LGBTQ – History of Sorts

A Warning from the Past

I have done similar posts before, but I do think it is extremely important that people understand this. The Holocaust didn’t start with the killing of Jews and other groups, it started with the actions of well-educated people. It started with something we call nowadays cancel culture.

On this day, 90 years ago. university students in 34 university towns across Germany burned over 25,000 books. The works of Jewish authors like Albert Einstein and Sigmund Freud went up in flames alongside blacklisted American authors such as Ernest Hemingway and Helen Keller, while students gave the Nazi salute.

Four days previously, on 6 May 1933, the Institute of Sexology, an academic foundation devoted to sexological research and the advocacy of homosexual rights, was broken into and occupied by Nazi-supporting youth. Several days later the entire contents of the library were removed and burned.

It is presumed that Dora Richter was killed in the attack, the first known person to undergo complete male-to-female gender reassignment surgery, although it is possible she was arrested and died in custody. It’s not known just how many people were murdered after the institute’s records fell into the hands of the Gestapo and the police.

Dr Wolfgang Herrmann had created a black list of those books that should be removed from bookstores and libraries, List 1: Fiction and List 2: Politics and Political Science. At the same time, there were indications for books whose purchase is recommended. On 1 May 1933, Herrmann forwarded the selection list to the National Socialist German student body in order to direct the plundering of the stocks of libraries, lending libraries and scientific institutions in the campaign, “Against the un-German spirit.”

Surprisingly it also included works from Waldemar Bonsels: everything except Maya the Bee, heavenly people, and journey to India. Bonsels was an outspoken anti-semite and expressed his approval of Nazi politics against Jews in 1933, calling the Jew—a deadly enemy, who was poisoning the culture in an article (NSDAP und Judentum) which was widely published.

The lists were published in several newspapers and magazines at the beginning of May 1933. They contained summaries of four anthologies and 130 authors. Some exceptions were noted if only certain works of a writer were affected. The list was submitted to the Ministry of Propaganda but was never officially approved.

students burned upwards of 25,000 volumes of “un-German” books in the square at the State Opera, Berlin, thereby presaging an era of uncompromising state censorship. In many other university towns, nationalist students marched in torch-lit parades against the “un-German” spirit. The scripted rituals of this night called for high Nazi officials, professors, rectors, and student leaders to address the participants and spectators. At the meeting places, students threw the pillaged, banned books into the bonfires with a great joyous ceremony that included live music, singing, “fire oaths,” and incantations. In Berlin, some 40,000 people heard Joseph Goebbels deliver an address: “No to decadence and moral corruption!” Goebbels enjoined the crowd.

“Yes to decency and morality in family and state! I consign to the flames the writings of Heinrich Mann, Ernst Glaeser, and Erich Kästner. The era of extreme Jewish intellectualism is now at an end. The breakthrough of the German revolution has again cleared the way on the German path…The future German man will not just be a man of books, but a man of character. It is to this end that we want to educate you. As a young person, to already have the courage to face the pitiless glare, to overcome the fear of death, and to regain respect for death – this is the task of this young generation. And thus you do well in this midnight hour to commit to the flames of the evil spirit of the past. This is a strong, great and symbolic deed – a deed which should document the following for the world to know – Here the intellectual foundation of the November Republic is sinking to the ground, but from this wreckage, the phoenix of a new spirit will triumphantly rise.”

On April 8, 1933, the Main Office for Press and Propaganda of the German Student Union (DSt) . had already announced a nationwide “Action against the Un-German Spirit”, which was to climax in a literary purge or “cleansing” (“Säuberung”) by fire. On the same day, the student union published ‘The Twelve Thesis’

Against the un-German spirit!

Language and literature have their roots in the Folk. It is the German Folk’s responsibility to assure that its language and literature are the pure and unadulterated expression of its Folk traditions.
At present there is a chasm between literature and German tradition. This situation is a disgrace.
The purity of language and literature is your responsibility! Your Folk has entrusted you with the duty of faithfully preserving your language.
Our most dangerous enemy is the Jew and those who are his slaves.
A Jew can only think Jewish. If he writes in German, he is lying. The German who writes in German, but thinks un-German, is a traitor! The student who speaks and writes un-German is, in addition, thoughtless and has abandoned his duties.
We want to eradicate lies, we want to denounce treason, and we want institutions of discipline and political education for us the students, not mindlessness.
We want to regard the Jew as alien and we want to respect the traditions of the Folk.

