s inject you with testosterone in large quantities. The hypothesis is that your homosexuality is caused by a hormonal imbalance.

If we let’s increase your testosterone level, you should become normal. Gabriel looked at the syringe. The liquid at the inside was yellowish, thick. What if it doesn’t work? Hoffman raised his shoulders. So we’ll try something else thing. The injections began. Every day, for weeks, the 12 prisoners received doses massive amounts of testosterone.

Doses that would have been dangerous for a man in good health and who was potentially fatal for prisoners weakened by the fa and the forced labor. Side effects were immediate and brutal. Acne severe, hair loss, mood swings violent, muscle pain. palpitation cardiac. Julien, the youngest was the first to collapse.

His heart, weakened by months of malnutrition, couldn’t stand the hormonal shock. He collapsed during morning roll call, convulsing on the frozen ground. We took him in the infirmary. He never came back. “The subject 7 did not survive treatment”, Hoffman noted in his report. Conclusion: the dosage must be adjusted for people with weak constitutions.

That was all. A line in a report, a number crossed off a list. Gabriel Petit, 19 years old, student in Bordeaux, lover of letters and poetry, no longer existed. He never had kissed the man he loved. He had never known the pleasure of a body against his. He was dead virgin in a concentration camp because he dared to write words of love. Gabriel learned it that same evening.

He was in the barracks, lying on his bunk, trying not to think of the pain that pulsed in his whole body. Raymond approached him. “The little one is dead,” he said. simply. Gabriel closed his eyes. “How?” His heart gave out the call. It’s because of the injections probably. Gabriel felt something thing break inside him.

No sadness. He was too exhausted to sadness. Something more profound, a loss of faith in humanity, in justice, in everything. He was ten years old ! He had never done any harm to person. I know. He didn’t even have he had never been with a man. He had just written letters. I know. And how can they do that? How can they kill a kid for words on paper? Raymond did not answer. He had no answer.

Nobody had any. Henry, the doctor, had been taken to block 46. During a week, no one had any news of him. Then one evening he reappeared in the barracks. He was unrecognizable. His face was humped, covered with blue and cutoff. He walked bent as if each step cost him a immense effort. And his eyes, his eyes which had once shone of intelligence and compassion were empty. Henry Gabriel approached him.

My god, what did they do to you? Henry didn’t respond immediately. He sat down on his bunk slowly with gestures of an old man. Then he spoke in a monotone voice without emotion. They tried something new, surgical procedure. Surgical what? Henry looked up towards Gabriel. They implemented a gland.

A gland taken from another prisoner. A normal prisoner. He think it can heal us. Gabriel felt his stomach churn. A gland? Which gle? The gland of Ladyig in the testicles. They have it taken from a dead prisoner and they put it in me. The silence that followed was absolute. “It’s crazy,” Gabriel whispered. “It’s science”, Henry said with a bitter laugh.

“At least, that’s what he believes. The days passed, then the weeks. The injections continued, examinations continued, the humiliation continued. “Lower your pants.” He could almost hear this sentence every day now. Every time as he passed in front of the medical block, every time Hoffman wanted to check the progress of his treatment, Gabriel had stopped counting, stopped resist, stopped thinking.

He was falling his pants automatically without asks him, like a good dog erected. This is what they had become, dogs. But Raymond refused to give up. the former priest had found something deep inside him. Not the faith in God that he had since lost long, but faith in humanity, in what remained of humanity in this hell.

“We must hold on,” he told the others in the evening in the barracks. “We must survive to testify.” “Witness to what?” Gabriel asked. “No one will believe us. Nobody will want to know. Someday someone will want and that day, we will have to be there to tell.” Raymond began to document what was happening was passing.

It was risky, incredibly risky. If the guards discovered this what they were doing, he would be executed on the field. but he did it anyway. Every evening, with a piece of stolen pencil and pieces of paper recovered from the trash cans, he wrote the names of prisoners, dates of treatment, side effects, deaths. He hid the papers under a blade of floor in the barracks, a secret archive of horror.

“If I die, he said to Gabriel, you must find these papers. You have to get them out of here. You have to show them to the world. And if we both die, then someone someone else will find them one day. The Nazis will not reign forever. Henry, meanwhile, survived at block 46. The implant caused an infection massive.

For days he had delirious with fever, convinced he was going die. But he wasn’t dead. Sound body, despite everything had fought infection and slowly, very slowly he had healed, or at least his body had healed. His mind, that was another story. When Henry returned to the general barracks, Henry was no longer the same man.

He spoke little, he ate little, he slept little, but he observed a lot. “Hoffman makes mistakes, says Henry one evening to Gabriel and Raymond. Mistakes medical. Its dosages are incorrect. Its procedures are shoddy. What kind error! The kind that kills. He lost three topics this week. Not because of the treatments themselves, but because of contamination, infection, negligence.

