Paragraph 175
Directors • Rob Epstein, Jeffrey Friedman
Idea, Director of Research and Associate Producer • Klaus Müller
Narrated • by Rupert Everett
81 min. • 2000 USA

Website Telling Pictures

Screenings in USA, Brasil, Germany, France, Spain, Switzerland, Austria, United Kingdom, Italy, Netherlands, Norway, Hongkong, Israel, Canada, Portugal, Poland, South Korea, Mexico, Finland, Taiwan, Australia, Turkey, Ireland, Belgium, Denmark, Greece.

Screened on television: United Kingdom (Channel 4); United States (HBO), Canada, Netherlands, Germany, France.

American Premiere • Sundance Film Festival 2000
European Premiere • Berlin Film Festival 2000

JURY PRIZES:
Sundance Film Festival-Best Directors
Documentary Berlin Film Festival-Teddy Award
Turin Gay Film Festival
Philadelphia Int'l Gay and Lesbian Film Festival
Seattle Lesbian & Gay Film Festival - Award for Excellence

CRITICS AWARDS:
Berlin Film Festival-FIPRESCI Award
(Fédération International de la Presse Cinématographique)

AUDIENCE AWARDS:
Turin Gay Film Festival
Milan Gay Film Festival
Pink Apple Film Festival (Switzerland)
San Francisco Int'l Lesbian and Gay Film Festival
Barcelona Int'l Exhibition of Gay and Lesbian Films
MiX Brasil Festival of Sexual Diversity
Madrid Gay and Lesbian Film Festival
'identities' Queer Film Festival Vienna

PARAGRAPH 175 documents the Nazi persecution of homosexuals through the words of some of its survivors. Their testimonies - filmed for the first time - give insight in what for decades has been ignored or silenced. The Nazis arrested app. 100,000 men as homosexuals. Half of them were sentenced to prison of which an estimated 10,000 to 15,000 were incarcerated in concentration camps. Camp inmates sentenced under the anti-gay Nazi law 'Paragraph 175' were marked with a pink triangle. The German government never paid restitutions to the gay victims of the Nazi regime. In the late 60's, the pink triangle was reinterpreted by the gay and lesbian community as a symbol of gay pride. But we never knew the individual men who were forced to wear it in the camps. No names, no faces - just an empty memory. Now we learn to know some of them. Their stories are complex and marked by the horror of the camps and their humiliation after 1945, but also by their resilience, anger and strength.

Project History

Having worked since the early 90's on the Nazi persecution of homosexuals, I have since been in contact with a small number of gay survivors. In 1997, based on an idea for a documentary film, I proposed a collaboration to American directors Rob Epstein and Jeffrey Friedman.

Gay survivors have never received legal recognition or support. Their voice is unique and part of our complex, yet largely undocumented history. The film safeguards the few stories of the known gay survivors still alive and documents their ordeal before and after 1945

Reviews

Washington Post

New York Times

Neue Zürcher Zeitung (German)

L'Espresso Online (Italian)

FORO DE LA CINETECA (Spanish)

The Times

Reviews

‘Paragraph 175’: The Nazis’ Victims of Shame
Washington Post, October 19, 2000

By Chip Crews, Washington Post Staff Writer

"Heinz F. is very old, seemingly past the age of shame, but still he doesn’t want us to know his full name. His awful story, however, is something he will share, and on camera: the long years in the concentration camps, the deaths of so many friends, the loneliness that was itself a kind of endless sentence. But not just yet — look, his ancient eyes are dancing. He is gazing back across a million yesterdays, past that terrible time and all the way to the distant shores of youth.

"Today it’s hard to imagine how wild it was in Berlin after the 1914-to-1918 war," he says, a mixture of naughty-boy pride and embarrassment on his face. "Everything went topsy-turvy. Men danced together and so did women. . . . Then there was so much joy and even more screaming."

Heinz is one of the first people we meet in "Paragraph 175," a straightforward and compassionate new documentary about the Nazi persecution of gay men. It’s screening tonight at 7 at the Lincoln Theatre as part of the 10th annual Reel Affirmations film festival.

The film takes its title from an entry in the German Penal Code of 1871 prohibiting "an unnatural sex act committed between persons of the male sex or by humans with animals." (Nazi logic was that lesbianism was both temporary and curable, so with few exceptions women were spared prosecution.) The law was ignored by most in the heady, who-cares days and nights of Weimar Berlin — a city that was known throughout the world as a "homosexual Eden," narrator Rupert Everett tells us. But the rise of the Nazis changed everything.

"Paragraph 175" is the inspiration of Klaus Muller, a U.S. Holocaust Museum representative for Western Europe. Muller had come to feel that as a gay German of postwar vintage, "I did not have a past at all," and he set out to meet and interview as many of his remaining "gay grandfathers" as he could.

He was almost too late. The film, produced and directed by Rob Epstein and Jeffrey Friedman, tells us that in their attempt to eliminate homosexuality from the national bloodline, the Germans arrested close to 100,000 men, of whom 10,000 to 15,000 were sent to concentration camps. Most of the latter group were Christians and therefore not condemned to the gas chambers; instead they were marked for slave labor, medical experiments or castration. The great majority of them perished.

