Albert Speer recalls the Röhm Purge in his memoirs



I was in Berlin during the Röhm Putsch*. Tension hung over the city. Soldiers in battle array were encamped in the Tiergarten. Trucks full of police holding rifles cruised the streets. There was clearly an air of "something cooking" similar to that of July 20, 1944, which I would likewise experience in Berlin.

The next day Goering was presented as the savior of the situation in Berlin. Late on the morning of July 1, Hitler returned after making a series of arrests in Munich, and I received a telephone call from his adjutant: "Have you any new designs? If so, bring them here!" That suggested that Hitler's entourage was trying to distract him by turning his mind to his architectural interests.

Hitler was extremely excited and, as I believe to this day, inwardly convinced that he had come through a great danger. Again and again he described how he had forced his way into the Hotel Hanselmayer in Wienssee -- not forgetting, in the telling, to make a show of his courage: "We were unarmed, imagine, and didn't know whether or not those swine might have armed guards to use against us." The homosexual atmosphere had disgusted him: "In one room we found two naked boys!" Evidently he believed that his personal action had averted a disaster at the last minute: "I alone was able to solve this problem. No one esle!"

His entourage tried to deepen his distaste for the executed SA leaders by assiduously reporting as many details as possible about the intimate life of Röhm and his following. Brückner showed Hitler the menus of the banquets held by Röhm and his clique, which had purportedly been found in the Berlin SA headquarters. The menus listed a fantastic variety of courses, including foreign delicacies such as frogs' legs, birds' tongues, shark fins, seagulls' eggs, along with vintage French wines and the best champagnes. Hitler commented sarcastically: "So, here, we have those revolutionnaries! And our revolution was too tame for them."

After paying a call on the President, he returned over-joyed. Hindenburg had approved his operation, he said, saying something like: "When circumstances require it, one must not shrink from the most extreme action. One must be able to spill blood also."

*The Blood Purge of June 30, 1934. The official version was that Ernst Röhm, leader of the SA, was planning a putsch; hence the name -- Translator's note.

Source: Inside the Third Reich, Albert Speer, London: The Orion Books, 1970, p. 90

Photo: Hitler and Speer at Obersalzberg looking at a plan for the new Opera of Linz.

Henny Schermann, juive et lesbienne


Henny Schermann, vendeuse à Frankfurt am Main, fut arrêtée par les nazis en 1940. et assassinée à Ravensbrück en 1942.

Les parents de Henny s'étaient rencontrés peu après que son père eut émigré de Russie. Henny fut la première des trois enfants de ce couple juif. Francfort était un important centre économique et culturel.

1933-39 : Après l'accession des Nazis au pouvoir commença la persécution de nombreux groupes "d'indésirables" parmi lesquels les Juifs, les Tsiganes, les homosexuels, les handicapés, ainsi que les politiciens de gauche. Après 1938, pour identifier les Juifs, un décret Nazi fut promulgué prévoyant que "Sara" devait être ajouté comme deuxième prénom de toutes les femmes juives sur leurs papiers officiels. Henny, alors âgée de vingt-quatre ans, travaillait comme assistante dans une boutique et vivait avec sa famille à Francfort.

1940-44 : Au début de l'année 1940, Henny fut arrêtée à Francfort et déportée dans le camp de concentration pour femmes de Ravensbrück. Derrière la photo où on la voit prisonnière, il était écrit : "Jenny (sic) Sara Schermann, née le 19 février 1912 à Francfort sur le Main. Vendeuse célibataire à Francfort sur le Main. Lesbienne licencieuse, ne fréquente que les bars [homosexuels]. A refusé le prénom 'Sara'. Juive apatride."

Henny fit partie des nombreuses prisonnières de Ravensbrück sélectionnées en vue de leur extermination. En 1942, Henny fut gazée dans le centre d'exécution de Bernburg (Copyright © United States Holocaust Memorial Museum, Washington, D.C. Translation Copyright © Mémorial de la Shoah, Paris, France).

A noter que :

* Après la prise de pouvoir du parti national-socialiste en 1933, toutes les femmes juives furent contraintes, par décret, d'apposer le nom de Sara après leur nom original. Il s'agissait là d'une marque infamante d'appartenance au peuple juif. Shermann refusa d'utiliser ce second nom et continua de fréquenter les bars homos interdits de Francfort.

* L'hôpital psychiâtrique de Bernburg, à proximité de Magdeburg, était spécialisé dans l'élimination des éléments asociaux. C'est là que Henny Schermann fut gazée.

* Schermann a sans nul doute été exécutée parce qu'elle était juive. Mais les données reprises sur la photo signalétique, l'intérêt direct du médecin eugéniste de Ravensbrück et l'envoi à l'hôpital psychiatrique de Brenburg témoignent de la répression particulière de l'homosexualité féminine, coupable, selon l'idéologie nazie, de faire baisser les taux de natalité du Reich et d'affaiblir la race aryenne. Il va de soi que dans le cas d'une femme juive, ces dernières considérations n'entrent pas en ligne de compte.

Sources : Ravensbrueck, Allemagne, 1941. Stadtarchiv Nuernberg/UNITED STATES HOLOCAUST MEMORIAL MUSEUM #71929a ; United States Holocaust Memorial Museum ; Gay Kosmopol.

Photos : Photos d'identification de Henny Schermann, vendeuse à Frankfurt am Main.

Homosexualité et trahison

Jean Le Bitoux : Il y a un parallèle constant dans votre oeuvre entre la fascination de l'ordre militaire, le refus de la violence et l'homosexuel à la recherche de fortes symboliques. Par exemple, l'homosexuel Daniel dans Les Chemins de la liberté applaudit l'arrivée des troupes allemandes dans Paris. Cette adhésion à l'ordre mâle se retrouve chez Genet. L'homosexuel ne serait-il en politique qu'un traître virtuel ?

Jean-Paul Sartre : C'est possible. Je ne l'ai pas dit parce que dans un sens ça a cessé de me regarder. Je n'étais pas homosexuel, donc je ne pouvais pas le dire. J'aurais essayé de le penser ou de penser quelque chose d'équivalent si j'avais été homosexuel. Et je pense en effet que l'homosexuel est un traître en puissance. Mais il faut bien comprendre ce que ça veut dire. Le traître, c'est l'aspect noir de la chose ; mais l'aspect blanc, doré, c'est que l'homosexuel essaie d'être une réalité profonde, très profonde. Il essaie de trouver une profondeur que n'ont pas les hétérosexuels ; mais cela même, cette profondeur qu'il essaie d'avoir avec simplicité, avec clarté, eh bien l'autre côté noir le reprend ; il y a dans l'homosexuel un aspect noir qui le définit, qui se fait sentir à lui et pas nécessairement aux autres.

JLB : Hitler a fait massacrer les SA en 1934, en prétendant que l'homosexualité était dangereuse pour l'ordre social. Staline venait juste de déclencher des rafles similaires. L'homosexuel n'est-il pas le nécessaire épouvantail que l'on dresse chaque fois qu'un régime cherche à consolider son pouvoir ?

JPS : Chaque fois, je ne sais pas. En tout cas, c'est certainement un épouvantail que l'on dresse. Un régime fasciste est en général contre les homosexuels. Seulement n'oubliez pas que dans le régime hitlérien il y avait aussi l'inverse ; les Hitler Jugend étaient très souvent homosexuels ou en tout cas s'orientaient vers l'homosexualité. Il y avait ces deux aspects. Cette ambiguïté existe dans tous les exemples de fascisme, chaque fois qu'il y a des masses retenues, unifiées ou en exercice militaire. Dans tous ces cas, il y a une tendance à l'homosexualité parce que les hommes sont toujours ensemble, dorment ensemble, vivent ensemble, ont des rapports plus ou moins intimes. Il y a donc une menace d'homosexualité ; je dis "menace" parce que les chefs fascistes savent à la fois qu'il y a de l'homosexualité qui naît avec le fascisme, et voulant être en même temps machistes, ils sont contre cette homosexualité. C'est la preuve qu'il y a les deux et cela fait la contradiction profonde d'un régime fasciste, disons dictatorial.

JLB : Mais cela a aussi été le cas de Staline...

JPS : Oui.

JLB : Pourquoi pas un mot dans vos écrits politiques sur l'extermination des homosexuels par Staline et Hitler ?

JPS : C'est parce que je ne savais pas exactement le type de ces massacres. Je ne savais pas qu'ils étaient systématiques, combien ils avaient atteint de gens ; je n'étais pas sûr. Alors je pouvais reprocher une foule de choses à ces dictateurs, mais celles-là, je ne pouvais pas les reprocher puisque je ne les savais pas.

JLB : A quoi attribuez-vous le fait que vous n'aviez pas la connaissance de ces faits historiques ?

JPS : Les historiens en parlent peu. Votre journal [Le GaiPied] est fait pour dire des faits de ce genre. Vous en ferez de temps en temps des analyses.

JLB : Votre nouvelle L'Enfance d'un chef, dans Le Mur, met en scène Lucien Fleurier qui, comme Le Conformiste de Moravia, refuse son homosexualité en se réfugiant dans l'ordre fascisant. Pensez-vous que c'est le cas de nombreux homosexuels à la recherche de solides références hiérarchiques ?

JPS : Je ne sais pas. Le cas de Lucien Fleurier indique bien que ce qu'il a refusé, c'est plutôt le désordre. Il sentait l'homosexualité non pas comme l'ordre mais comme le désordre. Et en effet Lucien Fleurier n'est pas un homosexuel. Il a une tentation mais il est essentiellement un hétérosexuel, bien qu'il ait des tendances homosexuelles. En tout cas, le désir d'ordre ne semble pas lui venir de l'homosexualité : il l'a depuis longtemps.

