A contemporary witness report about Lichtenburg concentration camp

Content note: Due to violence portrayed, reading this text and watching this video can be very painful.

The gay contemporary witness Kurt von Ruffin explained in this interview in the early 1990s that people perceived as gender nonconforming were treated particularly cruelly in Lichtenburg concentration camp. The interview shows that reports from contemporary witnesses can be an important source for learning more about the undocumented everyday treatment of queer people in concentration camps. During an interview in 1978, von Ruffin had already stated the following:

“Down in the courtyard you had to experience that transvestites who were brought in, who had to travel as women, were then stripped and beaten in front of everyone, pushed and abused until they were naked. The bigwigs, the SS henchmen, feasted on the desperation of these people. One of them - I don't know his name - was sent to the latrine downstairs as a punishment, his head was pushed into the sewer and he suffocated down there."

The prison conditions in concentration camps were inhumane and continued to worsen as Nazi rule progressed. People were forced to work, abused and murdered. Queer people were low in the prison hierarchy and lived in a climate of fear. Not only did they experience unspeakable treatment by the SS. Being queer they often were social outlaws and couldn't necessarily count on the solidarity of their fellow prisoners.