regained my phone.

currently i am reading a book entitled "the men with the pink triangle." it was dictated to heinz heger in 1971, published 1980. the anonymous author was put into concentration camps under hitler's rule for being homosexual, and was compelled to have this book published but remained secretive for all of the trash he was still getting in the 1970s. i am at a part where he is in his first camp, and is put into a barrack with all the other gays. they sleep with the lights on and their hands out of their blankets, but no jew/disabled/jehovah witness/etc has to do this. he encounters a gay priest who is punished for refusing to stop praying...


"i felt i was witnessing the crucifixion of christ in modern guise. instead of roman soldiers, hitlers SS thugs, and a bench instead of the cross. the torment of the savior however was scarcely greater than that inflicted on one of his representatives 1900 years later here in sachsenhausen.

the next morning when we marched...we almost had to carry the priest, who seemed about to collapse from pain and weakness. when our block senior reported to the SS block sergeant, the latter came over to the priest and shouted:...."you filthy queer, you filthy swine, say what you are!" the priest was supposed to repeat the insults, but no sound came from the lips of the broken man. the SS man angrily fell on him and was about to start beating him once again.

suddenly the unimaginable happened, something that is still inexplicable to me and that i could only see as a miracle, the finger of god:

from the overcast sky, a sudden ray of sunshine illuminated the priest's battered face."

in short, this light unnerves those beating the priest. the priest murmurs a small prayer of thanks, and then quietly passes away.

i never expected to find passages like this. and i love it.


listening to: "against the wind" by bob seger