And so what is that? change for us? Henry looked at them. This means that he is vulnerable, that his superiors begin to doubt him, unless these results improve not, it could stop the program or he might just kill us all and start again with others, said Gabriel. Possible, but it is a risk that we can influence. How? Henry smiled.

A smile without joy, but with something that looked like determination by sabotaging his experiences from within. The plan of Henry was simple. but dangerous. In as a doctor, he had knowledge than other prisoners didn’t have. They knew how the treatments worked, it knew what medicine was used and he knew how to make them ineffective without anyone noticing see.

“The injections of testosterone, he explained, if they are poorly preserved, exposed to heat or light, they lose their effectiveness. Side effects remain, but the main effects are decreasing. You want to sabotage them medications? I want to keep us in life long enough for the war to end ends. If the doses are ineffective, Hoffman will think that his theories are false.

Perhaps he will abandon program. And if he realizes this what’s happening, Henry raised his eyes, then I will die. But at least I would have tried. The sabotage began. Henry had managed to get himself assigned as a medical assistant in the operating room, a position normally reserved for prisoners of confidence, but that the SS had given because he lacked qualified personnel.

Every day he found subtle ways to compromise experiments, expose testosterone vials in the light, dilute the solutions, mix them sansecunes. Nothing visible, nothing detectable, just enough to distort the results. And it worked. Week after week, Hoffman’s progress were stagnating. These reports became more and more vague.

His superiors began to ask questions. “I don’t understand,” Hoffman said to his assistants. “the dosages are correct, the procedures are followed, but the results do not correspond to the forecasts. Henry, standing in a corner of the room kept a face impassive. Inside, he was smiling. March 1947. The program was suspended.

Berlin had decided that research of offman were a vastige of resources. The results were disappointing, the prices were high and the war demanded that all resources are focused on military forts. Hoffman was furious. He screamed, protested, threatened, but decision was made. The experiences on homosexuals stopped, from less in Saxon Hausen.

“It’s over,” said Henry that evening in the barracks. “The program is over.” Gabriel couldn’t believe it. “Really, they give up? For now, they no longer have the means to continue. But what will happen to us? We returns to normal work, quarries, factories. It’s brutal, but it’s better than the medical block. Raymond is at the head. We survived.

That’s all what matters. No, said Henry, it’s not not all that matters. It is also necessary tell what happened here. Injections, implants, exams. All this must be documented. I wrote everything, Raymond says every day from the beginning. names, dates, the procedures. Henry looked at him with respect.

Okay, so now we need to hide it, protect it until can someone get him out of here. But the relaxation was short-lived. A week after the end of the program, Hoffman made a final visit to the barracks of pink triangles. He was no longer in a white coat. He wore his full uniform with badges and medals. “Gather,” he ordered. the salt prisoners.

32 survivors out of the 37 originals. Five were dead during treatments. Hoffman looked at them with contempt. “My program was canceled,” he said. “grace to you, thanks to your inability to respond to treatment.” Nobody replied. “But don’t think it’s finished. It’s never over for people like you.” He stopped in front Henry.

You, the doctor, believed that I hadn’t noticed? Henry felt his blood freezes. Notice what, her doctor? The vials exposed to the light, diluted solutions, mixed samples? Henry doesn’t did not answer. There was nothing to say. You sabotaged my work. You destroyed years of research. Hoffman smiled. a smile that had nothing human about it.

And now you will pay. He gestured to the guards. Take him away. Henry was taken that evening. Gabriel and Raymond tried to intervene, but the The guards brutally pushed them back. He couldn’t do anything, nothing at all. “The papers!” Henry whispered as he passed. in front of Raymond. “Don’t forget the papers.” These were the last words.

We never saw him again. Gabriel remained awake all night. He was thinking of Henry, to his courage, to his sacrifice. The doctor had saved lives, not all, but some. He had slowed down experiments, reduced doses, limited the damage. Without him, many more prisoners would have died. And now Henry was dead. Or worse.

He knew, said Rémon, sitting next to him in the dark. He knew what was going to happen if he got caught and he did it anyway. Yes, because that it was the right thing to do. Gabriel shook his head. The right thing to do. Look where that got him. It has it led to save lives, to give meaning to his suffering, to die like a man, not in animal.

Raymond placed his hand on Gabriel’s shoulder. That’s all we can hope here. Die as a man. The months passed. Gabriel and Raymond survived day after day, week after week. Career work was brutal, but they did it accustomed. The fa was constant, but they had learned to ignore it. The cold was deadly, but they had found ways to warm up, sleep, tight together, fly pieces of fabric to sew on their clothes.

