The Lilac People

by Milo Todd

He felt a flicker of ego at the thought that this Nazi might see him not only as a normally sexed man but an Aryan one. Again the guilt struck his heart. Pride had no place here, not even if it was just for all of his hard work over the years transvesting, all the diligence and exhaustion.

Karl listened in his usual quiet way as the circle went around, once more swapping stories. This was another day for sad ones. The types of violence that was most often had on certain bodies and what one did once it was done. When it came to Karl, he hesitated a moment. There was surely so much he wanted to say. “It’s all so difficult,” he finally said. He sounded proud of managing even this much. But the group simply continued to stare at him. One of the women finally cleared her throat. “Excuse me,” she said, “but you’ll never understand what we go through. It’s you men that did all of this to begin with.” “Mmm,” he replied. He paused. “If you’ll excuse me, I need some air.” He got up. Bertie quickly stood and followed him, his legs tingling as the blood rushed back into them. When Bertie reached him up on deck, Karl was already looking out over the water, the wind tossing his hair in every direction. He put a hand on Karl’s shoulder. “Are you alright?” “This life is unfair, Bertie.” “I know.” Karl tapped out piano notes upon the railing. Bertie did not think he always knew he was doing it. “They refuse to see more than two options. Either we’re women and victims, or we’re men and the enemy.” “They’re hurting,” Bertie said simply. “Well they’re hurting in quite selfish ways. And it’s not fair that it’s excused just because they’re hurting. To lump us in with the people who have done all they’ve done to us, without a second thought. To ignore all the women who were camp g...

The man beamed. He shook heartily and all Bertie could do was match him. The man closed his smiling lips over his teeth, gave a final nod, and returned with his friends toward their quarters. The three of them were suddenly, finally left alone. “They’re so nice,” Bertie muttered in disbelief. “I can’t believe they’re so nice. They’re like normal, everyday people.” Karl swallowed between his still-heavy breaths. “That’s what makes them so terrifying.”

“Keep my back straight,” he said. “Walk with space between my thighs. Speak from my chest, breathe from my belly. End my sentences at a lower octave than a higher one. Shake one’s hand harder than is necessary . . .”

Bertie gently placed a hand upon his shoulder. “One day,” he whispered into his ear, “you’ll forget that you’re supposed to be scared.” He did not know how possible that was. Karl would certainly find solace in their home together, but out in the world, that was a different matter. There would always be fear popping up somewhere at any time. He knew Karl knew this. But his words seemed to calm him nonetheless. Perhaps he knew that while he could never have eternity, he could at least have moments.

Bertie looked at his passport again. Male, it still declared. He suddenly realized he wanted Sofie and Karl to promise him that they would burn him after he died. He did not want to be the next one noticed after death and plastered across the papers for sensation. He wished he could be more fearless, someone who would show his full self without hesitation. But if people could not be kind about it, would not be respectful, then they were not allowed to know. He wondered how many people like him had lived and died undetected. Surely for every one reported, there were ten others who slipped by. Maybe more. It all came down to your luck and your loved ones. He realized the rare gift he had just been given and how many people would have done what he had done and more to get it. He felt relieved. He felt lucky. He also felt sad. He noticed the man had spelled their new surname with only one n, and his new name of Burt with a u instead of a much-preferred e. Sofie was with a ph and Karl was with a C. Bertie had a mix of feelings well up inside him. He was surprised that some of them were bad. “I’ll never get to be Berthold Durchdenwald again,” he said. “And I never got to be Karl Fuchs. Not really.” Bertie was quiet. For the first time, he felt the loss in his heart. It was an ache deep inside. Through all these years, he had believed that one day he could be himself again. He had believed it possible, if only because to not have it would be too cruel. Only now the cruelty was he...

This, then, was all that was left of Gert. At that moment, Bertie realized how quickly Gert and the others, how all of them really, would slip away from memory. His mind flashed to that last night at the Institut, the burning of the archives. He suddenly wanted to scream and never stop. In whose memory would any of them remain?

