There were fewer than a hundred men recognized as homosexuals incarcerated in Auschwitz. They were prisoners of German nationality designated by a pink triangle, arrested on the basis of Paragraph 175 of the German criminal code. The majority of the several score thousand homosexuals arrested by the Nazis before the war ended up in such concentration camps as Dachau, Sachsenhausen, or Flossenbürg. Prisoners in this category were rare in camps founded during the war, when the persecution of them in Germany eased markedly.

Their fellow former prisoners usually held negative views of their behavior in the camp, which may in part have reflected prejudices that were widespread at the time. They were also sometimes confused with other German prisoners— criminal and asocial functionaries—who often compelled young boys (youths) to perform sexual favors.

(Mini dictionary of terms from the history of Auschwitz)