By the time Muller began trying to find camp survivors, fewer than 10 were known to be alive, and not all of them wanted to talk to him. At least one encounter is testy. Pierre Seel, a Frenchman in his seventies, meets him at a subway entrance. "I’m here, but let’s make it short," he says curtly, later adding: "I swore never to shake hands with a German again. And here you are."

It is telling that by the early ‘30s the Nazis and their opponents were trading charges of homosexual sympathies as evidence of unfitness for rule. An opposition cartoon from the period contemptuously depicts a cadre of round-bottomed Nazi troops, alluding perhaps to the fact that Ernst Roehm, one of Hitler’s chief lieutenants, was known to be gay. (Though the Fuehrer initially stood by Roehm, in the end the man was put to death by the Third Reich.)

The film makes no effort to answer any imponderable questions about the Holocaust, instead leaving us alone with them. One of the starkest is this: Having lived through this monstrous time, do these men owe us the debt of talking about it? Seel is given the last word here. He shares what he can share, but finally it is too much. Angrily, he describes an unprintable injury that left him disabled for life, and he shouts, "Do you think I can talk about that? That it is good for me? This is too much for my nerves, Klaus! . . . I am ashamed for humanity."

The ordeals of these men came to an end many years ago, except of course they didn’t. Injuries like theirs don’t heal, and their stories suggest that the postwar world regarded stories of Nazism’s gay victims with brusque indifference. Toward the end of the film, Heinz F. remarks that all told he spent more than eight years in various camps. When he was finally released, he returned home to work with his brother in the family store. He felt ashamed, he says, and never spoke of his ordeal to anyone, not even his mother. He received, in turn, "not even one word from her" about it.

Muller then asks whether he would have liked to talk with somebody, and the old man’s jaw tenses. "Maybe, maybe with my father," he says before breaking into tears.

It’s a haunting image, the face of this 92-year-old man who long ago was wounded and stayed wounded and wishes he could have talked to his dad about it. In fact the pain of all these men is beyond us, and we can only be grateful to them for sharing it with us. Through their courage, they have found a way not just to survive their own suffering but to outlive it."

By Lawrence Van Gelder

"To the growing body of invaluable cinematic literature documenting for posterity the hideous barbarity of Nazism may now be added "Paragraph 175."

At once admirable and deeply unsettling, this film draws upon the testimony of little more than a handful of the all-but-vanished ranks of survivors to relate the horror of the Nazi purge of homosexuals from the life of Germany and the aftereffects that scar and roil these men as the 21st century begins.

"I am ashamed for humanity," says one of the survivors as he recounts his personal ordeal and the horrors visited on those he knew.

"Paragraph 175," opening today at the Film Forum, was directed by Rob Epstein and Jeffrey Friedman. Together they won an Academy Award for their documentary "Common Threads: Stories From the Quilt," after Mr. Epstein won an Oscar, among many other awards, for "The Times of Harvey Milk," which will be revived at the Film Forum, starting on Friday.

This year their new documentary, to run through Sept. 26, won the grand jury award for directing at the Sundance Film Festival and the International Film Critics Association Award at the Berlin International Film Festival.

"Paragraph 175," using new and archival film, family photographs and narration by the actor Rupert Everett, takes its title from a portion of the German penal code enacted in 1871: "An unnatural sex act committed between persons of male sex or by humans with animals is punishable by imprisonment; the loss of civil rights may also be imposed."

This provision, expanded by the Nazis, remained law in West and East Germany until nearly the end of the 1960’s. Some of the film’s witnesses were rearrested under this law after the defeat of the Nazis. During the years of the Weimar Republic, between the end of World War I and the rise of Hitler, Paragraph 175 was rarely enforced, and the Berlin of the 1920’s was, in the words and images of the film, "a homosexual Eden."

According to the filmmakers, who drew upon German records and were assisted by Klaus Muller, a German historian and the project director for Western Europe for the United States Holocaust Museum, about 100,000 men were arrested for homosexuality between 1933, when Hitler assumed power, and 1945, when World War II ended. About half were sentenced to prison; 10,000 to 15,000 were sent to concentration camps, and by the end of the war, only about 4,000 of those in the camps had survived. Of the eight known to be alive, six appear in "Paragraph 175."

Because women were regarded by the Nazis as vessels of motherhood, lesbians were spared mass arrest. Some chose exile; others entered into marriages with gay men. Only one woman, who escaped to England, tells her story in the film.

Mr. Muller, the film’s associate producer and director of research, notes that he grew up in Germany without ever hearing of the persecution of its gays.

Among the male survivors seen in "Paragraph 175," one tells of torture; another recalls a daring but vain attempt to rescue his lover from a Gestapo camp by donning a Hitler Youth uniform; a third remembers his years in concentration camps; and yet another tells how he was released from prison during the war only to find that all the men were gone. So, he says, he joined the German Army because "that’s where the men were."

