SCOTT DETROW, HOST:
Since 2016, the "Making Gay History" podcast has brought the history of the LGBTQ rights movement to life through the voices of the people who lived it. And recently, they released a 12-part series that goes back further in time to a historical moment that many people do not immediately associate with gay and queer people but one that did have a profound effect on them. It's about World War II, specifically the Nazi era in Germany. The series introduces us to LGBTQ people persecuted for homosexuality during the Nazi regime, World War II and the Holocaust. And a warning, this conversation will include descriptions of torture at times. Eric Marcus, founder and host of "Making Gay History," joins me. Hey, Eric.
ERIC MARCUS: Hi, Scott.
DETROW: Let's talk about the first thought that people have with this period of time and with the Holocaust. And I'm wondering, did the Nazis specifically target gay people in the way that they targeted Jewish people and other groups?
MARCUS: No, they didn't. It was not wholesale genocide. For - actually, it was at first gay men in particular. There were laws against homosexuality in Germany prior to the Nazi era. They strengthened those laws, and they did go after gay men. They arrested tens of thousands of them, sent many to prison and sent between 7- and 10,000 to concentration camps. The goal wasn't to kill them. It was sort of a brutal conversion therapy to make them good Aryans so that they would reproduce and create new little Aryans. But along the way, because the treatment was so brutal, many of them died. And what we also discovered was there was a whole range of experiences for LGBTQ people, from those who were victims to those who were involved in the resistance movement.
DETROW: I want to talk about resistance fighters in a moment. But one...
MARCUS: Yeah.
DETROW: ...Thing I'm wondering is - you saw this with different groups in the way the Nazis approached things - did they treat gay people in countries that they occupied differently than they treated German gay people?
MARCUS: They did. For example, in Poland, they didn't really care about gay men, except what they might do to infect German soldiers, meaning they thought you could catch it. But in some of the adjacent regions, like the Alsace-Lorraine region of France, they applied the laws unevenly, but people were caught up. In fact, one of the people we featured, Pierre Seel, and his boyfriend, were 18 years old and were arrested, and their experience was horrific.
(SOUNDBITE OF PODCAST, "MAKING GAY HISTORY")
PIERRE SEEL: (Through interpreter) And there he was. They made him undress, strip down completely naked. They put a bucket, a tin bucket, on his head so you could only see his body. And then they set the camp dogs on him. This is an evil thing, what I'm telling you, yes? Now you understand why I have a candle burning at home.
UNIDENTIFIED PERSON: (Speaking French).
MARCUS: The memory of Jo.
SEEL: (Through interpreter) His life - and I'm 70 years old now. And the older I get, the more I need to think and feel. I think and I hope that his last thought was about me because I can't stop myself from thinking about him. I can't. I can't do it.
MARCUS: That was Arnie Burton, a Broadway actor, who voiced Pierre's French testimony. What has always struck me in listening to that clip and his story - we have a full episode with him - is that he's 70 years old. This is decades after he had been through this, and it's as if he is there all over again. And so many of the people we feature were so deeply affected that when they gave testimony in their 70s, 80s, 90s, it was as if they were right back where they were during World War II.
DETROW: These aren't distant memories at all.
MARCUS: No, no.
DETROW: You mentioned this before. I want to ask more about it. You featured people who were involved in resistance efforts. I'd love for you to tell us about one person, Frieda Belinfante.
MARCUS: She was amazing. She was a cellist, a young cellist. She had a chamber orchestra in the Netherlands. And it turned out she was brilliant at forging documents. So she was expert at removing the letter J from the documents of Dutch Jews. But she also realized that there were copies of all of those documents at the registry in Amsterdam, so she proposed the idea of blowing up the registry. They wouldn't let the women participate, but it was led - the action was led by her friend, Willem Arondeus, who was an effeminate gay man who was determined to show what gay men could do. After the action, the men were caught and executed, and Frieda dressed as a man, very effectively, to escape the Gestapo.
(SOUNDBITE OF PODCAST, "MAKING GAY HISTORY")
FRIEDA BELINFANTE: For three months, I was disguised as a man, and a friend of mine had the same figure, the same height, and I had a three-piece suit that fit me to a T. I went out for the first time in my disguise, and I went to get a haircut right away. I went into the barber shop, and the barber walks up to me and he said, what do you want, sir? Shave or haircut? And I said, no, just haircut. And he didn't bat an eye. I lived at the Jacob Obrechtstraat No. 64, and my mother lived at 44. And I passed my mother several times during that time, and she never recognized me.
MARCUS: Frieda was not shy at all about being a lesbian and was very open about it. She said her friend Willem Arondeus, who led the action, was not like her, as open and comfortable with his sexuality. But when he was about to be executed, he asked his lawyer to tell the world that gay men were not cowards. And I can tell you, when I do presentations and I talk about that, it's rare that I can get through that without choking up.
DETROW: Yeah. I mean, these are stories of profound bravery and profound suffering.
MARCUS: Yes.
DETROW: And even though it's been 80-plus years, I mean, you could still feel it, hearing these voices. What are the takeaways from the people that you featured in this series?
MARCUS: There are so many takeaways, but I really do think there's a warning in their experiences for the present day - in a way that I might not have expected when we started working on this series three years ago - that when a government goes after the most vulnerable, the least understood people in their country, we all need to be concerned because it starts there and it doesn't stop there. So it's important to stand up early and speak out and resist.
DETROW: That is Eric Marcus, host of "Making Gay History." Member Station KALW is "Making Gay History's" radio home and broadcast partner, and you can hear it wherever you get your podcasts. Eric, thank you so much.
MARCUS: Thanks so much, Scott.
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