This very touching documentary consists of interviews of six gay men and one lesbian who survived the Nazi regime. They somehow lived through the concentration camps, or managed to hide (those individuals were called U-Boats). One person escaped to England.
Personally, I don’t particularly recommend this film for education on concentration camps in Germany. I already know more about the camps than I really care for. But I genuinely treasured the experience of actually seeing and hearing individuals who managed to come through it.
Two of the interviewees have written books. Pierre Seel wrote I, Pierre Seel, Deported Homosexual. His suffering did not end with the war. Pierre lived for decades in secrecy and shame before finally accepting his homosexuality.
Gerhard Beck (who called himself Gad) wrote An Underground Life. He was a teenager at the start of the war (born in 1923) and quickly went into hiding because, in addition to being gay, he was half Jewish. Gad was surprisingly resourceful for someone so young and he helped to organize food and housing for Jews in hiding until they were able to escape to Switzerland. I lent my copy of his book to a friend who was initially reluctant to read it. Eventually, she told me that she was surprised that she was able to finish it, but she was even more surprised that it made her laugh so much.
Incidentally, I assume that there was only one lesbian interviewee in the film because Nazis did not put much energy into tracking them down. Probably because women were so unimportant in the Nazi regime.