JLB : Dans vos romans, certains personnages font de la sodomie l'acte dominateur par excellence, qui permet à un homme d'en soumettre un autre. Franz dans Les Séquestrés d'Altona déclare : "Deux chefs, il faut que ça s'entre-tue ou que l'un devienne la femme de l'autre." Pourquoi voir dans la sodomie passive une exécution capitale ?

JPS : C'est un peu une impression que j'ai eue et que j'ai développée à la suite de discussions avec Genet. Quand j'ai fait mon livre sur lui, j'avais la possibilité de lui parler, je faisais mes hypothèses et les lui soumettais. Quelquefois, malgré ses objections, je gardais mon hypothèse, mais de temps en temps, c'est lui qui avait raison. Et puis parce que je voyais ça comme ça. Je ne prétendais pas qu'en toutes circonstances, c'est ainsi qu'il fallait le voir, mais dans la situation de Franz, jeté à l'armée par les Allemands -- ses chefs --, je voyais ça comme une exécution. Il était tout le temps soumis à l'exécution et, finalement, c'était une exécution capitale puisqu'on le soumettait. Je vous dis là une destinée possible de l'homosexuel : la société hétérosexuelle le domine et le conduit plus ou moins sournoisement à une exécution capitale.

Source : Entretiens sur la question gay, Jean Le Bitoux, préface de Michael Sibalis, éditions H&O, 2005, pages 39-43.

Photos : (en haut, à gauche) Jean Le Bitoux ; (en bas, à droite) Jean-Paul Sartre.

Victimes du nazisme, tout simplement...

"Et quand on se demande à propos des "triangles roses" si l'on peut considérer sous un même angle celui qui risque sa vie et celui qui a été puni pour "déviation", c'est assurément raisonner d'une manière qui outrage la vérité de l'Histoire, car c'est aussi pour leur "déviation" que les Juifs et les Tziganes ont été "punis", et non pour "fait de guerre".

Le supplice de la Déviation par rapport à la pureté de la race, déviation par rapport à la reproduction de la race, la motivation était semblable, et, dans l'analyse, il n'est pas possible d'opérer des distinctions, car ce serait trahir la vérité de l'entreprise voulue et organisée par les nazis afin de faire triompher la "race des seigneurs" par l'élimination de tous ceux qui, pour une raison ou pour une autre, constituaient un obstacle à cet objectif.

Alors, effectivement, "Juif ? Homosexuel? Simple citoyen ? La question ne se pose même pas. Victime du nazisme, tout simplement".

Victime du nazisme, tout simplement...

Et c'est bien à cette conclusion - à cette seule conclusion - que doit parvenir tout honnête homme, s'il ne veut pas mentir à la réalité de l'Histoire, c'est-à-dire en définitive à lui-même.

Aussi, quand on évoque la déportation des homosexuels dans les camps de concentration nazis, convient-il de se rappeler avec Baudelaire que l'on ne peut être à la fois "la plaie et le couteau", "le soufflet et la joue", "la victime et le bourreau" !

Et, si certains avaient aujourd'hui la tentation de faire encore référence aux vieilles théories du siècle dernier, en traitant les homosexuels "d'infirmes", comme le fit en 1982 l'évêque de Strasbourg, Mgr Elchinger, il serait alors à constater que la pensée de Himmler continue de sévir dans les esprits, et qu'il y a ainsi danger d'un retour au fascisme hitlérien.

Il se comprend donc que le recours à de telles références soulève indignation et condamnation, car il s'agit là effectivement d' « un langage qu'on croyait à tout jamais disparu », mais qui pourtant se maintient avec insistance.

Et l'on partage ainsi la légitime colère de ce rescapé de l'enfer nazi (Pierre Seel) qui devait rappeler à Mgr Elchinger combien il était ignominieux de traiter les homosexuels "d'infirmes", alors qu'ils avaient tant eu déjà à souffrir de l'arbitraire de telles sottises.

"J'ai décidé, écrira-t-il ainsi à ce prélat, d'apporter mon appui le plus total aux nombreuses voix de tous ceux et celles qui se sont sentis offensés par votre déclaration du 8 avril 1982.

"Victime du nazisme, je dénonce publiquement avec toute ma force que de tels discours ont favorisé et justifié l'extermination de millions d'infirmes pour des raisons politiques, religieuses, raciales ou de comportement sexuel.

"Je ne suis pas un infirme et je ne suis atteint d'aucune infirmité. Je n'ai pas envie de retourner dans les infirmeries où l'on a soigné mon homosexualité et précisément dans un lieu qui se trouve non loin de la capitale alsacienne.

"C'était en 1941, je n'avais que dix-huit ans ! Arrêté, torturé, frappé, emprisonné, interné en dehors de toute juridiction sans aucune défense, ni procès ni jugement...

"Je suis trop fatigué ce soir pour vous rappeler toutes les tortures morales et physiques et les souffrances indescriptibles et indicibles que j'ai alors endurées.

"Depuis lors toute ma vie a été vécue dans la terrible douleur partagée avec ma famille par suite de cette arrestation arbitraire...

"Votre déclaration du 8 avril 1982 a éveillé en moi une foule de souvenirs atroces et j'ai encore décidé à cinquante-neuf ans de sortir de l'anonymat.

"Dans ma vie et jusqu'à ce jour je n'ai pas connu la haine pour qui que ce soit. Et pourtant souffrant du désarroi profond dans lequel nous plonge cette homophobie toujours présente, je tremble en pensant à tous les homosexuels disparus et à tous ceux qui à travers le monde sont, hélas! encore torturés ou exterminés avec tant d'autres minorités."

Mais de ceux-là aussi, on ne parlera jamais !

Il est vrai que "l'Histoire a son cimetière des oubliés"...

Mais il serait trop facile de pleurer sur cette constatation et d'en accepter placidement la fatalité, comme si le maintien de cette situation échappait au pouvoir humain. Or il faut bien se persuader que "les oublis ne sont jamais le fait de l'Histoire, qui est aveugle, sans conscience, mais des hommes qui font l'Histoire".

Et, si l'on constate que "l'Histoire a toutes les ruses pour écarter ceux dont elle veut rejeter le souvenir", c'est précisément parce que "les hommes ont leurs raisons pour choisir ou refuser leurs souvenirs", et qu' "ils n'aiment pas que reprennent la parole ceux qu'ils ont décidé d'oublier", laissant ainsi apparaître que "la police des ondes de l'au-delà est leur affaire". Mais au prix de quels mensonges et de quels truquages !

Or, a justement proclamé Simone Veil, qui fut elle-même déportée, "se souvenir, c'est aussi tirer la leçon de l'Histoire, pour que de telles catastrophes ne puissent plus se reproduire". Mais "tirer la leçon de l'Histoire, c'est refuser la falsification".

Source : Le Triangle Rose, Jean Boisson, Editions Robert Laffont, Paris, 1988.

Illustration : Le supplice de la "forêt chantante", lithographie de Richard Grune, déporté au titre du §175, (1945). (Orig : Schwules Museum, Berlin).

Les oubliés de la mémoire


On ignore toujours dans les livres d'histoire comme du côté des associations de déportés de la dernière guerre mondiale qu'en Alsace et Lorraine, dès l'invasion de 1940, les homosexuels français tombèrent sous le coup d'une loi homophobe issue du code prussien, qui signifia leur expulsion sans jugement, leur incarcération ou leur déportation sans autre forme de procès.

De l'autre côté du Rhin, sept ans avant cette invasion, cette juridiction avait été aggravée dès 1933, un mois après l'arrivée d'Hitler au pouvoir. Les nazis utilisèrent pour la première fois l'homophobie populaire lors de l'incendie du Reichstag, en accusant Van der Lubbe, un fragile jeune homme manipulable, d'être un sympathisant communiste mais aussi, on l'a moins lu à l'heure de la récente ouverture du Reichstag, d'être homosexuel. Lequel Reichstag, s'il n'eut été incendié, aurait, comme l'indiquait son calendrier parlementaire, eu à débattre quelques mois plus tard de l'abrogation de cette loi homophobe, le paragraphe 175, héritée du code prussien, elle qui avait été effacée au milieu du XIXe siècle par le code Napoléon qui avait aboli toute condamnation pénale pour sodomie.

Cette double accusation de la chancellerie nazie – imaginez : un incendiaire du parlement à la fois communiste et homosexuel – permit, par une sorte de "tétanisation" de l'indignation populaire ainsi interloquée, rumeurs comprises, de faciliter la suspension des libertés publiques, des syndicats, des associations et des partis politiques. On ignore encore plus souvent que c'est dès l'avènement d'Hitler et dans un flux identique à celui, ravageur, de l'antisémitisme que les homosexuels et les lesbiennes d'Allemagne puis des pays et régions annexés par le Reich furent raflés, torturés, expulsés ou déportés dans les camps d'internement ou de déportation, (...), dans la banlieue de Berlin, où de nombreux homosexuels périrent. A ce sujet, un dévoilement de plaque en forme de triangle rose y eut lieu le 27 janvier 1999 en présence du gouvernement allemand.

Quant au centre berlinois d'archives et de recherches homosexuelles du docteur Hirschfeld, juif et homosexuel et instigateur du projet de modification de la loi, il fut mis à sac le 6 mai 1933 par les SA. Dans le même temps, les SS récupéraient les fichiers judiciaires et de police. Puis, gravissime, les listes se complétèrent par une délation conséquente. Ce sont sans doute les mêmes qui dénoncèrent les juifs, les opposants à l'ordre nouveau et les homosexuels de leur voisinage.

Comment témoigner de tout cela ensemble ? Pourquoi une tension a-t-elle surgi entre les autres déportés et notre "délégation homosexuelle", chaque année depuis de nombreuses années, lors de la journée nationale du souvenir ? Que signifie ce divorce entre vérité et recueillement, entre histoire et mémoire, quand les derniers témoins, plus de cinquante ans après ces horreurs, ont atteint la limite d'âge y compris de témoigner ? La mémoire ne se sérialise pas. Elle est une, ou elle n'est pas . [...]