Therefore, we demand the censor:
Jewish writings are to be published in Hebrew.
If they appear in German, they must be identified as translations.
Strongest actions against the abuse of the German script.
German script is only available to Germans.
The un-German spirit is to be eradicated from public libraries.

We demand the German students the desire and capability for independent knowledge and decisions.
We demand German students have the desire and capability to maintain the purity of the German language.
We demand German students have the desire and capability to overcome Jewish intellectualism and the resulting liberal decay in the German spirit.
We demand the selection of students and professors in accordance with their reliability and commitment to the German spirit.
We demand that German universities be a stronghold of the German Folk tradition and a battleground reflecting the power of the German mind.

The German Student Association.

These are just some names of authors whose books were burned that day 90 years ago.

Vicki Baum, Walter Benjamin, Ernst Bloch, Franz Boas, Albert Einstein, Friedrich Engels, Etta Federn, Lion Feuchtwanger, Marieluise Fleißer, Leonhard Frank, Sigmund Freud, Iwan Goll, Jaroslav Hašek, Werner Hegemann, Hermann Hesse, Ödön von Horvath, Heinrich Eduard Jacob, Franz Kafka, Georg Kaiser, Alfred Kerr, Egon Kisch, Siegfried Kracauer, Theodor Lessing, Alexander Lernet-Holenia, Karl Liebknecht, Georg Lukács, Rosa Luxemburg, Klaus Mann, Ludwig Marcuse, Karl Marx, Robert Musil, Carl von Ossietzky, Erwin Piscator, Alfred Polgar, Gertrud von Puttkamer, Erich Maria Remarque,Ludwig Renn, Joachim Ringelnatz, Joseph Roth, Nelly Sachs, Felix Salten,[16] Anna Seghers, Abraham Nahum Stencl, Carl Sternheim, Bertha von Suttner, Ernst Toller, Frank Wedekind, Franz Werfel, Grete Weiskopf, and Arnold Zweig.

Not only were German-speaking authors’ books burnt, but also French authors such as Henri Barbusse, André Gide, Victor Hugo and Romain Rolland; American writers such as John Dos Passos, Theodore Dreiser, F. Scott Fitzgerald, Ernest Hemingway, Helen Keller, Jack London, Upton Sinclair, and Margaret Sanger; as well as British authors Joseph Conrad, Radclyffe Hall, Aldous Huxley, D. H. Lawrence, Henry de Vere Stacpoole, H.G. Wells, Irish authors James Joyce and Oscar Wilde; and Russian authors including Isaac Babel, Fyodor Dostoyevsky, Ilya Ehrenburg, Maxim Gorki, Vladimir Lenin, Vladimir Mayakovsky, Vladimir Nabokov, Leo Tolstoy, and Leon Trotsky.

What really concerns me is that 90 years on and people are talking about banning books again, and also cancelling other cultural media. Free speech is important, if you don’t like what you read or hear, you don’t cancel it, you fight your corner with persuasion.

If you limit education, you will breed ignorance and indifference, throw in hate, and you have three main pillars to create a genocide.

sources

https://www.attitude.co.uk/culture/sexuality/the-incredible-story-of-the-first-known-trans-woman-to-undergo-gender-confirmation-surgery-304097/

https://www.berlin.de/berlin-im-ueberblick/geschichte/berlin-im-nationalsozialismus/verbannte-buecher/artikel.500549.php

https://www.goodreads.com/list/show/101688.Books_Banned_by_Nazis

https://www.theguardian.com/books/2023/may/10/nazi-book-burnings-in-germany-may-1933

https://www.museumoftolerance.com/education/archives-and-reference-library/online-resources/simon-wiesenthal-center-annual-volume-2/annual-2-chapter-5.html

https://encyclopedia.ushmm.org/content/en/article/university-student-groups-in-nazi-germany

https://www.pbs.org/wgbh/americanexperience/features/goebbels-burnings/

https://encyclopedia.ushmm.org/content/en/article/book-burning

Fredy Hirsch—Holocaust Hero

Heroes don’t always wear capes, or are dressed in uniforms, sometimes they are just ordinary people. I say ordinary but more often than not they are anything but ordinary, as was the case with Fredy Hirsch.