They survived because they had to survive, to Henry, for Julien, for all those who had not survived. In January 1945, rumors began to circulate. The Soviets were advancing, the Allies bombed Berlin. war touched on its end. “Is this really going to end?” asked Gabriel one evening. “It will end,” said Rmon. The question is whether we will be still here when it happens.

” In April 1945, the SS began to evacuate Saxenhausen. They took the prisoners towards the north in what we would later call the steps of the dead. Forced marches through Germany in ruins where thousands of prisoners died of exhaustion, hunger and esses balls. Gabriel and Raymond were among those who were walking.

For three days, they walked without food, without water, without rest. Around them, prisoners collapsed. Those who do not did not get up were felled on place. The gunshots punctuated the works like a macabre metronome. “Continue,” said Raymond to Gabriel, “One step at a time, that’s all it takes must be done.

Gabriel continued a step, then another, then another. He doesn’t thought no more, he no longer felt, he worked, that’s all. On the third day, the SS disappeared. They had run away during the night, abandoning the prisoners in the middle of a forest German. Gabriel and Raymond woke up at sunrise. Around of them, hundreds of prisoners, those who had survived the march, looked around in confusion.

“They’re gone,” someone whispered. It’s a trap, said another. But this was not a trap, it was the end. The Soviets found them next day. Red Army soldiers in green uniform with red stars on their cap. They were looking at the prisoners with a mixture of horror and of compassion. “My God!” said one from them in Russian, “what are they telling you did?” No one answered.

No one could answer. Gabriel and Raymond were taken to a camp refugees. They receive food, real food for the first times in two years. They received clothes, clean clothes, without watch, without triangle. And they receive something he didn’t have for a long time, dignity. “We have survived”, said Gabriel one evening, sitting on a hospital bed looking out window. “Yes,” said Raymond.

We have survived. But at what price?” Raymond did not answer immediately. He went out something from his pocket, a small packet of crumpled, stained, half illegible. “I managed to keep,” he said throughout the walk. “I hid them under my clothes.” Gabriel looked at the papers, the notes of Raymond, the names, dates, procedures, everything that had happened at medical block.

“What are you going to do with it?” Gabriel said. I would give them to someone who can use them, a historian, a journalist, someone who will be able to tell the world what happened past. Do you think people will want know? I don’t know, but they must know. For Henry, for Julien, for all those who did not have survived. Epilogue.

Gabriel the king, 56 years old, lived in Paris. He had resumed his profession of architect after the war. He had rebuilt his life as much as we could rebuild after what he had lived. He never spoke of Saxenamsen, never to anyone, except one times. One day, a young student of history came to see him. He was preparing a thesis on pink triangles, homosexuals in the Nazi camps.

He had found the name of Gabriel in Soviet archives. “Mr. King, I would like to ask you some questions about what happened there.” Gabriel hesitated for a long time. For twenty years he had kept silent. For twenty years, he had tried to forget. But we don’t ever forget. Okay, he said finally. I’ll tell you.

And he told everything. The train, the arrival, the examinations, injections, implants, the dead and this sentence, this sentence which still haunted him 20 years later. Pull down your pants. You know, he said at the end, it was the worst. not the blows, not the end, not even the experiences.

It was this order, this constant, daily humiliation, systematic. He took everything from us, our dignity, our humanity, our identity. And it always started with these three words: “Breeze your pants.” The student nodded. He understood as much as we could understand without having lived. “Thank you for spoke to me, Mr.

Loi! No, thank you for listening to me.” Raymond Duval died in at the age of years. Before his death, he had succeeded in publishing a testimony, a small book drawn from a few hundred copies which recounted what had happened to Saxenhausen. Nobody read it, no one wanted to know but the book existed and one day someone would read it.

Henry Vasser died in Saxonhausen in March 1944. We never found his body. We never know exactly what had happened to him. But the prisoners that they had known remembered him, of his courage, of his sacrifice, of his resistance. He died in man, not animal. Julien Petit, 19 years old, student in Bordeaux, died on the 15th November 1943.

He had never kissed the man he loved. He had never known the happiness of a shared life, but he had loved and no one could take that away from him. Pull down your pants. These words, hundreds of homosexual prisoners have heard. Some died in hearing, others survived, but they never forgot. If you read this story, remember them.

Remember Gabriel, Raymond, Henry, from Julien. Remember everyone those who suffered because they loved differently. And remember that dignity, true dignity cannot never be taken. She can be injured, humiliated, attacked, but she can never be destroyed, not so much that there are people to remember. If this story touched you, leave a comment, say what you feel because these men deserve to be talk about them.

Subscribe if you want hear other stories like this one, stories of those who been forgotten, ignored, erased from the story. Pull down your pants. Now you know why these words made grown men tremble and you will never forget them.