La difficulté reste d'obtenir que s'institue, pour être plus forte demain, plus politique et plus pédagogique, une mémoire de toutes les victimes de l'ordre nazi, qu'elles aient été pourchassées en raison de leur religion, de leur handicap, de leur infirmité, de leur appartenance à une minorité ethnique, sociale ou culturelle, ou de leur volonté de combattre un état totalitaire en proie à une folie meurtrière. Aujourd'hui, des témoins, des recherches universitaires, des documents, des documentaires commencent à nous dire l'essentiel des contours non encore exhaustifs de cette histoire trop méconnue. Preuve que nous avons à nommer tous les démons, toutes les tactiques meurtrières et toutes les fragilités d'une histoire européenne, celle que nous avons l'espoir de mieux construire demain.

Source : Article de Jean Le Bitoux, paru dans le quotidien Libération en 1999.

Photo : Jean Le Bitoux, fondateur du Mémorial de la déportation homosexuelle (cliché : Franck Dennis - no copyright).

The punch-card system

Veils of smoke hung above Bergen-Belsen concentration camp. Many prisoners slumped lifelessly, waiting for death.

Plainly visible at the rear of the camp, a round-topped furnace squatted in the mud. Black and elongated, it resembled a railway engine, but with two heavy kiln doors at the front. A metal stretcher used to slide emaciated corpses into the flames was always nearby. Here was the crematorium.

Belsen had originally been a transit camp. But in late 1944, as Nazi death camps such as Auschwitz were liberated by the allies, Belsen became a nightmare receiving transports from other sites.

In December a Dutch-Jewish prisoner, Rudolf Cheim, was assigned to the office of the Arbeitsdienstführer, the labour service leader, a few yards away from the crematorium, down a muddy path. Cheim was often beaten by the SS men in the labour service, but he knew that having a job meant staying alive.

He noticed that they were engaged in some sort of work involving punch cards. He unobtrusively watched them and quickly learnt their system. At first glance they seemed to be handling simple rectangular cards divided into numbered columns with holes punched in various rows. But Cheim began to understand the truth. The labour service office held the power of life or death over prisoners. Hundreds of thousands of human beings were being identified, sorted, assigned and transported by means of the card system.

Every day, transports of slave labourers were received at the camp. Prisoners were identified by cards, each with columns and punched holes detailing nationality, date of birth, marital status, number of children, reason for incarceration, physical characteristics and work skills. Sixteen categories of prisoners were listed in columns 3 and 4, depending upon the hole. Hole 3 signified homosexual, hole 9 for antisocial, hole 12 for gypsy, hole 8 for Jew. Column 34 was labelled "reason for departure". Code 2 meant transferred to another camp. Natural death was coded 3. Execution was 4. Suicide was coded 5. Code 6 designated "special handling", the term commonly understood as extermination, either in a gas chamber, by hanging or by gunshot. On arrival, each prisoner's punch card was fed into a mechanical sorter. The dials were adjusted to isolate the skills, age groups or language abilities needed for particular work battalions.

The process was monitored by Office D II of the SS economics office, which administered all the camps under General Oswald Pohl, the creator of the "Extermination by Labour" programme. The general argued that expeditiously gassing Jews deprived the Reich of an important resource; he preferred working them to death. As the trains and trucks full of prisoners rolled into Belsen from Belgium, France and Holland, thousands of punch cards were processed and the information fed back to the SS department of statistics. How many died was just a statistic to note. That December, some 20,000 prisoners were registered: 50 deaths per day, on average, were recorded on the punch cards. By spring 1945, more than 40,000 were imprisoned under indescribable conditions - starved, randomly tortured and worked to death. The monthly death toll rose to nearly 20,000 in March.

Cheim never understood where the punch card system came from, but after the war - having survived Belsen - he saw a punch card in a shop and felt the need to write a record of what he had witnessed in the camp. This ended up in a Dutch archive in Amsterdam and was quietly forgotten.

Many years later, in 1993, I went with my parents to the new Holocaust museum in Washington. There, in the very first exhibit, was a gleaming black, beige and silver machine. The label said it was an IBM Hollerith D-11 card-sorting machine.

Source : IBM and the Holocaust, Edwin Black, Little, Brown, 2001.

Photos : (en haut, à gauche) Une carte perforée pour IBM Hollerith D-11 ; (en bas, à droite) une machine à cartes perforées IBM Hollerith D-11.

Homophiles in Hitler's concentration camps

When the German concentration camps were thrown open in 1945, a wave of terror swept over Germany and the entire world. But the indignation, pity and horror soon were wiped out by the general misery that followed the war, by daily worries about finding food and a place to live. The Dachau trials remained unknown to large parts of the public, and it didn't take long before some individuals started to show signs of doubt about the genuine gravity of the horrors that took place in the camps. Too many people had a powerful interest in minimizing the atrocities that had been committed and in letting them fall into obscurity as quickly as possible. A few books did appear, but they were not always objective, and often they were aimed at sensationalism. As for the survivors of the horrors of the camps, they were busy trying to find their place in the new society then being formed -- a society that they hoped would be in keeping with fundamental humanitarian principles. From time to time, organizations representing the interests of the victims -- particularly Jews, who were the most severely affected, as well as communists, socialists and displaced foreigners -- tried to claim indemnification, most often without much success.

The common law prisoners -- pimps, killers and professional thieves who had been so numerous in the camps and who had at first greatly damaged the reputations of the liberated internees -- quickly rediscovered their old lives and disappeared from view. Bonds of friendship already had been less than firm in the camps, where shared misery too often brought out the basest instincts; such bonds rapidly came undone. The recent trials of former concentration camp doctors have created barely even a weak renewal of curiosity and interest regarding these past events.

Yet there is one group among all the victims that has never received the light of publicity, hasn't complained about the damage it sustained, and hasn't encountered any understanding from the newspapers, from government agencies or from organizations that defend the interests of former internees: That group is the homophiles. Because Paragraph 175 of the German Penal Code -- the very Paragraph 175 that has been a subject of debate for decades -- makes homophiles into criminals, they encounter no pity from the public, and of course can make no claim for damages. To this day, no one has sought to learn how many homophiles were hunted down by the Nazis, nor to learn what the survivors retrieved of their lives and their belongings.
The trials of former camp doctors have recently called to mind the fact that thousands of homophiles were forcibly castrated, often under beastly conditions. In the camps, homophiles often were singled out for special mistreatment. The author of these lines himself once witnessed how an effeminate young man had to dance repeatedly in front of the SS, only to be subsequently strung up on a beam in the guardroom with his hands and feet tied, then beaten horribly. The author also recalls the "latrine parades" in one of the first camps (Sonnenburg), for which the commandant always chose homophiles.

We must not forget that the homophiles in question often were honorable and cultured citizens who held important positions in society and in the government. During the seven years that he passed in various camps, the author of this article got to know a Prussian prince, major athletes, professors, schoolteachers, engineers, artisans, workers of every type -- and naturally, prostitutes, as well. Certainly, not all of them were worthwhile people, but the majority were completely lost and alone in the world of the concentration camps. During their rare hours of leisure, they lived largely in isolation. It was thus that I came to know the tragedy of a very civilized foreign embassy attaché who remained absolutely walled-up and unapproachable in a boundless and inescapable despair. He couldn't manage to make sense of the atrocious cruelty that he saw around him, and one day, for no apparent reason, he slumped over dead.

To this day, I find it impossible to recall all those comrades, those outrages, those deaths without sinking into profound despair.

None of this would have been possible without the legal opportunities that Paragraph 175 offered to the sadistic butchers of the Third Reich. I am now an old man. In my youth, I knew the activities and the struggles of the homophile circles that were then united under Magnus Hirschfeld, Adolf Brand, Fritz Radszuweit and others -- men who gave their honorable names to the fight for rights. I worked with them and I joined them in hoping for understanding and justice. Whether Paragraph 175 is maintained or repealed is no longer of much concern to me personally. But I hope for all those human beings known or unknown who still live under the weight of its constant threat that -- despite everything -- reason, progress, science and the courage of the medical profession will finally win the day. If that happens, the victims of all the concentration camps will not have died in vain.


Source : Les homophiles dans les camps de concentration de Hitler, B. M., "Die Runde" (Bert Micha), Arcadie, no. 82 (octobre 1960), p. 616-618. Translated from the French by Gerard Koskovich.

Photo: Memorial to the gay victims of the Nazi regime (Nollendorfplatz, Berlin). The inscription on the granite triangle reads: "Beaten to Death. Silenced to Death. The Homosexual Victims of National Socialism." (Photo: G. Koskovich)


NOTE: Arcadie was the main French homophile periodical of the 1950s. It gives little indication of the source of the text translated here: merely the German words "Die Runde" ("the round," "the circle" or "the party") that follow the author's initials. Although not so stated, the article was translated into French from a German text that appeared under the pseudonym "Bert Micha" in the autumn 1958 issue of the mimeographed private newsletter of Die Runde, an informal social group of gay men in the town of Reutlingen, near Stuttgart.