I first heard of Fredy a few years ago. I got the book, The Librarian of Auschwitz, as a birthday gift. Although it is based on the story of Dita Kraus, Fredy features prominently in the book.

Alfred Hirsch, known as Fredy, was born in Aachen, Germany on 11 February 1916. In Aachen, he began his career as a teacher and educator in various Jewish youth organizations. An enthusiastic and talented athlete, Fredy also
worked with Jewish sports associations. After the Nazis came to power in Germany, he fled to Czechoslovakia, where he believed he would be safe.

In October 1939, after having moved to Prague, Hirsch helped a group of kids he had been working with go to Denmark for pre-aliyah training(Pronounced: a-LEE-yuh for synagogue use, ah-lee-YAH for immigration to Israel, Origin: Hebrew, literally, “to go up.” This can mean the honour of saying a blessing before and after the Torah reading during a worship service, or immigrating to Israel). They later went to Israel.

Following the Nazi conquest of Czechoslovakia in March 1939, strict restrictions were placed on the country’s Jews. Despite this, Hirsch continued his work with children, organizing sports activities, camping trips and study groups.

When he was deported to Theresienstadt in December 1941, Fredy organized activities for the children there. He set up games, including soccer and track and field events, in the grassy areas of the camp.

Fredy was described as athletic, attractive, and extremely caring. He made sure that the children kept themselves as clean as possible despite the lack of hot water and soap, even running cleanliness competitions.
Survivors remember him as a kind and reassuring presence to the children.

“Every group had a counsellor, and above all the counsellors—was Fredy. Fredy was admired by everyone” Dita Kraus, Auschwitz survivor who knew Hirsch from Prague and Theresienstadt.

Fredy Hirsch arrived in Terezín on 4 December 1941 as part of a team called the Aufbaukommando II, consisting of Hirsch and 22 other employees of the Jewish community who had been given the task of organising life in the newly-created ghetto. From the start of the ghetto’s existence, special rooms were created for children, who lived apart from their parents. Later they were transformed into the heims [homes] around 11 children’s houses where several carers and teachers devoted themselves to the children’s semi-legal education. Fredy Hirsch, Egon Redlich and Bedřich Prager were in charge of looking after the young people. Hirsch and the other carers tried to improve the living conditions of the children in the ghetto in whatever way they could. Hirsch insisted that the children must exercise every day and pay attention to personal hygiene to maintain their psychological and physical condition, for in this lay their only hope of survival. The fact that Hirsch came from Germany, and his self-confident manner, meant that some SS members had a certain degree of respect for him. He thus managed to gain space for a playground, where in May 1943, the Terezín Maccabi Games took place.

The Maccabiah Games (a.k.a. the World Maccabiah Games; Hebrew: משחקי המכביה, or משחקי המכביה העולמית; sometimes referred to as the Jewish Olympics), was first held in 1932, are an international Jewish and Israeli multi-sport event held quadrennially in Israel.

Fredy Hirsch also gained the ability to have individuals taken off the planned transports to the east, and often made use of this to benefit children. When a group of 1,200 children from the recently liquidated Bialystok ghetto arrived in August 1943, Hirsch went to see them in defiance of German orders to stay away. He was caught and his connections did not prevent him from being sent to Auschwitz-Birkenau in transport along with 5,006 other people before the visit of representatives from the International Red Cross.

Unlike most arrivals to Auschwitz, Hirsch’s group did not have to go through the selection process and was instead moved to a newly built family camp. (BIIb)

BIIb (Theresienstadt family camp) highlighted in an RAF aerial photograph

They also did not have to wear uniforms or have their heads shaved. Men and women were allowed to interact and the group was allowed to receive packages from relatives. Hirsch took responsibility for the 274 children under 14 years of age from his transport, and another 353 who came later.

