A young Willem Arondeus in his flat in Blaricum, the Netherlands. During the war, Arondeus led a gay resistance group in Amsterdam responsible for bombing the Amsterdam Population Registry offices in an effort to destroy government records of Jews and others sought by the Nazis. As a result, Arondeus was executed in 1943. United States Holocaust Memorial Museum #21533
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Admission is free for all programs, but reservations are required. Call 202.488.0407.
In the years following World War II, the history of Nazi persecution of homosexuals was almost entirely unknown, shrouded by the social taboos that prevailed in both North America and Europe. For example, in the Federal Republic of Germany (West Germany), the Nazi penal code regarding restrictions on homosexual behavior remained on the books until the decriminalization of homosexual relations between adults in 1969. It was not until the mid-1970s that the fate of homosexual victims under Nazism began to be acknowledged, and several more years would pass before filmmakers sought out the few remaining survivors for interviews. In the last several decades, a growing number of filmmakers has sought to document and to dramatize these stories of survival and resistance, hand in hand with progress in historical research. In this presentation, James D. Steakley shows clips from selected documentary and feature films that trace advances in our understanding of what homosexual men and lesbians experienced during the Nazi era.
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