“The United States has been welcoming them in. They’ve been seeking them out for recruitment with the government. Mostly spy work and war tactics. I’ve heard they’re terrible at it so far, embarrassingly bad, but they keep inviting them in.” “How?” Bertie could not think of anything more he could sputter out, English or otherwise. “Because the United States wants to eradicate Communists and homosexuals. And nobody hates Commies and queers more than Nazis.” He looked at all three of them, as if sure they did not believe him. “They’re getting great pay and benefits.” Karl looked horrified. “Are they at least being watched?” “Not from what I’ve heard. Some government agent just knocks on the doors of their houses once a month—” “They have houses?” Bertie realized many things at once. He realized why their ferry went through the other occupations effortlessly, why their ship was not attacked by the Allies while out in open water. There were valuable Nazis on board, most likely some that had been specifically requested by Amerika to join their ranks. The Allies had known about the ship all along. He realized why the passport of the Nazi on the ship had looked so real. Because it had been. After everything he, Sofie, and Karl had gone through to leave, to save themselves from people like him, to run to a country that hated them just as much as the one they left— The anger stoked inside of him, a burning inferno. Was this how Karl felt? So much inside of him, churning, the world ...

“Perhaps it will get better,” Bertie said flatly. “Herr Doktor taught many people, many countries. He put his life into it. He was right here in New York just before the War.” “There is teaching and then there is listening,” Roy said quietly. “So . . . what do we do now?” Karl asked. Sofie finally opened her mouth. “Live.” Bertie knew she was right, but he was also filled with bad feelings. He worried about moving forward, about putting so much trauma behind him. Because if he put it behind him, he worried that meant putting Gert and all the others behind him, too. All of his community, all of his family, all of his friends. He worried that to smile, to thrive, would be a betrayal to everyone who had died. If he was a good person, if they had meant the world to him, then he was not supposed to move forward. But he knew he had to. For the only other option was death, and after all those who had fallen, after all Gert gave so that Bertie could live, that felt like an even bigger insult to his memory. Bertie felt it all weigh upon him. They walked slowly, the sunlight peeking through the clouds. It glinted dully against the dagger around Roy’s neck. Bertie gave a dry chuckle, which sounded more like a cough. He spoke in Deutsch, and he did not care. “What a cruelty. One of the last surviving artifacts of our community, of our history, is an omen of death.” Karl shook his head. “History isn’t artifacts or pictures or things. History is the people who made them.” Bertie glanced...

The fifth and final issue of the transvestite journal Das 3. Geschlecht (The Third Gender/Sex) came out in May 1932. It’s unlikely Bertie would’ve been able to easily purchase it off the newsstand six months later, but I took the liberty here for the sake of flavor. Likewise, any given queer title by that year was subject to tightened censorship laws. Some days you could find some of them on the racks, other days they were taken back down. I decided to have as many of them available to Bertie as possible so readers could get a fuller idea of the expanse of options available up until the recent law changes.

While Dr. Hirschfeld did have a secretary and assistant, documentation suggests these tasks most likely fell under the guidance of his lover, Karl Giese, who was also the museum’s librarian and archivist. For plot reasons, I gave the fictional character of Bertie this role. Giese was described by Christopher Isherwood as “a sturdy peasant youth with a girl’s heart.” He stayed behind when Hirschfeld went on his world tour. He survived the Institute’s attacks unscathed, eventually coming to France to stay with Hirschfeld and Li Shiu Tong, Hirschfeld’s second lover who he met during his world tour. After a certain “bathhouse affair,” Giese had to quickly relocate to Vienna, then Brno. He died by suicide in 1938 before the Nazis invaded Czechoslovakia. He had played the part of the younger version of the protagonist in Hirschfeld’s film Anders als die Andern (Different from the Others, 1919).

