No community of survivors with which to share their stories. For decades, most of these men were unable to relate the saga of their torture at the hands of the Nazis for fear of outing themselves to a hostile society. and Europe, meant that many gay survivors of Nazism faced continued persecution, arrest, and detention long after Hitler was defeated. The enforcement of anti-homosexuality laws across the U.S. While great effort was made to repatriate most victims of Nazi brutality, the homosexual survivors were not “liberated.” At the recommendation of British and American lawyers, the men who had been arrested under Germany’s anti-homosexual ‘Paragraph 175’ statute – identified by the pink triangles many were forced to wear – were to be re-imprisoned. At the conclusion of World War II, the Allies came upon Nazi concentration camps and other sites of atrocity to find thousands upon thousands of people – suffering terribly, emaciated, near death – whom the SS had incarcerated because they were Jewish, Roma or Sinti, dissenting Lutheran and Catholic Clergy, mentally or physically disabled, homosexuals, political dissidents… the list of groups which offended Adolf Hitler was a long one. Pierre Seel, from "I, Pierre Seel, Deported Homosexual: A Memoir of Nazi Terror"īefore the Nazi era, Berlin had been home to a vibrant gay and lesbian culture.
As for myself, after decades of silence I have made up my mind to speak, to accuse, to bear witness.” But I suspect that some people prefer to remain silent forever, afraid to stir up memories, like that one among so many others. Why are they still silent today? Have they all died? It’s true that we were among the youngest in the camp and that a lot of time has gone by. I will never forget the barbaric murder of my love – before my very eyes, before our eyes, for there were hundreds of witnesses. For fifty years now that scene has kept ceaselessly passing and re-passing through my mind. “Since then I sometimes wake up howling in the middle of the night.