And one of them tells of "the singing forest," where the agony of gay men subjected to torture wailed from the poles on which they were hanging.

For generations to come, "Paragraph 175" lets them be heard."

Dokumentarfilm als Dokument
«Paragraph 175» und die homosexuellen Zeugen des Holocaust

Stefan Zweifel

8. Juni 2000 / Neue Zürcher Zeitung, 9. Juni 2000

Der singende Wald, die Rückkehr aus dem Lager ins Schweigen der Familie, ins Schweigen einer Nation, der rosa Wimpel auf den KZ-Uniformen, aber auch die ungebrochen blauen Augen eines fast Hundertjährigen, der seinen Blick auf Zeiten zurück richtet, die sich jeder Illustration entziehen, das leere Schlucken und die Synkopen, welche die Erzählungen, die heiseren Sprachfragmente rhythmisieren. Vielleicht lässt sich das Unsägliche und Unsagbare der Geschichte nur so erzählen, vielleicht brennt sich die Vergangenheit nur so dauerhaft ins Gedächtnis: Von den 100 000 Homosexuellen, die während der Nazi-Zeit inhaftiert, gefoltert und, zu Tausenden, vernichtet wurden, leben heute noch zehn Zeugen. Fünf von ihnen stellen sich ihrem Schmerz und machen diesen Dokumentarfilm zu einem unvergesslichen Erlebnis - diese Floskel meint für einmal wirklich zu einem Erlebnis, das man nicht mehr vergessen kann.

Und dies ohne Rückgriff auf die bekannten Bilder des Grauens. Gerade durch das Aussparen dessen, was man schon einmal, schon mehrmals gesehen zu haben glaubte, sieht man tiefer ins Verhängnis, dessen Konturen durch die Einbettung in die harmlos-prüde Aufbruchstimmung der zukunftsfrohen zwanziger Jahre schärfer hervortreten, als in Berliner Kneipen und Tanzlokalen die Entdeckung des - damals so genannten - «dritten Geschlechts» als ungewisses Abenteuer begann: Diese geschickte Dialektik zwischen Zeigen und Auslassen, diese Kippfigur vom normalen Alltag in die Perversion der Verfolgung von Andersdenkenden, Andersgläubigen und Andersliebenden erweisen sich als Strategien, die diesen Film der rein intellektuellen Verarbeitung und Kontrolle der Vernunft entziehen. Lange danach tauchen in Gesprächen, in Träumen auch, die Geschichten dieser alten Männer beim Zuschauer wieder auf, eine Geschichte von Verfolgten, die bis heute vom deutschen Staat nicht als Verfolgte anerkannt sind und vergeblich für sich selber eintraten, aber nicht vergeblich für uns.

Gewiss wird der Erinnerungsraum auch durch die bekannten Daten von Hitlers Machtergreifung, von der Zerschlagung von Hirschfelds Sexualinstitut, von der Nacht der langen Messer abgesteckt, während deren Hitler seinen Helfer Röhm ermorden liess, um - endlich - die nationalsozialistische Bewegung von den Homosexuellen zu «reinigen»; doch die Hauptrolle spielen Zwischentöne, harmlose und grauenvolle Anekdoten. Vielleicht entsteht das eigentliche Geschichtsbewusstsein durch das Singuläre, durch den Staub der Erinnerung, der sich zu Wolken verdichtet, die mehr von dunklen Zeiten ahnen lassen als Zahlen und Fakten.

Aufgehängt im singenden Wald
In diesem Film formiert sich gerade das Unspektakuläre zum faszinierenden Rätsel der Irr- und Abwege, die der Hass und die Verdrängung einschlagen können. Eine Frau, die ihr trautes Heim in der ehemaligen Baracke 13 eingerichtet hat, dort, wo ein Achtzehnjähriger mit seinen Lagergefährten zuschauen musste, wie sein Liebhaber von Hunden, deutschen Schäferhunden, aufgefressen wurde; die Invalidenrente für die Holzpfähle, die man ihm in den Hintern gerammt hat, aber auch der stolze Satz: «Mutti, heute habe ich meinen ersten Mann gehabt», und der Blick auf die fremd gewordene Jugendfoto, auf der der jüdische Schwule, wie er selber belustigt feststellt, noch wie ein blondes Christkind aussah . . . Rob Epstein und Jeffrey Friedman, die in ihren preisgekrönten Dokumentarfilmen «The Times of Harvey Milk» und «The Celluloid Closet» ihre Methode entwickelt haben, lassen in «Paragraph 175» über weite Strecken harmlose Geschichten des Banalen erzählen, die den Einbruch des real Bösen erst so erschreckend machen: «Der singende Wald, da bekam jeder Gänsehaut.»

