Pierre Seel, the last known surviving French homosexual victim of the Nazi concentration camps, has died at the age of 82, it was announced in Paris yesterday. Anyone who has seen the remarkable documentary "Paragraph 175," by Rob Epstein and Jeffrey Friedman -- about the Pink Triangles, the homosexual victims of Nazi repression -- will remember the unforgettable sequence in the film in which Pierre Seel (left) recounted his arrest and torture for being gay -- this included his multiple rapes, and being sodomized with a wooden stake, which left his ass bleeding all his life long --and how the Nazis fed his lover to be eaten by dogs before his eyes.
Seel, an Alsatien, was arrested at the age of 17 -- by Vichy France's police -- for being homosexual, and subsequently sent to the concentration camp of Struthof, the only German concentration camp on French soil during World War II. While in the camp, he discovered that his 18-year-old lover had also been arrested. Seel related that discovery, and the horror that followed it, in his 1994 autobiography, "Moi, Pierre Seel, déporté homosexuel" (Editions Calmann Levy, cover right):
"All the inmates were summoned to stand at attention in the camp's assembly ground. The camp commandant and all his troops were there. Into the center of the square we were ordered to form, two SS men dragged a young man. With stupefaction I recognized my beloved, Jo -- he and I hadn't seen each other since a few days before my arrest....The loudspeakers played noisy military music as the SS men stripped him naked, and violently jammed a metal bucket over his head. They unleashed on Jo the camp's ferocious guard-dogs, German Shepherds, who began to rip at his flesh -- first his genitals, and his thighs, and then they devoured Jo before our eyes. His screams of pain were amplified and distorted by the bucket over his head. Frozen in place and trembling, wide-eyed at seeing so much horror, I had tears running down my cheeks. I prayed that he would rapidly lose consciousness...." (My translation -- D.I.) Upper left, the sign over the Struthof camp entrance, as it appears today.
After the war, gay concentration camp victims like Seel -- the Pink Triangles, named after the special badge homosexuals in the camps were forced to wear by the Nazis -- were shunned, and refused recognition or compensation from the state, like other deportees. All his life, Seel fought for official recognition of the Vichy-Nazi deportation of homosexuals by the French authorities. Seel not only brought his witness before the public on many occasions, but he also fought for the inclusion of the representatives of gay organizations in the annual French ceremonies commemorating Nazi deportations of Jews, resistants, political prisoners, and others. In 2003, Seel (right) finally received official recognition as a victim of the Holocaust by the International Organization for Migration's program for aiding Nazi victims. Seel explained that, for as long as he would not be recognized as having been "deported for homosexuality," he considered himself a stateless person.
http://direland.typepad.com/direland/2005/11/pierre_seel_las.htmlI remember reading Seel's memoirs when they were first published in the U.S. It provides a fascinating look at Nazi persecution of gays (like the book The Men of the Pink Triangle). I also saw the very moving documentary "Paragraph 175." Seel was a true hero for speaking out about what happened to him under the Nazis (and the Nazi-controled Vichy government). Most gay survivors of the Nazi gay purges lived and died in shame, but Seel spoke up and refused to let the world ignore the fact that gays were not only the victims of the Holocaust, but victims of the German and French governments' attempts to hide this aspect of the Holocaust.
May you rest in peace, Pierre!
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