Details about Die Runde and the Micha article can be found in Karl-Heinz Steinle, Die Geschichte der Kameradschaft die Runde 1950 bis 1969, Hefte des Schwulen Museums, no. 1 (Berlin: Verlag rosa Winkel, 1998), pages 12-13, and Andreas Sternweiler et al. (eds.), Goodbye to Berlin? 100 Jahre Schwulenbewegung (Berlin: Verlag rosa Winkel, 1997), page 199. Thanks to Prof. James Steakley of the University of Wisconsin, Madison, USA, for providing this information. --GK

Translation copyright © 2009 by Ray Gerard Koskovich; may be reprinted for noncommercial purposes provided the translator is credited, this copyright note is included, and a copy of the print publication or a link to the online publication is sent to the translator:

Gerard Koskovich
P.O. Box 14301
San Francisco, CA 94114-0301
USA
dalembert@aol.com

Les triangles roses

Il n'a jamais été possible de savoir le nombre exact d'homosexuels disparus dans les camps de concentration hitlériens. Nous ne connaissons de manière sûre que les statistiques des procès légaux en Allemagne, mais échappent à tout recensement les exécutions sommaires (à partir du début de la guerre), les rafles directes dans tous les pays européens, et les envois sans jugement, y compris en Allemagne, d'homosexuels directement acheminés sur les camps. De plus, les archives de ces camps ont souvent été détruites lors de l'avancée des troupes Alliées. Mais le principal obstacle est bien sûr le refus, à la Libération, de toutes les autorités Alliées de prendre en considération le problème des "triangles roses". Et la peur qui a poussé les victimes, comment leur donner tort, à cacher le plus souvent la vraie raison de leur déportation, s'il s'agissait d'homosexuels. Après tout, jusque dans les années soixante, un tel aveu, en Allemagne comme en Angleterre, ne leur aurait valu en principe qu'une nouvelle condamnation pénale.

Eugen Kogon, dans son livre L'Etat SS (1), rappelle les marques distinctives des groupes minoritaires en camp : "Triangle rouge pour les dissidents politiques, vert pour les criminels de droit commun, mauve pour les sectes religieuses, marron pour les Tziganes et rose pour les homosexuels". Le triangle était répété deux fois, sur le côté gauche de la veste et sur le côté droit du pantalon, pour mieux désigner les homosexuels aux persécutions des autres détenus.

La seule répression légalisée, c'est-à-dire les condamnations par les tribunaux allemands en vertu du paragraphe 175 " amélioré ", concerne environ 50 000 personnes. En examinant les statistiques, on constate que la moyenne des condamnations, un millier par an jusqu'en 1934, passe alors à cinq mille, puis dix mille par an de 1936 à 1940. Les homosexuels ainsi condamnés, après avoir purgé leur peine "civile" de prison, prenaient ensuite automatiquement le chemin des camps à leur "libération". En cas de condamnation pour récidive, la justice avait d'abord pris soin de les faire castrer.

A partir de 1940-1941, il y a une forte baisse des condamnations légales. Il ne s'agit évidemment pas d'une soudaine clémence, mais d'un changement dans les méthodes, désormais plus expéditives. Dès avant la guerre, un nombre inconnu d'homosexuels allemands avaient été envoyés directement en camp par le canal de la Gestapo, réorganisée en 1936 par Himmler, l'un des plus acharnés persécuteurs d'homosexuels du régime nazi. Himmler, favorable à l'exécution de tous les "dégénérés ", appliqua une sentence de mort immédiate à tous les employés de son propre ministère suspects d'homosexualité. Dans l'armée aussi, l'épuration se fit sans procès ni formes.

Entre 1936 et 1939, plusieurs dizaines de milliers d'homosexuels ont donc été envoyés directement en camps. Le théoricien nazi sur la question fut le Dr Rudolf Klare, qui a écrit L'Homosexualité et le Châtiment, et affirmé : "Seule une sévérité impitoyable peut amener à la pureté." Il faut rappeler que l'extermination des minorités par les nazis a commencé, bien avant la guerre, par les fous, les incapables sociaux, tous ceux que concernait, avant même une décision politique, l'eugénisme de la médecine nazie. Tel est aussi le cas des homosexuels.

Lors de la réorganisation de la Gestapo, Himmler, qui avait pris une part personnelle à l'exécution de Röhm et des deux cents victimes de la Nuit des longs couteaux, confia à la IIe division le soin particulier de la chasse aux homosexuels. C'est à ses ordres personnels qu'on doit le classement des détenus homosexuels en camps de niveau trois, camps de la mort réservés à eux, aux Juifs et aux Tziganes.

En 1937, le journal de la SS estime le nombre d'homosexuels allemands à deux millions d'individus, et exige leur liquidation. La répression extralégale prit alors une grande ampleur - tous les homosexuels connus de la police antérieurement à la création du IIIe Reich furent déportés. Rien qu'à Berlin, le fichier en question contenait 20 000 noms datant d'avant la prise de pouvoir par Hitler. A partir de 1940 s'y adjoignirent les homosexuels des fichiers des pays occupés.

Le travail forcé, les expériences médicales, notamment les essais de brûlures sur des sujets vivants pour tester les bombes au phosphore, décimaient les rangs des "triangles roses". D'après la discipline des camps de niveau trois, ils n'avaient pas le droit de tomber malades : leur admission à l'hôpital des camps était interdite. Tomber malade, c'était donc signer son arrêt de mort.

La haine des gardiens nazis pour les déportés homosexuels est connue. Ils s'acharnaient avec une violence particulière sur les ex-prostitués. Mais d'une façon générale, ils jugeaient que les "triangles roses" présentaient un danger de contamination très grave. Cette haine fut parfois portée jusqu'à l'absurde - dans un camp, de jeunes détenus condamnés pour vol ayant été logés, faute de place, dans les baraquements des "triangles roses", les gardes SS, choqués dans leur moralité à l'idée d'un tel voisinage, firent à ces jeunes déportés des injections mortelles de morphine. Entre homosexuels et autres déportés il fallait maintenir une infranchissable barrière.

Rudolf Höss, commandant du camp de Sachsenhausen, puis de celui d'Auschwitz, écrit dans ses mémoires : "A Sachsenhausen, on voulait séparer les homosexuels des autres. Ils devaient travailler jour et nuit . Rares sont ceux qui en sont sortis. C'était un véritable moulin à os."

Jean Danet, citant Michel Foucault, écrit que le camp de concentration est imaginairement un mixte de l'hôpital et de la basse-cour. Il est censé participer au plan de régénération de la race, de la sélection pour repeupler l'Allemagne en sujets sains. Les expériences médicales pratiquées dans les camps rappellent cette dimension : à Ravensbrück, "stages de guérison" pour homosexuels, le plus souvent mortels. A Buchenwald, un médecin danois essayait, avec le soutien de Himmler, les injections massive d'hormones mâles.

Expériences sadiques ou extermination déguisée, la médicalisation de l'homosexualité trouve là sa dernière expression, d'une terrible ironie. Le lien de l'hygiène sociale soviétique à la médecine tueuse des camps nazis, c'est bien celui de la Science, même caricaturale, science des comportements, science marxiste, science nazie. Car de la théorie de l'homosexualité comme dégénérescence chère à Kraft-Ebing, le maître d'Hirschfeld, jusqu'à l'eugénisme hitlérien, en passant par le "péril social" soviétique, court un même fil teint de sang.

(1) L'Etat SS, le système des camps de concentration allemands, Eugen Kogon, 1946. Europäische Verlagsanstalt, F. am Main 1947, Edition de la Jeune Parque 2004, Collections Points (Histoire) - Seuil.

Source : Race d'Ep !, de Guy Hocquenghem, Editions Libres/Hallier, Paris, 1979.

Photo : Guy Hocquenghem

L'appartenance réelle ou supposée au troisième sexe


Nous avons été d'autant plus surpris de lire voici quelque temps, dans ce même journal [Il Borghese], un article d'Eugenio Dollman intitulé "Le triangle rose" où, après avoir rappelé quelques affaires d'homosexualité en Suisse et critiqué la condamnation à dix mois de prison prononcée contre un certain Rinaldi, italien, qui avait étouffé son "corrupteur", après avoir noté qu'il semble que l'on veuiller noyer "le troisième sexe" dans un mer de sang, il met en relief, à propos de l'affaire de Sir Jan-Douglas Harvey, la tendance à briser la carrière de ceux qui pratiquent des amours non-conformistes. "Alfred Krupp, fils du roi des canons, fut conduit à un suicide prématuré par une campagne sans précédent partie de Capri et menée, en style de chantage, par un journaliste napolitain. La social-démocratie allemande saisit au bond l'affaire et, après avoir monstrueusement déformé les faits, utilisa pour ses fins démagogiques l'envers du décor érotique du capitaliste Krupp à Capri".

Le Troisième Reich à son tour se servit impitoyablement de l'homosexualité, réelle ou supposée, dans sa lutte pour le pouvoir. On cite le cas du général-baron Von Fritsch, qui est l'un des chapitres les plus troubles et les plus honteux des temps du règne nazi. Ce général était le dernier obstacle que l'Armée opposait aux prétentions de Hitler de devenir l'unique commandant en chef. C'était un personnage gênant, et Himmler et Goering ne négligèrent rien pour le rendre suspect à Hitler et pour le faire éliminer.

Comme jadis pour Krupp, on se servit du fait que le général appartenait au "troisième sexe". On s'assura le concours d'un repris de justice, qui soutint avoir eu des rapports intimes avec Von Fritsch (voir également texte contradictoire sur von Fritsch de John Toland sur ce site). Malgré la parole d'honneur du général et un procédure menée aussitôt par Goering, qui conclut en le lavant de toute accusation, malgré une scène dramatique avec Hitler, la démission de Von Fritsch était inévitable. Sa "réhabilitation" ultérieure, grâce à laquelle il fut appelé à commander à la suite son ancien régiment d'artillerie, ne modifia pas beaucoup les choses. Le Troisième Reich s'était servi, avec succès, de la diffamation sur l'appartenance, réelle ou peut-être seulement inventée, au "troisième sexe".

Dès lors, la R.S.H.A. (la Gestapo commandée par Heydrich) employa sans retenue cette arme contre ses ennemis internes et externes. Ces malheureux avaient, dans les camps de concentration, un quartier particulier et portaient, cousu au bras, un triangle rose. Le meilleur expert en la matière, le professeur Kogon, écrit à ce propos dans son livre L'Etat SS : "Contre les homosexuels, les SS procédaient comme contre les juifs, probablement parce que l'homosexualité, au début, était très répandue dans les milieux militaires prussiens et, ensuite, dans les SA et les SS, de sorte qu'il fallait la proscrire et l'exterminer sans pitié." Himmler n'hésita pas à faire "liquider" ainsi son propre neveu Hans Himmler au camp de Dachau.