Aufgehängt im singenden Wald - kaum noch gehaucht kommt das Wort «Wald» über die Lippen, und dann, vom Schweigen und schweren Atmen umrauscht, als spätes Echo der Satz: «Der singende Wald, unerklärlich, da versagt das menschliche Hirn, und vieles bleibt noch unbekannt.» Jahrzehnte liegt es zurück, bald hat der Sprecher ein Jahrhundert gelebt, überlebt. Nebenan noch immer die kleine Kammer, wo er seine ersten Freuden mit Knaben hatte, die Herzkammer seines späteren Leids. Später: Das meint auch noch nach Ende des Krieges, als er immer wieder, acht Jahre lang, verhaftet worden war, weil er gegen den diskriminierenden Paragraphen 175 verstossen hatte, der seit 1871 zur Bestrafung der Homosexuellen Handhabe bot und erst 1969 abgeschafft wurde. Im Berlin der goldenen Twenties hatte er in putzigen Tanzlokalen und am Flussufer unter Pfadfindern kurz jenen Aufbruch in eine Freiheit erlebt, die er und seine ermordeten Freunde durch ihre beharrliche Widerstandskraft einer nachgeborenen Generation wieder ermöglicht haben. Schicht über Schicht lagerte sich der tanzende Staub der Erinnerung ab. Dank der filmischen Archäologie lässt sich nun etwas von der Nachtseite heutiger Fun-&-Fashion-Nächte erahnen.

Weinen der ungeweinten Tränen
Man könnte freilich gewisse unreflektierte Übernahmen von Topoi des Dokumentarfilms kritisieren: der banale physiognomische Sinn-Ballast, der den faltigen Gesichtszügen aufgebürdet wird, und als Sinnbilder der zerronnenen Zeit tickende Uhren an der Wand und zitternde Hände, vergilbte Fotoalben, Aufnahmen aus dem fahrenden Zug - doch für einmal führen die Geleise wirklich zurück als Spuren der Erinnerung. Und vielleicht wird erst zur Erinnerung, was geteilt, dem allgemeinen Gedächtnis mitgeteilt wird, angesprochen vor der Kamera als Augenzeugen: Ein heute 93-Jähriger kehrte aus dem Lager zurück und wagte es - aus Scham - nicht, seiner Mutter etwas vom Geschehenen zu erzählen; all die anderen wollten «von dem alten Kram» nichts mehr hören - vergessen, dass auch ihre Gesichter sich, die Wochenschaubilder zeigen es, entzückt am Anblick des Führers betranken. Jetzt erzählt er seine Geschichte, zum ersten Mal in seinem Leben . . .

Gefragt, ob es nicht jemand gegeben habe, dem er all dies damals gerne erzählt hätte, als es noch Zeit gewesen wäre, verneint er. Nachgefragt, beginnt sein Kinn zu zittern, die Hand fährt zum Schutz und Halt ins Gesicht; ja doch: seinem Vater. Aber der war schon tot bei seiner Rückkehr. Das Gesicht bricht in sich zusammen, er weint die ungeweinten Tränen vergangener Tage, er verliert sein Gesicht, verzittert und verwittert, aber er gewinnt seine mit Füssen getretene Würde zurück. Sein Ausdruck: wach im Schmerz und klar in der Haltung. Damals wie heute. Nicht einfach ein weiterer Dokumentarfilm, ein Dokument. In hallenden Räumen singt noch immer der Wald, in den uns die fünf Zeitzeugen zurückführen und wo uns noch heute die Stimme und der Atem stockt."

di Daniele Scalise, 06.07.2001, L'Espresso Online

"Il paragrafo 175 del Codice penale germanico del 1871 parlava chiaro: «Un atto sessuale innaturale tra persone di sesso maschile o tra esseri umani e animali è punibile con la prigione. E’ prevista anche la perdita dei diritti civili». Poche parole burocratiche e brutali che hanno crocefisso migliaia di omosessuali. E fino al 1969 quella legge è rimasta nella giurisprudenza tedesca continuando a mietere vittime. Nessuno (o quasi) ha mai parlato di loro. E’ una pagina troppo vergognosa e rimossa per essere riaperta. In Germania ma anche altrove.

Qualcuno però ha cominciato a indagare. A cercare gli scampati. A porre e a porsi domande laceranti. Ci sono memorie dolorose che non possono attendere, che non si possono sotterrare. Nemmeno d’estate. Klaus Müller è un uomo gentile, gli occhialetti incorniciano uno sguardo leggero e insieme profondo. Tedesco di origine, storico e produttore cinematografico, vive da anni in Olanda dove lavora come ricercatore per Holocaust Memorial Museum di Washington. Klaus Müller è anche tra gli ideatori e i produttori di “Paragrafo 175”, uno straordinario documentario che ha raccolto premi e riconoscimenti ogni volta che è stato mostrato in pubblico: al Sundance Film Festival, al Festival di Berlino, al Festival di Film con tematiche omosessuali di Torino e di Milano... C’è un timore che è quasi una certezza: “Paragrafo 175” non lo vedremo mai sui nostri teleschermi. Racconta le testimonianze di uomini sopravvissuti a quella tragedia. E’ stato Klaus che li ha scovati e intervistati. A lui chiediamo di ricordarci cosa è stato quell’olocausto gay.

