I, Pierre Seel, Deported Homosexual: A Memoir of Nazi Terror

by Pierre Seel

For one pleasure a thousand pains François Villon, 1463

The more one studies the history of gay people’s lives, the more one is heartened by the evidence that, even in the least likely circumstances, it was possible for love—or for the choice of promiscuous sexual enjoyment—to flourish.

As Seel says at the end of Chapter Three, “Liberation was only for others” (p.88).

Now I froze in terror. I had prayed that he would escape their lists, their roundups, their humiliations. And here he was, before my powerless eyes, which filled with tears. Unlike me, he had not carried dangerous letters, torn down posters, or signed any statements. And yet he had been caught and he was about to die. What had happened? What had the monsters accused him of? Because of my anguish I have completely forgotten the wording of the death sentence. Then the loudspeakers broadcast some noisy classical music while the SS stripped him naked and shoved a tin pail over his head. Next they sicced their ferocious German shepherds on him: the guard dogs first bit into his groin and thighs, then devoured him right in front of us. His shrieks of pain were distorted and amplified by the pail in which his head was trapped. My rigid body reeled, my eyes gaped at so much horror, tears poured down my cheeks, I fervently prayed that he would black out quickly. Since then I sometimes wake up howling in the middle of the night. For fifty years now that scene has kept ceaselessly passing and repassing through my mind.

When I have finished wandering, I go home. Then I light the candle that permanently burns in my kitchen when I am alone. That frail flame is my memory of Jo.