Et Hitler ? Les bruits selon lesquels le futur Führer dans ses années de famine à Vienne, aurait été en contacts trop étroits avec le problème du "troisième sexe", ne sont pas encore apaisés. Et l'on ne peut pas continuer à nier que Hitler était exactement informé de l'appartenance indéniable à cette "association" de son chef d'état-major des SA, le lieutenant-colonel Röhm, mais qu'il ne se servit de cet argument contre lui que lorsque Röhm, avec ses ambitions personnelles, devint trop dangereux.


Source : Nouvelles d'Italie, Maurizio Bellotti, Arcadie, no. 71 (novembre 1959), p. 644-646.

Photo : Carte postale représentant Ernst Röhm lors d'un rassemblement à Dortmund en 1933 (orig : USHM)

La punizione dell'omosessualitá durante il periodo fascista


Osservando le differenti giurisprudenze di Germania e Italia in materia di omosessualitá, durante i periodi di dittatura nazifascista, si nota subito il diverso approccio dei due Stati alla "questione omosessuale". Mentre la Germania di Hitler perfezionava il Paragrafo 175 e preparava i primi campi di concentramento, l'Italia di Mussolini escludeva dal "Codice Rocco" qualsiasi traccia di omosessualitá. In buona sostanza il nazismo provava ad eliminare fisicamente l'omosessuale (uccidendolo o "curandolo" con i piú subdoli ed inefficaci esperimenti), mentre il fascismo utilizzava il silenzio come arma efficacie e sperimentata, applicando il principio tipicamente latino per cui di un argomento scomodo "meno se ne parla e meglio é". Gli omosessuali tedeschi venivano eliminati dalla circolazione e uccisi, quelli italiani venivano fatti sparire al confino in qualche isola remota per poi farli tornare e svergognarli di fronte ai propri concittadini notificandogli l'obbligo di firma per i motivi ormai noti a tutti. Tuttavia, sebbene questa sia la tesi piú comunemente accettata, vi erano alcune eccezioni. Diversi omosessuali tedeschi si salvarono dai lager grazie a conoscenze altolocate o pagando ingenti somme di denaro. Molti omosessuali italiani furono invece spediti ai lavori forzati in miniera a Carbonia, comune sardo creato durante la dittatura per dimostrare la laboriositá del popolo italiano.

Il Codice Rocco e la tolleranza repressiva

Il codice fascista, il Codice Rocco, non ha prodotto, nel momento della sua attuazione, una legge specifica antiomosessuale. Tra l'altro neanche il codice precedente, il Codice Zanardelli, conteneva una legge antiomosessuale. Ma attenzione, non è una scelta liberale, non è nell'ideologia fascista o di Zanardelli o dell'Italia Umbertina (io ricordo che probabilmente noi non sappiamo nulla sulla repressione e sull'uso di sanzioni di polizia nell'Italia prefascista, che è un campo di ricerca tutto da vagliare), il fatto di non perseguire con leggi apposite l'omosessualitá. Non è una scelta liberale, non è una scelta di riconoscimento dei diritti delle persone omosessuali quella di non inserire un articolo antiomosessuale, anzi! L'articolo antiomosessuale era presente nel progetto Rocco del 1927. Questo progetto prevede un articolo, il nr. 528, che punisce con il carcere da 1 a 3 anni qualsiasi persona che abbia relazioni omosessuali. La pena poteva essere aggravata dalle circostanze di accadimento. Nell'Italia fascista, questo sarebbe stato il primo articolo antiomosessuale che avrebbe colpito le persone perché, come dice Appiani, (magistrato): "Questo articolo risponde pienamente al nuovo orientamento del regime fascista, ispirato ad una più efficace tutela della sanità fisica e morale della stirpe contro il rilassamento del costume determinato dalla guerra e accentuatosi nel dopoguerra, che ha consigliato di apprestare nuovi e più idonei mezzi di difesa contro le minacce alla moralità e le oscenità che insidiano lo spirito delle nuove generazioni. Oggi lo stato fascista deve prevalere sull'individuo nel conseguimento dei suoi fini etici". Ma nel momento in cui però c'è la discussione finale a sorpresa l'articolo viene tolto. Le motivazioni, se non fossero tragiche, sarebbero comiche. La relazione finale della Commissione Appiani, che è quella che dovrà discutere e mettere in atto il progetto proprio sul Codice Penale Rocco dice così: "La Commissione ne propose ad unanimità e senza alcuna esitazione la soppressione per questi due fondamentali riflessi. La previsione di questo reato non è affatto necessaria perché per fortuna ed orgoglio dell'Italia il vizio abominevole che ne darebbe vita non è così diffuso tra noi da giustificare l'intervento del legislatore, nei congrui casi può ricorrere l'applicazione delle più severe sanzioni relative ai diritti di violenza carnale, corruzione di minorenni o offesa al pudore ma è noto che per gli abituali e i professionisti del vizio, per verità assai rari, e di impostazione assolutamente straniero, la Polizia provvede fin d'ora, con assai maggiore efficacia, mediante l'applicazione immediata delle sue misure di sicurezza e detentive". Viene quindi detto: "non c'è bisogno dell'articolo perché non abbiamo omosessuali"; c'è quindi una negazione della differenza. Gli omosessuali non esistono, se caso mai comunque ne troviamo qualcuno, tanto poi ci sono anche le forze di Polizia che ci pensano, ed è quello che in Italia verrà fatto. Questo non si discosta dalla tradizione precedente dello Zanardelli stesso che, nel commentare un non inserimento dell'articolo antiomosessuale nel Codice Penale del 1889 diceva: "Il legislatore non deve invadere il campo della morale", ma il silenzio funziona meglio di una repressione aperta, che è l'atteggiamento della tolleranza repressiva (nel quale possiamo leggere la nostra storia di movimento gay italiano). Nel momento in cui c'è una dichiarazione di guerra si risponde, però in realtà l'atteggiamento è quello di non dichiarare guerra aperta ma nello stesso tempo agire, e quindi reprimere, e il regime fascista lo farà quando ce ne sará bisogno utilizzando le misure di polizia. Che cosa erano queste misure di polizia? Le misure di polizia erano regolate dal Testo Unico di Polizia del 26-31. Semplicemente in ogni provincia c'era una Commissione Provinciale formata dal Prefetto, Questore, Rappresentante della Milizia Volontaria per la Sicurezza Nazionale e un rappresentante dei Carabinieri Reali. Una persona poteva essere diffamata dalla voce pubblica al Questore, ed il Questore faceva partire su di lui un procedimento e dava poi le carte alla Commissione senza che la persona sapesse nulla. Poteva essere data una sanzione amministrativa senza che la persona sanzionata sapesse nulla, dopodiché una volta che la Commissione Provinciale si pronunciava partiva l'arresto nel caso di confino oppure la comunicazione alla persona. Le tre sanzioni fondamentali utilizzate erano la diffida, l'ammonizione e il confino.

Source : Le ragioni di un silenzio, raccolta di saggi realizzata dal Circolo Pink di Verona e pubblicata da Ombre Corte. Voir site CIG Arcigay Milano.

Photo : portrait de Benito Mussolini réalisé en 1937 pour figurer sur une carte postale.

Experiments in reversal of hormonal polarity at Buchenwald


ln contrast to the compulsory castration and typhus fever experiments, the hormonal experiments on homosexual men at Buchenwald are quite well documented. They were conducted in strict secrecy on the orders of the SS by the Danish doctor Carl Peter Jensen, alias Carl Vaernet. He went to Germany in 1942 after being forced to give up a practice he had had in Copenhagen since 1934. His contact with the leader of the Danish Nazi Party, his colleague Frits Clausen, must already have cost him a lot of patients in the first year of the war. In summer 1943 he was brought to Himmler's attention by the SS Reich Doctor, Dr Grawitz. Vaernet's claim that his hormonal research in the thirties had made it possible to cure homosexual men aroused Himmler's undivided interest. He gave instructions for Vaernet to be treated with 'the utmost generosity', and to be given the possibility of continuing his research in a Prague cover firm coming under the Reichsführer-SS, 'German Medicines Ltd.' By July 1944 he was in a position to start the human experiments. Buchenwald concentration camp was instructed to place five prisoners at his disposal.

Surviving documents tell us about the choice and temporal sequence of the experiments. Together with Schiedlausky, the Waffen-SS garrison doctor at Weimar-Buchenwald, Vaernet first selected the five prisoners during a visit to Buchenwald in late July 1944, then nominated a further ten on 8 December. According to a memorandum (from the prisoners'sick bay?) four of the five selected in July were identified as homosexuals and one as an SV or Sittlichkeitsverbrecher [sex criminel]. Of the December batch all we know (from a memorandum drawn up in October) is that six of them had been castrated. It is very likely that these too were pink-triangle prisoners, so that altogether at least ten male homosexuals would have been subjected to Vaernet's experiments.

A total of fifteen prisoners were selected. Vaernet 'operated' on twelve men - if that term can be applied at all in the nightmarish conditions of the camp. What actually happened is that he made an incision in the groin and implanted a hormone preparation in the form of a briquette; the release of hormones was then checked through examination of the blood and urine.

What seems to us today a macabre experiment was heralded by Vaernet as a great success. But in his reports to the SS leadership he did not say a word about one effect which was nevertheless quite apparent to him. If the victims readily gave the answers expected of them, they did so partly at least in the hope that they would be pronounced 'cured' and soon released from the terrible reality of the concentration camp. To the SS Reich Doctor Vaernet suggested three results of 'direct importance to the war': the maintenance or restoration of a full capacity for work, the better possibilities of sustenance, and an increase in the birth-rate.