La persecuzione nazista contro gli omosessuali è ormai un dato storico accertato ma ancora non si riesce a capire quanti furono gli omosessuali richiusi nei lager nazisti. E' possibile stabilire una cifra realistica?

«Tra il 1933 e il 1945 circa centomila uomini furono arrestati in quanto omosessuali. Circa la metà di loro furono condannati e rinchiusi in prigione. Un numero minore – si stima tra i dieci e i quindicimila – furono dichiarati omosessuali e inviati in campi di concentramento o, dopo aver scontato una pena in galera, trasferiti in campi sotto la cosiddetta ‘custodia protettiva’. Si stima che il 60 per cento di loro non sopravvisse».

Quali erano le caratteristiche della persecuzione contro i gay durante il nazismo? Come era possibile identificare con certezza un omosessuale?

«Dopo che Hitler prese il potere, sia la Gestapo che le SS fecero pressioni per estendere il vecchio e ‘inefficiente’ paragrafo 175 della legge contro la sodomia in modo che non fosse più necessario addurre delle prove. L’omosessualità, sostenevano, non era solo una delitto criminale ma un pericolo per il futuro della razza ariana. Heinrich Himmler vedeva nei maschi omosessuali un pericolo per la crescita del popolo tedesco e il partito nazista aveva quindi incorporato le leggi anti-gay nella propria ideologia di igiene razziale e di politica sulla popolazione. Nel 1935, lo stesso anno in cui furono pubblicate le leggi di Norimberga, il paragrafo 175 rivisto divenne legge effettiva. La sola ipotesi di un’intenzione omosessuale divenne motivo per l’arresto e il numero di uomini gay condannati crebbe immediatamente. I cambiamenti legali non sorpresero nessuno. Già da metà degli anni ’20 i nazisti avevano detto esplicitamente che nel futuro Reich ariano non ci sarebbe stato posto per gli omosessuali. Nel 1936 venne costituito un Ufficio di sicurezza federale per combattere l’aborto e l’omosessualità che stabilì una stretta connessione tra la politica nazionalsocialista sulla popolazione, le idee sul miglioramento della razza e l’omofobia. Dopo il 1939 le misure naziste contro gli omosessuali sospettati divennero ancora più radicali. Grazie ad una serie di ordini impartiti da Himmler, la castrazione venne sempre più vista come una possibile soluzione medica per il problema omosessuale. Nel 1943 un progetto di legge propose la castrazione per gli ‘elementi asociali’, ivi inclusi gli omosessuali. Solo il sempre maggior impegno nel conflitto bellico non rese effettivo quel progetto di legge».

Erano perseguitate anche le donne?

«Tutti gli uomini gay e le donne lesbiche furono colpiti dall’ideologia nazista antigay nelle sue differenti applicazioni. La distruzione della primigenia cultura lesbica e gay che s’era sviluppata a Berlino negli anni ’20 e la conseguente frantumazione delle organizzazioni, isolò di nuovo gli uomini gay e le lesbiche che persero un punto di riferimento collettivo a cui fare riferimento. Gli uomini gay vennero minacciati da una persecuzione statalizzata secondo la versione nazista del paragrafo 175. Un numero incredibile di esistenze furono colpite sia dal punto di vista fisico che da quello emotivo. Le lesbiche raramente venivano perseguitate direttamente in quanto tali. Gli apparti delle SS e della Gestapo si erano concentrati sulla persecuzione dell’omosessualità maschile che era criminalizzata dal paragrafo 175 della legge contro la sodomia. Siamo a conoscenza solo di pochi casi di donne deportate nei campi in quanto lesbiche. La loro posizione fu tuttavia condizionata dal fatto che l’ideologia familista e sessista dei nazisti dipingeva le donne come vessilli della riproduzione. Di nuovo dovettero ritirarsi nello stretto privato. La storia di questa perdita non è stata ancora scritta perché tutti noi ci siamo più concentrati sulle peggiori conseguenze delle misure antigay dei nazisti: l’arresto e la deportazione nei campi di concentramento».

Dove venivano portati gli omosessuali? Cosa succedeva loro? Erano destinati allo sterminio come gli ebrei o il regime si accontentava di chiuderli in un campo?

«Nella gerarchia del campo, gli uomini con il triangolo rosa – il segno di riconoscimento nazista destinato ai prigionieri ritenuti omosessuali – erano sottoposti alle stesse condizioni inumane di tutti gli altri prigionieri: estrema violenza delle guardie, fame, malattie, lavoro schiavizzato. Quel segno di riconoscimento, tuttavia, li isolava e li metteva a rischio in un modo particolare. Le famiglie spesso non osavano scrivere loro o si vergognavano dei propri figli. I loro compagni di prigionia evitavano qualsiasi contatto per non apparire a loro volta omosessuali o semplicemente condividevano i pregiudizi generali contro gli omosessuali. All’interno del campo fu del tutto impossibile creare un’auto-organizzazione collettiva dei prigionieri omosessuali, come per esempio succedeva ai prigionieri politici o ai cosiddetti comuni. Come risultato gli internati omosessuali non potevano contare su una rete di sostegno all’interno del campo. Venivano spesso messi in speciali squadre per il lavoro schiavizzato come a Neuengamme, Buchenwald o Nordhausen».