Hirschfeld was a complicated sexologist. To learn more about his messy and tangled relationship to racism, misogyny, and eugenics—and to learn more about his lover and intellectual successor Li Shiu Tong—read Racism and the Making of Gay Rights by Dr. Laurie Marhoefer.

The Night of the Long Knives (June 30 to July 2, 1934) took place almost exactly one month before the death of President Paul von Hindenburg (August 2, 1934). The attack upon the Institute of Sexual Science was likewise more than a year earlier (May 6, 1933). Hindenburg’s death was nonetheless narratively included ahead of these two events in the several sparse pages illustrating Hitler’s rise to power in order to complete that picture. Besides that jump in time, all other events are narratively portrayed in the order in which they occurred. * The Night of the Long Knives (otherwise known as Operation Hummingbird) was primarily intended to purge Ernst Röhm (well known as homosexual) and the Sturmabteilung (SA), also believed to be notably homosexual. Hitler believed Röhm and his SA were no longer of use and, therefore, now a liability. The degree to which the attacks were motivated by prejudice against Röhm’s and the SA’s homosexuality is muddy, though this prejudice likely played a part. While Röhm and the SA were considered the primary targets, many of Hitler’s other perceived opponents were also targeted; at the time, those were primarily political opponents or LGBTQ+ people. Somewhere between 85 and 1,000 people were murdered during the three days of the Long Knives, and more than 1,000 others were arrested and/or sent to the freshly built Dachau.

Dora Richter was originally believed to have died during the attack on the Institute. However, it was later found that she’d fled to Karlsbad—now the West Bohemia region of the Czech Republic—and become the owner of a small restaurant. In 1934, she was finally granted a legal name change by the president of Czechoslovakia. She owned her own home, remained unmarried, and eventually moved on to working as a lace maker from home. After 1939, there is no known record of her. The rest of her life is unknown.

upholding Paragraph 175. * I initially mentioned the punishment for §175 (homosexuality) was six months in jail, while §183 (cross-dressing) was a year. However, when Bertie later talks with Ward about punishment regarding cross-dressing, they discuss the time length of §175 instead. While it’s true that America decided to keep the lengthened Nazi punishment of §175 from six months to five years, it’s unknown what, if any, changes the Nazis made to §183. I decided to include this discrepancy so readers would further understand how America treated and viewed LGBTQ+ survivors.

Lila is most often translated as lavender, with purple being second-most popular, and lilac as third. I felt purple was too vague, but worried lavender would be misconstrued in America with the lesbian community (e.g., Lavender Menace). I chose lilac because it felt the most distinct for this story, as well as the most visually similar translation.

named in honor of three of the few known presumed trans masculine and/or intersex individuals documented to have survived the War: Berthold Buttgereit, Karl M. Baer, and Gerd Katter. * Berthold Buttgereit (1891–1983) inexplicably survived in plain sight of the Nazis throughout the War, mainly in Cologne, his entire life documented save for an eight-year disappearance from 1942 to 1950. This is a significant time to disappear, and yet I was never able to account for this disappearance. With Dr. Hirschfeld’s help, he acquired a “transvestite card” in 1912 and a “transvestite passport/travel pass” in 1918. His “transvestite passport/travel pass” is the only known surviving article of this nature. His “transvestite card” is lost. He acquired a name change in 1920, after over a year of battling the regulations. He soon after sought to marry his girlfriend of eight years but was denied when he presented his birth certificate. He then tried to change his birth certificate, but the outcome of this, and his consequential marriage, are unknown. Save for his name continuing to appear in Cologne’s address books until his death, the remainder of his life is largely unknown. * Karl M. Baer (1885–1956) wrote the semi-fictional book Aus eines Mannes Mädchenjahren (Memoirs of a Man’s Maiden Years) under the pseudonym N. O. Body in 1907, with a foreword by Dr. Hirschfeld. The book was popular enough in its time that copies survived beyond the burning of the Institute’s library and the Nazi ...