Little is known of the victims' fate. One prisoner was already dead by December 1944. But of those who may have survived, we do not know of any who applied for compensation after 1945. (This is true also of persons born after 1910, who might have been likely to take advantage of the new regulations for the compensation of victims of sterilization and castration that came into force in the late 1980s.)

As for the perpetrators, the experiments were not explicitly mentioned in the list of charges at the Nuremberg doctors' trial. The SS doctors Schiedlausky and Ding were condemned to death for other profoundly inhuman experiments. Vaernet himself evaded responsibility by fleeing to South America.

Source : Hidden Holocaust ?, Günter Grau, London: Cassell, 1995. Translated from German by Patrick Camiller.

Photo (en bas) : Carl Vaernet ; (en haut) : Expérience pratiquée sur un déporté par le personnel médical de Buchenwald.

Arrival at Sachsenhausen


By January 1940 the complement for the transport was made up, and we were to be taken to a camp. One night we were loaded thirty to forty at a time into the police wagons, and driven to a freight station where a prison train was already waiting. This train consisted mainly of cattle trucks with heavily barred open windows, as well as so-called cell wagons. These were also cattle trucks, but divided up into five or six cells, similarly barred, and set aside for the worst criminals.

I was placed in one of these cells, together with two young men of about my age. We remained together the whole journey. This lasted thirteen days, and proceeded via Salzburg, Munich, Frankfurt, and Leipzig to Berlin-Oranienburg. Each evening we were put off the train and taken to a prison to spend the night, sometimes by truck, but other times on foot. If we went on foot, we had to march in long heavy chains. These gave a ghostly rattle, like a slave caravan in the depths of the Middle Ages, and passersby would stare fixedly at us in terror.

The cells in the cell wagon only had proper room for one person, with a wooden table and bench. That was the entire furniture, not even a water jug or chamber pot. We were fed only in the evening, at the prisons where we stopped overnight, aslo being given there a large piece of bread to take on the train the next day. If the train was to stay clean, then we could only attend to the wants of nature at night [...]

When we reached the Oranienburg station, we were again loaded up a ramp onto trucks and driven to Sachsenhausen camp [...] As soon as we were unloaded on the large, open parade ground, some SS NCOs came along and attacked us with sticks. We had to form up in rows of five, and it took quite a while, and many blows and insults, before our terrified ranks were assembled. Then we had a roll call, having to step forward and repeat our name and offense, whereupon we were immediately handed over to our particular block leader.

When my name was called I stepped forward, gave my name, and mentioned Paragraph 175. With the words. "You filthy queer, get over there, you butt-fucker!" I received several kicks from behind and was kicked over to an SS sergeant who had charge of my block. The first thing I got from him was a violent blow on my face that threw me to the ground. I pulled myself up and respectfully stood before him, whereupon he brought his knee up hard into my groin so that I doubled up with pain on the ground. Some prisoners who were on duty immediately called out to me. "Stand up quick, otherwise he'll kick you to bits!" My face still twisted, I stood up again in front of my block sergeant, who grinned at me and said: "That was your entrance fee, you filthy Viennese swine, so that you know who your block leader is."

When the whole transport was finally divided up, there were about twenty men in our category. We were driven to our block at the double, interrupted by the commands: "Lie down! Stand up! Lie down, stand up!" and so on, from the block leader and some of his men, then having once again to form up in ranks of three. We then had to strip completely naked, lay our clothes on the ground in front of us, with shoes and socks on top, and wait - wait - wait. It was January and a few degrees below zero, with an icy wind blowing through the camp, yet we were left naked and barefoot on the snow-covered ground, to stand and wait. An SS corporal in winter coat with fur collar strode through our ranks and struck now one of us, now another, with a horsewhip, crying. "This is so you don't make me feel cold, you filthy queers." He also trod deliberately on the prisoners' toes with his heavy boots, making them cry out in pain. Anyone who made a sound, however, was immediately punched in the stomach with the butt end of his whip with a force that took his breath away. Almost sweating from dealing out blows up and down, the SS corporal said, "You queers are going to remain here until you cool off."*

Finally, after a terribly long time, we were allowed to march to the showers - still naked and barefoot. Our clothes, which had already had nametags put in, remained behind, and had vanished when we returned. We had to wash ourselves in cold water, and some of the new arrivals collapsed with cold and exhaustion. Only then did the camp doctor have the warrn water turned on, so that we could thaw ourselves out. After the shower we were taken to the next room, where we had to cut our hair, pubic hair included. Finally we were taken, still naked - to the clothing stores, where we were given underwear and were "fitted" with prison clothing.'This was distributed quite irrespective of size. The trousers I received were far too short, and came only just below my calves; the jacket was much too narrow and had too-short sleeves. Only the coat fitted tolerably well, but by mere accident. The shoes were a little too big and smelled strongly of sweat, but they had leather soles, which made walking a lot easier than the wooden soled shoes that many new arrivals received. As far as clothing went, at least, I didn't do too badly. Then we had to form up again outside our block and have its organization explained to us by the camp commander. Our block was occupied only by homosexuals, with about 250 men in each wing. We could only sleep in our nightshirts, and had to keep our hands outside the blankets, for: "You queer assholes aren't going to start jerking off here!" The windows had a centimeter of ice on them. Anyone found with his underclothes on in bed or his hands under his blanket - there were checks almost every night - was taken outside and had several bowls of water poured over him before being left standing outside for a good hour. Only a few people survived this treatment. The least result was bronchitis, and it was rare for any gay person taken into the sick bay to come out alive. We who wore the pink triangle were prioritized for medical experiments, and these generally ended in death. For my part, therefore, I took every care I could not to offend against the regulations.

Our block senior and his aides were "greens" - that is, criminals. They looked it, and behaved like it too. Brutal and merciless toward us "queers," and concerned only with their own privilege and advantage, they were as much feared by us as the SS. In Sachsenhausen, at least, a homosexual was never permitted to have any position of responsibility. Nor could we even speak with prisoners from other blocks, with a different-colored badge; we were told we might try to seduce them. And yet homosexuality was much more rife in the other blocks, where there were no men with the pink triangle, than it was in our own. We were also forbidden to approach nearer than five meters of the other blocks. Anyone caught doing so was whipped on the "horse," and was sure of at least fifteen to twenty strokes. Other categories of prisoner were similarly forbidden to enter our block. We were to remain isolated as the damnedest of the damned, the camp's "shitty queers," condemned to liquidation and helpless prey to all the torments inflicted by the SS and the Kapos.

The day regularly began at 6 a.m., or 5 a.m. in summer, and in just half an hour we had to be washed, dressed, and have our beds made in the military style. If you still had time, you could have breakfast, which meant hurriedly slurping down the thin flour soup, hot or lukewarm, and eating your piece of bread. Then we had to form up in eights on the parade ground for morning roll call. Work followed, in winter from 7-30 a.m. to 5 p.m., and in summer from 7 a.m. to 8 p.m., with a half-hour break at the workplace. After work, straight back to the camp and immediate parade for evening roll call. Each block marched in formation to the parade ground and had its permanent position there. The morning parade was not so drawn out as the much-feared evening roll call, for only the block numbers were counted, which took about an hour, and then the command was given for work detachments to form up.

At every parade, those who had just died had also to be present; that is, they were laid out at the end of each block and counted as well. Only after the parade, having been tallied by the report officer, were they taken to the mortuary and subsequently burned.Disabled prisoners had also to be present for parade. Time and again we helped or carried comrades to the parade ground who had been beaten by the SS only hours before. Or we had to bring along fellow prisoners who were half-frozen or feverish, so as to have our numbers complete. Any man missing from our block meant many blows and thus further deaths. We new arrivals were now assigned to our work, which was to keep the area around the block clean. That at least is what we were told by the NCO in charge. In reality, the purpose was to break the very last spark of independent spirit that might possibly remain in the new prisoners, by senseless yet very heavy labor, and to destroy the little human dignity that we still retained. This work continued until a new batch of pink-triangle prisoners were delivered to our block and we were replaced. Our work, then, was as follows: in the moming we had to cart the snow outside our block from the left side of the road to the right side. In the aftemoon we had to cart the same snow back from the right side to the left. We didn't have barrows and shovels to perform this work either - that would have been far too simple for us "queers." No, our SS masters had thought up something much better. We had to put on our coats with the buttoned side backward, and take the snow away in the container this provided. We had to shovel up the snow with our hands - our bare hands, as we didn't have any gloves. We worked in teams of two. Twenty turns at shoveling up the snow with our hands, then twenty turns at carry ing it away. And so right through to the evening, and all at the double! This mental and bodily torment lasted six days, until at last new pink-triangle prisoners were delivered to our block and took over from us. Our hands were cracked all over and half frozen off, and we had become dumb and indifferent slaves of the SS. I learned from prisoners who had already been in our block a good while that in summer similar work was done with earth and sand. Above the gate of the prison camp, however, the "meaningful" Nazi slogan was written in big capitals. "Freedom through work!"

*The slang word for homosexual used here is "warmer Bruder", literally "hot brother", which gives occasion for a lot of vicious puns.


Source : The Men with the Pink Triangle, Heinz Heger (alias), translated by David Fernbach, Alyson Books, 1980

Photos : Camp de Sachsenhausen : déportés alignés devant la grille d'entrée du camp (en haut) ; déportés pénétrant à l'intérieur du camp (milieu, à gauche) ; portail du camp (bas, à droite),

Deportação nazista de homossexuais: uma viagem à dor e ao silêncio


Resumo -Este artigo analisa o livro Moi, Pierre Seel, déporté homosexuel (“Eu, Pierre Seel, Deportado Homossexual”, sem tradução para o português), autobiografia do único francês homossexual a falar abertamente sobre sua experiência de deportado durante a Segunda Guerra Mundial e de prisioneiro do campo de concentração nazista. É o testemunho de uma longa viagem à dor e ao silêncio.