Ne morirono molti?

«Si ritiene che la percentuale dei decessi in confronto a quella di altri piccoli gruppi di vittime (prigionieri politici, testimoni di Geova) toccasse il 60 per cento. Dalle testimonianze di altri prigionieri sappiamo che gli uomini con il triangolo rosa venivano spesso trattati con una particolare brutalità dalle altre guardie. La stragrande maggioranza degli uomini omosessuali furono incarcerati nei campi di concentramento tedeschi e austriaci mentre solo pochi – per quanto ne sappiamo finora – furono mandati nei campi di sterminio dell’Est. Voglio dire insomma che essi, a differenza degli ebrei e degli zingari, non vennero selezionati per essere uccisi nei campi di sterminio dell’Est».

Chi si occupa di conservare la memoria di quella tragedia?

«Lavoro con i sopravvissuti gay dall’inizio degli anni ’90. Quando avvicinai i produttori americani e proposi loro di fare un documentario sui sopravvisuti gay, il mio scopo era proprio quello di rendere visibile quella storia invisibile e dare un volto agli uomini con il triangolo rosa. Dopo il 1945, i sopravvisuti gay venivano visti come criminali o pervertiti. Il paragrafo 175 della legge nazista contro la sodomia rimase nel codice della Germania dell’Ovest fino al 1968 e fino ad oggi nessun sopravvissuto gay ha ricevuto un risarcimento dal governo tedesco. Negli anni ’50 e ’60, la polizia tedesca continuò a perquisire i luoghi di incontro gay. Il numero degli omosessuali arrestati e condannati fu quasi come quello della Germania nazista. I sopravvissuti gay, se venivano arrestati di nuovo, erano considerati recidivi. Per un tempo lunghissimo, né gli Alleati né il governo tedesco percepì la persecuzione nazista degli omosessuali come un’ingiustizia. Solo negli ultimi anni alcuni musei hanno cominciato a dare alcune informazioni aggiuntive durante le loro manifestazioni. L’Holocaust Memorial Museum di Washington ha svolto un ruolo fondamentale in questo e molte notizie possono essere trovate nel sito web del museo stesso. Il museo mi ha assunto nel 1992 per cercare materiali relativi ai gay e per lavorare in questo campo».

I gay americani sembrano interessarsi molto alla storia della propria comunità. E gli italiani?

«In effetti negli Stati Uniti la comunità gay e lesbica è sempre di più in cerca della propria storia, e il triangolo rosa è una parte importante di questa storia. In Italia, un piccolo gruppo di storici sta cercando di documentare la persecuzione degli uomini omosessuali sotto Mussolini ma la legislatura italiana sulla privacy rende pressoché impossibile il lavoro di documentazione storica. In questo momento lavoro con un gruppo – la Pink Triangle Coalition – che spera di ottenere dei finanziamenti consistenti per fare ricerca».

Quando sarà possibile secondo lei vedere 'Paragrafo 175' in Italia?

«Il film è stato proiettato ai Film Festival Gay di Torino e Milano e in entrambi i casi ha vinto il premio come miglior documentario, cosa di cui noi siamo molto grati. A luglio il film andrà in onda sulla tv americana e naturalmente speriamo che anche la tv italiana possa fare altrettanto»."

¤ Carlos Bonfil ¤

"Artículo 175

Los directores Rob Epstein y Jeffrey Friedman realizan desde hace 13 años una notable labor de rescate historiográfico en el cine, con un tema predominante: la experiencia homosexual. Sus documentales, de carácter testimonial, aprovechan con astucia materiales de archivo cuidadosamente seleccionados, desde Common threads: stories from the quilt -acerca de la manta conmemorativa para los muertos por sida- hasta Artículo 175 (Paragraph 175), sobre la persecución de homosexuales en Alemania durante el régimen nazi y 14 años más después de su caída. Entre estas dos realizaciones destaca una más, mejor conocida, El clóset de celuloide (The celluloid closet, 1995), revisión divertida y oportuna de la presencia gay en Hollywood, desde el cine mudo hasta nuestros días, basada en el libro homónimo del historiador de cine Vito Russo.

El título del documental más reciente alude a una ley discriminatoria vigente en Alemania de 1871 a 1969, casi un siglo, y tenazmente combatida por el sexólogo libertario Magnus Hirschfeld en los años veinte, bajo la república de Weimar. El artículo 175 del Código Penal alemán ordenaba: ''Todo acto sexual no-natural entre dos personas de sexo masculino, o entre humanos y animales, es susceptible de ser castigado con cárcel, e incluso con la pérdida de todos los derechos civiles". A partir de 1933, la interpretación nazi añadiría la deportación a campos de concentración, el escarnio público, la obligación de portar visible un triángulo rosa (como el judío debía portar uno amarillo, y uno rojo el disidente comunista), y por fin el exterminio. Durante la guerra fueron así arrestadas por su orientación sexual cien mil personas; la mitad sufrió prisión y, entre 10 y 15 mil, incluidas en la ''solución final".