The children slept with their mothers, fathers or counsellors and during the day, were brought to a building Hirsch convinced the SS to set aside for them. The children’s block was under the supervision of Josef Mengele.

Hirsch once again organized classes, scout activities, plays and physical fitness courses. Two artists drew cheerful pictures that were put on the walls. He forbade counsellors from talking about the gas chambers and crematoria and his insistence on maintaining hygiene was critical to the survival of children, especially as adults began to die from the disease. Hirsch again made friends with guards who allowed the children to receive better food and to stay indoors for twice-daily roll calls.

Children in the block had secret, improvised lessons, taught in small groups according to age. If an SS patrol was approaching, the lessons quickly turned into games, or the children started to sing German songs, which were allowed. For the carers, too, working in the children’s block had a certain advantage: an intellectual environment, and under a roof too, which made it easier for them to keep themselves in relatively good psychological and physical condition. The teachers would tell the children the content of books that they remembered. They taught them geography and history, played games with them, and sang with them. In late 1943 and early 1944, the children also rehearsed and performed a production of Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs. It was attended by SS men, including Dr Mengele, who applauded the children enthusiastically, had them sit on his knee and asked them to call him Uncle.

As the September transport neared the end of its six-month quarantine period towards the end of February 1944, members of the camp’s resistance movement contacted Fredy Hirsch. They knew that the word Sonderbehandlung, written on the identity card of each prisoner in the family camp, actually meant death in the gas chamber. In Fredy Hirsch, who enjoyed natural authority among the prisoners, they saw a potential leader of the planned uprising. Hirsch found himself facing a difficult decision: a rebellion would mean the chance to kill several SS men and a slim chance of possible escape for a handful of prisoners, but also certain death for the great majority of prisoners in the family camp, and without a doubt, certain death for all the children. On the morning of 8 March, he discussed the issue again with Rudolf Vrba, who was connected to the Auschwitz resistance movement. Vrba visited him and told him there was no doubt that the whole transport was heading for the gas chambers. Hirsch asked for an hour to decide. An hour later, Vrba found him unconscious. A doctor stated that he had taken an overdose of tranquillizers. That evening, Fredy Hirsch’s body was burned in the Birkenau crematorium, together with the remains of the 3,792 murdered prisoners of the Terezín family camp.

There is still speculation as to what happened in the final minutes of his life. It is not entirely clear how he managed to obtain a fatal dose of medicine, nor whether it was truly suicide. Before his death, Hirsch appointed his successors as the heads of the children’s block—Seppl Lichtenstern and Jan Brammer.

In Rubi Gat’s 2017 documentary, Dear Fredy, the subject of Hirsch’s sexuality comes up as early as the film’s first two minutes, in an animated segment in which we are told, “Hirsch couldn’t fall in love. That was the gossip in the ghetto.” And it is raised again in questions asked of the interviewees. In an interview by Dr Michal Aharony, Gat, who is himself gay, and lives with his partner and their three children, was asked why he put such an emphasis on Hirsch’s sexual orientation. “It’s part of who he was,” Gat said. “I tried to tell his story without omissions or prettifying things. He didn’t hide it, so I’m certainly not going to hide it.”

Indeed, it was well-known in Prague that Hirsch was gay. Nor did he hide it at Theresienstadt, Terezin in Czechoslovakia, or Auschwitz. “We’d heard that Fredy was gay,” Kraus told me in an interview, “but we didn’t care about that at all. It wasn’t an issue anywhere.”

Unfortunately, it was an issue in the city of Harish in Israel.

They had set a location and date, Thursday, 26 January, the evening before the start of International Holocaust Remembrance Day—and Gat had even approved promotional materials for the event.

Suddenly, ten days before the event, the head of Harish’s youth services called Gat and told him they had to call off the event. During the call, which Gat recorded, she told him that it was because of a fuss within the municipality, that there had been “explosions” between different officials in city hall. She explained that the cancellation of his screening was part of a broad cancellation of LGBTQ-focused events in the city due to opposition from Haredi leaders. “There’s a crisis about the [LGBTQ] program in general because we’re a mixed city and it’s a new program and a new city,” she told Gat, referring to the secular and religious communities that share the city.