Palavras-chave -literatura de testemunho, homossexualidade, nazismo.

Muitas vezes, quando se fala em viagens, são evocados bons momentos e belas imagens. Mas para milhares de homossexuais que foram perseguidos pelo regime nazista e enviados a campos de concentração, as lembranças são bem diferentes, são de momentos dolorosos, sofridos e traumáticos. É o que se pode observar com a autobiografia do francês Pierre Seel, deportado ao campo de Schirmeck-Vorbrück, na região da Alsácia, o único em solo francês. Depois de anos de silêncio, resolveu contar sua história, testemunhar, denunciar. Assim, escreveu Moi, Pierre Seel, Déporté Homosexuel (“Eu, Pierre Seel, Deportado Homossexual”, sem tradução para o português).

Com a Segunda Guerra Mundial, a região da Alsácia foi tomada pelos nazistas, e em 3 de maio de 1941, ainda aos 17 anos, Seel foi capturado. Depois de ficar dez dias na cadeia da cidade, onde sofreu tortura, foi transferido ao campo de concentração de Schirmeck-Vorbrück. A primeira viagem rumo à dor. Lá, foi obrigado a usar um uniforme marcado com uma faixa azul, que significava católico e/ou prisioneiro anti-social, ao invés do triângulo rosa, símbolo que marcava os homossexuais capturados em Auschwitz, mas que não estava sendo usado em Schirmeck. Porém, sabia-se que o eram. Os nazistas, assim, faziam uso da tortura para tentar descobrir outros homossexuais que ainda não haviam sido capturados. “A engrenagem de violência se acelerou. Irritados com nossa resistência, os SS começaram a arrancar as unhas de alguns de nós. Com raiva, eles romperam as réguas sob as quais nós estávamos ajoelhados e se serviram delas para nos violar. Nossos intestinos foram perfurados. O sangue salpicava por todo lado. Eu ainda escuto nossos atrozes gritos de dor. (SEEL, 1994, p. 39, tradução minha).

Podemos observar que uma importante questão presente em sua autobiografia é a da violência sofrida, das torturas. Esta é, aliás, uma das características desse tipo de escrita, pertencente à Literatura de Testemunho, que engloba as diversas narrativas de situações-limite. “Essa ética e estética da literatura de testemunho possui o corpo – a dor – como um dos seus alicerces.” (SELIGMANN-SILVA, 2005, p. 111).

Pierre Seel narra, assim, como foi o tempo que passou no campo de concentração e tudo o que foi obrigado a suportar. “Eu vivi seis meses desse jeito, nesse espaço onde o horror e a selvageria eram a lei. Mas eu demoro a evocar a provação que foi a pior para mim, embora ela tenha se passado nas primeiras semanas do meu encarceramento nesse campo. Ela contribuiu mais que tudo a fazer de mim essa sombra obediente e silenciosa entre os outros.” (SEEL, 1994, p. 58, tradução minha).

Seligmann-Silva afirma que, “na literatura de testemunho de um modo geral é frequente a concepção do campo como constituindo a “única realidade” e a afirmação da impossibilidade de saída dele, da impossibilidade de libertação dele.” (Seligmann-Silva, 2005, p. 110). Também vemos isso presente nas memórias de Pierre Seel: “O ritmo infernal do campo, feito de jornadas repetitivas pontuadas de humilhações incessantes, instalou-se por muito tempo em meu corpo, em minha cabeça. Nada se passava além do ciclo cotidiano de atrocidades tranquilamente programadas pelos SS.” (SEEL, 1994, p. 61, tradução minha).

Depois desses meses passados e sofridos no campo de concentração, foi libertado. Ele narra, em sua autobiografia, como estava seu estado mental, ao sair e andar pelas ruas de Schirmeck, rumo à estação de trem: “Uma hora mais cedo, não longe da forca, eu fazia ainda gestos de autômato descerebrado em meio a gritos, cães, pequenas metralhadoras e torres de vigilância.” (SEEL, 1994, p. 64, tradução minha). E observamos em seu texto que são repassadas à escrita todas as indagações que ele se fazia ao sair de lá, narrando também como aconteceu seu retorno para casa e como se sentiu ao se deparar com sua família. “uando cheguei em casa, eu toquei a campainha como um estranho.” (SEEL, 1994, p. 65, tradução minha). Estrangeiro, aquele que é diferente, que vem de um outro lugar, que não pertence a um grupo, a uma cidade, a uma família. Aquele que não compartilha os mesmos signos, não é familiar, conhecido. Estranho. Era assim que se sentia.

“Nós estávamos em 6 de novembro de 1941. Um duplo segredo acabava de se selar de uma só vez: o do horror nazista e o da vergonha de minha homossexualidade. De vez em quando, um olhar caía sobre mim, cheio de interrogações sobre meu aspecto famélico. Em que eu havia me transformado em seis meses? Eu era, portanto, homossexual? Que me haviam feito passar os nazistas? Por que haviam me libertado? Essas questões naturais, ninguém as colocava. Mas se alguém tivesse feito, eu não teria respondido: eu estava preso ao meu duplo segredo. E a esses olhares silenciosos, eu levei quarenta anos para responder.” (SEEL, 1994, p. 66, tradução minha).

Vemos, portanto, que foi uma viagem bem longa essa do silêncio. Antes de Pierre Seel ter sido libertado do campo de concentração, teve que assinar uma declaração em que aceitava tornar-se um cidadão alemão, como podiam fazer os alsacianos sob a ocupação. Essa era uma tática nazista, pois, com isso, foi obrigado a fazer parte do exército alemão e a lutar na guerra, durante três anos. Sua segunda viagem ao sofrimento.

“Portanto, a guerra, aos dezoito anos e meio, e com o uniforme alemão. Eu não me lembro da minha partida de Mulhouse; e os três anos que se seguiram, em que eu atravessei a Europa toda, muitos detalhes, lugares, datas, escapam-me completamente. Eu faço um esforço para me lembrar e para delimitar os acontecimentos, mas eles se esquivam: esquecidos? reprimidos? É como se, nas garras dos nazistas, eu tivesse concentrado toda minha vontade na ideia única de sobreviver, e não na de me lembrar. Somente fragmentos de memória se mantêm, aleatórios, desconcertados em sua desordem”. (SEEL, 1994, p. 69, tradução minha).

Observamos, assim, em seu relato, uma memória fragmentada. Outra característica da literatura de testemunho. Isso é decorrência da situação extrema pela qual passou o sobrevivente. O filósofo Paul Ricoeur afirma, em seu livro A História, a Memória, o Esquecimento, que a testemunha não esteve ela mesma distante dos acontecimentos, ela não ‘assistiu’ a eles; ela foi sua vítima. E, dialogando com Saul Friedlander, escritor do livro Probing the Limits of Representation, o filósofo aborda a questão do limite.

“O vocábulo pode designar dois tipos de limites: de um lado, um tipo de esgotamento das formas de representação disponíveis em nossa cultura para dar legibilidade e visibilidade ao acontecimento chamado ‘solução final’; de outro lado, uma solicitação, uma exigência de ser dito, representado, elevando-se do próprio cerne do acontecimento, procedendo, portanto, dessa origem do discurso que certa tradição retórica considera como o extralinguístico, banido da terra semiótica”. (RICOEUR, 2008, p. 267).

Além disso, a violência sofrida, ou seja, “os danos físicos infligidos das rupturas de contrato, as contestações a respeito de atribuição de bens, de posições de poder e de autoridade, e todos os outros delitos e crimes constituem outras tantas feridas de memória que demandam um trabalho de memória inseparável de um trabalho de luto visando a uma reapropriação por todas as partes do delito e do crime, apesar de sua estranheza essencial. Da cena traumática à cena simbólica, poderíamos dizer” (RICOEUR, 2008, p. 334).

Seel sofreu muitos atos violentos, e violência de toda espécie, desde corporal à simbólica. Ademais, presenciou a morte de muitas pessoas, inclusive de pessoas que amava. E também foi obrigado a matar para não morrer. Todas essas fortes impressões podem gerar traumas, que podem ser fortes demais e ser apagados ou então podem estar presentes para sempre. Permanecem mesmo quando estão inacessíveis, indisponíveis. Em seu lugar, aparecem fenômenos de substituição, sintomas que mascaram o retorno do recalcado de modos diversos, como, por exemplo, os sonhos. Além disso, percebemos também em Pierre Seel a “síndrome do sobrevivente”, termo usado por W. G. Niederland para representar uma “situação crônica de angústia e depressão, marcada por distúrbios de sono, pesadelos recorrentes, apatia, problemas somáticos, anestesia afetiva, ‘automatização do ego’, incapacidade de verbalizar a experiência traumática, culpa por ter sobrevivido e um trabalho de trauma que não é concluído” (SELIGMANN-SILVA, 2005, p. 68).

Pierre Seel nos narra:
“Um fantasma eu me tornei e um fantasma eu permanecia: não devia ainda ter tomado consciência de que eu continuava vivo. À noite, me visitavam pesadelos e durante o dia eu praticava o silêncio. Eu queria esquecer todos os detalhes e todos os terrores dos quatro anos que eu acabava de viver. Estava totalmente exausto por meus múltiplos enfrentamentos com a morte e constatava dolorosamente a impotência que eu havia sentido ante a morte dos outros. Uma tristeza imensa havia se apossado de mim. E eu não tinha desejo algum.” (SEEL, 1994, p. 113, tradução minha).