Epstein y Friedman rescatan testimonios de sobrevivientes homosexuales, con la colaboración del Klaus Müller, del Museo del Holocausto en Washington, quien entrevista a estos hombres nonagenarios para reconstruir, sin conmiseración ni sensacionalismo, esta historia de infamia, en apariencia vieja; en rigor, continuamente actualizada por el fundamentalismo moral y la jerarquía eclesiástica.

Ningún reconocimiento oficial a estas víctimas del nazismo, ningún monumento ni un acto de contrición papal por la promoción del odio contra las minorías sexuales. La importancia de Artículo 175 radica justamente en señalar la persistencia de la homofobia después del nazismo y (añadiríamos) del totalitarismo soviético. Con una factura impecable, el documental describe, con buen acompañamiento musical y buenas imágenes de archivo, la efervescencia cultural y la libertad sexual durante los años veinte en Alemania; viene luego el periodo de terror, con la depuración en los altos círculos nazis y la persecución de las minorías; sigue el testimonio de las víctimas, las cuales, de manera sorpresiva, tienen el vigor y humor necesario para reivindicar su preferencia sexual a pesar del horror experimentado. Algo notable: en sus palabras ha quedado desterrado cualquier sentimiento de culpa. Hay frustración, mutismo, franca rebeldía o alguna confidencia salaz e insólita.

La reflexión final es responsabilidad del público. ¿Hasta qué punto compartimos todavía las actitudes de discriminación y desprecio que originaron un artículo como el 175, y que hoy mantienen vigentes tantas otras leyes y reglamentos de inspiración semejante?"

By Tim Teeman

"FORGOTTEN VICTIMS OF THE HOLOCAUST

While interned at Schirmeck concentration camp, Pierre Seel, then 17, was forced to build crematoria, raped by officers with broken rulers and used as a human dart board with syringes thrown by camp orderlies. After the war he was allowed back into his family only under the condition that he never reveal the true circumstances of his original arrest. He entered a marriage of convenience and eventually became suicidal.

Today, aged 76, Pierre continues to struggle for official recognition of the persecution suffered by homosexual men under the Nazis. He remembers his best friend dying in Schirmeck after guards set a pack of German Shepherd dogs on him. Of his own experience, he rages: "I was arrested, tortured and beaten. There was no trial. I was sodomised, raped. I can't forget. I'm ashamed for humanity. Ashamed."

There are about ten known gay survivors of the concentration camps. Their stories receive a first and long overdue airing on a Channel 4 documentary, Pink Triangle, this weekend. It is almost impossibly moving: some men have not spoken about their experiences before. For many years they were hidden from history; unlike other victims of Nazi persecution they are not entitled to compensation, reparation or any form of legal redress.

The end of the war in 1945 had hardly brought liberation for gay men; it was only in 1969 that Paragraph 175 of the German Penal Code outlawing homosexuality was finally repealed in West Germany. Only earlier this year were homosexual victims of the Holocaust officially recognised for the first time at a memorial service held at what was Sachsenhausen concentration camp.

Historian Dr Klaus Mueller, who has traced the survivors, says: "Many of the gay men who were taken to the camps died within a couple of days. Marked with a pink triangle, they were the lowest of the low, there was no support network as there was for political or Jewish prisoners. They were put into slave-labour squads, subjected to torture and some to terrible medical experimentation.

"At Buchenwald there was a doctor who tried to change them by instituting a particular gland. The operations were crude. Many died as a result of botched surgery. Others were beaten to death, drowned headfirst in water, hung by their arms till they were dead. Some were castrated . . . really, the worst you can imagine."

One man remembers the "singing forest" outside his concentration camp. That is, there was a sequence of concrete poles on which all those waiting to be sentenced were hung - "their screeching, howling and screaming was inhuman - the singing forest. It's beyond human comprehension. So much remains untold".

Heinz F. - almost 93, dapper, besuited, with a luminous face - weeps as he tells his story for the first time. He remembers the hedonistic pleasures of Weimar Germany, the Berlin gay clubs of the Twenties and Thirties. He met Magnus Hirschfeld, whose Hirschfeld Institute was one of the world's first gay-rights organisations. He eventually settled in Munich where a sub-lieutenant of Ernst Roehm - the homosexual head of the SA [a.k.a. Storm Troops], Hitler's "backroom muscle" which crushed dissent on the streets in the early days of Nazi rule - tried to recruit him for the force. Heinz turned him down.

In 1935 someone in his circle of friends was arrested. Under pressure from the Gestapo, the man revealed the names of about 20 other homosexuals. Heinz was working in his family's store when he was called by the local police to go down to the station. Unsuspecting, he went. Without a trial, he was sent to the Dachau concentration camp.