Quatro anos de muito sofrimento, percorrendo vários lugares da Europa, tendo sido transformado pelos nazistas em um fantasma a serviço da morte. O armistício foi selado em 8 de maio de 1945, terminando assim a guerra. Porém sua repatriação tardou a acontecer. A demorada e burocrática volta à França ocorreu somente no dia 7 de agosto de 1945, chegando a Paris, onde ficou ainda por mais um ano, ajudando no registro dos repatriados. Enfim, depois de quatro anos, retornou a sua cidade, Mulhouse. Mas constatou: “Eu já comecei a censurar minhas lembranças e percebi que, apesar das minhas expectativas, apesar de tudo que eu havia imaginado, da emoção do retorno tão esperado, a verdadeira Libertação era para os outros.” (SEEL, 1994, p. 110, tradução minha). Começou, portanto, uma outra viagem, a do silêncio.

Um grande fator que contribuiu para isso foi que, com o fim da guerra, o governo Charles de Gaulle modificou o código penal francês, retirando principalmente leis anti-semitas. Porém, os artigos contra homossexualidade continuaram, tornando-se ainda mais rígidos em 1962. Somente em 1981 deixou de ser ilegal na França. Portanto, as vítimas homossexuais sentiam-se inseguras para contar suas verdadeiras histórias, por medo do estigma e de possíveis ações legais, e, assim, omitiam-nas, ou mesmo mentiam. O testemunho dos homossexuais era, portanto, socialmente inaudível, impossível e perigoso. Assim, relata Seel: “Tendo conhecimento da existência dessa lei, eu compreendi também que ao falar, eu corria o risco de ser ameaçado do lado dos tribunais, e acusado de fazer apologia de uma sexualidade 'contra-natureza'.” (SEEL, 1994, p. 115). Os homossexuais somente foram reconhecidos como vítimas do nazismo há alguns anos. O governo alemão pediu desculpas, em novembro de 2000, pelas deportações e torturas sofridas. E o estado francês reconheceu somente em abril de 2001 as perseguições sofridas por eles durante a Segunda Guerra Mundial.

Assim, depois de anos de auto-censura, silêncio e solidão, Pierre Seel resolve tentar levar uma vida “normal”. E, para isso, acreditava que o casamento era a solução. Desse modo, Seel casou-se, em 1950, tendo, mais tarde, três filhos. No entanto, tudo isso havia sido apenas uma ilusão. Anos depois, percebendo que não havia dado certo sua tentativa e sentindo-se muito angustiado, resolveu quebrar o silêncio. E aqui vemos outra marca muito importante da literatura de testemunho. A narrativa “é tecida como uma forma de se ‘libertar’ do passado como também se desdobra como um doloroso exercício de construção da identidade. Ela é uma narração necessária tanto em termos individuais como também – pensando universalmente – deve funcionar como um testemunho para a posteridade. Ela é um ato subjetivo e objetivo, psicológico e ético” (SELIGMANN-SILVA, 2005, p. 114).

Testemunhar foi algo que lhe fez bem. “Eu reconheço que tudo isso me tranquilizou. Eu me senti subitamente rodeado de um novo respeito pela minha identidade. E eu mesmo me olhei com mais dignidade. Sem dúvida porque eu tinha desse momento em diante um dever: fazer reconhecer a deportação dos homossexuais.” (SEEL, 1994, p. 159, tradução minha).

Bella Josef nos diz que “o testemunho nasceu, muitas vezes, da necessidade de apresentar o lado escondido da história, a dos dominados em oposição à dos dominadores.” (JOSEF, 1999, p. 298). Ela afirma também que, partindo-se do pessoal, tenta-se superá-lo para impor uma problemática coletiva, que foi justamente o que fez Seel. Ao falar de si e prestar seu testemunho, busca resgatar a memória coletiva desse grupo que, assim como ele, foi perseguido pelo fato de ser homossexual. O “eu” representa, assim, também os outros; temos um passado particular que pode ser visto também como coletivo.

Portanto, Pierre Seel dá voz a esse coletivo do qual fez parte, buscando que a justiça seja feita. Segundo Paul Ricoeur, é esta que transforma a memória em projeto, extraindo das lembranças traumatizantes seu valor exemplar, e é esse mesmo projeto de justiça que dá ao dever de memória a forma do futuro e do imperativo.
“É preciso primeiro lembrar que, entre todas as virtudes, a da justiça é a que, por excelência e por constituição, é voltada para outrem. (...) O dever de memória é o dever de fazer justiça, pela lembrança, a um outro que não o si. (...) O dever de memória não se limita a guardar o rastro material, escrito ou outro, dos fatos acabados, mas entretém o sentimento de dever a outros, que não são mais, mas já foram.” (RICOEUR, 2008, p. 101).

Essa é uma outra característica extremamente relevante da literatura de testemunho, pois ela existe apenas no contexto da contra-história, da denúncia e da busca pela justiça. “A verdade e a utilidade são, portanto, fundamentais.” (Seligmann-Silva, 2005, p. 88). Busca-se um registro da história, da opressão, e há uma simbiose entre memória e história.

Assim, vemos que a autobiografia, como afirma Phillipe Lejeune, “é feita para transmitir um universo de valores, uma sensibilidade ao mundo, experiências desconhecidas, e isto no quadro de uma relação pessoal percebida como autêntica e não ficcional.” (LEJEUNE, 2003, p. 53-54). E, portanto, inscreve-se tanto no campo do conhecimento histórico, pelo desejo de saber e de compreender; no campo da ação, pela promessa de facultar esse conhecimento aos outros; como também na área da criação artística, afinal trata-se de um texto literário.

De acordo com Georges Gusdorf, as Memórias propõem uma crônica pessoal do devir histórico, colocando a ênfase sobre a ordem das coisas, ao invés da subjetividade própria do narrador. “Sem dúvida, ele reage ao acontecimento com uma certa complacência de si mesmo, que ele não precisa dissumular, mas o interesse principal se coloca nos acontecimentos políticos, militares, diplomáticos aos quais o redator esteve envolvido.” (GUSDORF, 1991, p. 252, tradução minha).

Gusdorf diz também que a autobiografia permite ao historiador ver a realidade com os mesmos olhos dos que a viveram. No entanto, há uma relação objetiva dos acontecimentos de que o autor participou, pois busca ser uma testemunha destinada a trazer uma contribuição à história de seu tempo, mesmo estando inscrito no interior de suas lembranças. Seel afirma: “Testemunhar, dizer tudo, exigir reabilitação do meu passado, desse passado que é também o de muitos outros, esquecidos, ocultos nas horas negras da Europa. Testemunhar para proteger o futuro, testemunhar para acabar com a amnésia dos meus contemporâneos.” (SEEL, 1994, p. 156-157, tradução minha).

A autobiografia de Pierre Seel é, deste modo, um importante texto, tanto em termos literários, quanto em termos de documento histórico. Ricoeur afirma que “não temos nada melhor que o testemunho, em última análise, para assegurar-nos de que algo aconteceu, a que alguém atesta ter assistido pessoalmente” (RICOEUR, 2008, p. 156). Seel escreve justamente para dar seu testemunho. Para fazer visíveis as crueldades sofridas pelos homossexuais, recuperando, assim, a memória de um passado de repressão, e buscando o reconhecimento desse grupo, considerado como o mais inferior, pelos nazistas, e por muitas pessoas ainda hoje. E é justamente contra a repetição dessas situações de barbárie que Seel escreveu a história de sua vida, a história das difíceis viagens rumo à dor e ao silêncio.

Abstract: This article discusses the book Moi, Pierre Seel, déporté homosexuel (Liberation Was for Others: Memoirs of a Gay Survivor of the Nazi Holocaust, in its English version), autobiography of the only French homosexual to openly speak about his experience of deported during the Second World War and prisoner of a Nazi concentration camp. It is the testimony of a long journey to pain and silence.

Keywords: literature of testimony, homosexuality, Nazism

REFERÊNCIAS
GUSDORF, Georges. Les écritures du moi. Paris: Ed. Odile Jacob, 1991.
JOSEF, Bella. “(Auto)biografia: os territórios da memória e da história”. In LEENHARDT, J. e PESAVENTO, S. (orgs.). Discurso histórico e narrativa literária. Campinas: Editora da Unicamp, 1998.
LEJEUNE, Phillipe. “Definir Autobiografia”. In MORÃO, P. (org.). Autobiografia. Auto-representação. Lisboa: Fac. Letras de Lisboa, 2003.
RICOEUR, Paul. A memória, a História, o Esquecimento. Campinas: Editora da Unicamp, 2008.
SEEL, Pierre; LE BITOUX, Jean. Moi, Pierre Seel, déporté homosexuel. Paris: Éditions Calmann-Lévy, 1994.
SELIGMANN-SILVA, Márcio (org.). O local da diferença: ensaios sobre memória, arte, literatura e tradução. São Paulo: Editora 34, 2005.

FONTE: http://www.pgletras.uerj.br/palimpsesto/num7/dossie/dossie_TiagoElidiodaSilva.htm

Source : Deportação nazista de homossexuais: uma viagem à dor e ao silêncio, Tiago Elídio (Mestrando, UNICAMP). Tiago Elídio peut être contacté à l'adresse suivante : tiagoelidio@gmail.com

Photo : Paris, le 29 avril 2001. Commémoration de la Journée nationale du souvenir de la déportation, sur l'Ile de la Cité, à Paris. Pierre Seel, à gauche, en compagnie de Jean Le Bitoux, président d'honneur du Mémorial de la Déportation Homosexuelle. Contrairement aux années précédentes, les délégations officielles (représentées sur cette photo par des militaires en tenue) n'ont pas quitté les lieux à l'arrivée de la délégation homosexuelle. A l'issue de la cérémonie, Bertrand Delanoë, maire de Paris, s'est entretenu avec les participants, parmi lesquels : Mme Simone Weil (ancienne déportée à Auschwitz, ancienne ministre), M. Pierre Seel, M. Masseret (Secrétaire d'Etat à la Défense chargé des anciens combattants), M. Jean Le Bitoux et M. René Lalement, président du Mémorial de la Déportation Homosexuelle (Photo : Franck Dennis - no copyright).