Thus began a series of arrests and imprisonment that would take Heinz to numerous prisons and concentration camps over nearly nine years. At Buchenwald he met many other homosexuals, including several Jews who were also forced to wear the pink triangle.

These "multiply persecuted" men had even less chance to survive the camps. Heinz remembers a homosexual Gypsy who, at 24, committed suicide by letting himself be shot while "trying to escape" from the quarry. "They were harnessed, pulling rocks, those poor people," he says, eyes glistening. "The older people were always praying."

The war ended when Heinz was 40 and he went home. His father had died and no one asked him a single question about his years of captivity. "My mother never said anything. She didn't want to make it harder on me. I've never talked about it." When asked if there was anyone he wanted to talk to about it, he convulses with grief. "My father," he weeps.

Dr Mueller, who is the project director of the United States Holocaust Museum in Western Europe, began to trace the few homosexual survivors six years ago.

"What they've all experienced is a lack of support - most of them are very isolated. The memories of torture don't go away, the fact they were still criminals after the end of the war, that many families told them to keep quiet about why they were sent to the camps. Some committed suicide after being rearrested at the end of the war. Most of the men I've contacted have managed to live with the anger, disappointment and terrible memories, though at a huge cost."

Threaded between the men's stories is an intriguing examination of the influence of homosexuality in the course of Nazi Party history itself. Roehm, for example, was known to be gay, leading Hitler to issue a statement supporting him, though not by name, in 1932: "Private life cannot be an object of scrutiny unless it is in conflict with the basic principles of National Socialist ideology."

In February 1933 the Nazis ordered the closure of all gay bars and clubs (and ten days afterwards, a nationwide boycott of Jewish businesses); in May the Hirschfeld Institute was burnt to the ground. At the same time, the Nazis were caricatured as homosexuals in the press; cartoons show Party generals inspecting a parade of backsides on parade.

Heinrich Himmler, the head of the SS, issued a statement in 1933, claiming 7 to 8 per cent of German men were gay (lesbians were rendered invisible because Nazis saw women as simply baby carriers). "If that is how things remain, our nation will fall apart because of that plague. Those who practise homosexuality deprive Germany of the children they owe her." On June 30, 1934, Roehm was murdered in "The Night of the Long Knives"; Hitler then cited his homosexuality as justification. On the anniversary of his death, Hitler sanctioned the extension of Paragraph 175 - which had been on the statute books since 1871 - to include arrest not just on the grounds of homosexual behaviour, but also gossip, innuendo, gestures, touches, looks. Prison, concentration camp or voluntary castration followed.

Gad Beck's story is as positive as any of the survivors can be. He had his first sexual experience at school, seducing a teacher, and gladly told his mother about it. Hardly surprised, his parents accepted his homosexuality. In 1941 Gad, then 18, joined "Chug Chaluzi", a Jewish resistance group. The group organised hiding locations, food, and care for Jews in the Berlin underground. In 1942 Gad tried to liberate his first love, Manfred, from Gestapo transfer camp by posing as a Hitler Youth member. His dangerous charade was successful.

"After 20 yards I gave him 20 marks and told him I'd meet him at my uncle's. He replied very calmly: 'I can't go with you, Gad. I cannot leave my family. I am the only strong one.' He turned around, he didn't say goodbye. I went in the opposite direction. I never saw him again."

Movingly, Gad also remembers spending a night with a "beautiful blond Jew. He invited me to spend the night. We sat on the bed, played chess, did a bit of the other. We slept a couple of hours. The Gestapo came in the morning. They took him and his mother to Auschwitz. It happened to many others I knew who never reappeared." He pauses. "Love. A night of love." In 1944, Gad became head of his resistance group, but was imprisoned when the group was betrayed. After the war Gad went to Munich and worked with David Ben-Gurion, who became the first Prime Minister of Israel, in the Displaced Persons' camps, counting survivors and preparing them for emigration to Palestine. Gad emigrated to Israel in 1947 together with his lover. In the 1980s and 1990s he became more open about his homosexuality and has given many presentations in Europe and the US.

If these are the stories of ten men, what of the others? The Nazis arrested 100,000 men on suspicion of homosexual behaviour. More than half were convicted, of whom 10,000 to 15,000 were sent to concentration camps. Two thirds of them are believed to have died while there. The others, who when released were still criminalised, retreated into silence.

Of his work in bringing their stories to public attention, Dr. Mueller, 39, says: "I am gay myself and German. I am thankful to talk to the survivors because it is better to deal with a horrible past head-on, rather than not understand because of a lack of information."

He adds that most of these "sweet, strong people" do not want to talk: they are old, the memories are too painful and they want to be left alone. Their quiet heroism, however, is clear.

Bernhard - arrested in 1937, imprisoned without trial, castrated, survived death camp - now boasts that he is "stronger than Hitler".

Heinz F. smiles determinedly: "Only now I talk. I'll be 93 in September. Thick-skinned, no?" And his lip trembles again. His eyes, distant, looking somewhere off-camera, reveal that he is thinking of something else much darker."