Rating: 4* of five

The Book Report: At the age of seventeen, in the arms of a thief, Pierre Seel felt his watch sliding off his wrist. So begins the astonishing chain of events that led to the Schirmeck-Vorbruch concentration camp, where Seel suffered unspeakable horrors for the sole "crime" of being a homosexual.The story of survival in the camps has been told many times, but Seel's is one of the only firsthand accounts of the Nazi roundup and deportation of homosexuals. For nearly forty years he kept his experiences -- including torture, humiliation, and witnessing the vicious murder of his lover at the hands of the Nazis -- a secret in order to cover up his homosexuality. He found a wife through a personal ad, married, and raised three children. "The Liberation", he writes, "was for others". Finally, haunted by his experiences and by the silence of others, he decided to bear witness to an aspect of the Holocaust rarely seen. As he noted, "If I do not speak, I will become the accomplice of my torturers". The result is a terrifying and heartbreaking memoir, extraordinary for its frankness and courage.

My Review: First, read this:
I had to bear witness in order to protect the future, bear witness in order to overcome the amnesia of my contemporaries.
–and–
If I do not speak, I will become the accomplice of my torturers.

Horrible what Hate does to people, makes them bestial and vicious and base. Seel saw all of that, from his entry into the list of homosexuals kept by police to his arrest and deportation. Gay people in concentration camps were not accepted and cared for as were other prisoners, they were victimized by the others as well as the guards. Of course French society at that time was no more accepting of queers than it has ever been...even though the Vichy government wasn't legally re-criminalizing sodomy between consenting adults, it felt free to persecute its QUILTBAG citizens without even that figleaf.

What is it that you hate so much, straight people? Christian, Jewish, Muslim people? What in your souls says "I hate" so loudly that even your big bully imaginary friend hates too?
He had been one of the officials who kept the illegal list of homosexuals in that region with the same good conscience as when he ticketed store owners for neglecting dog turds on their sidewalks.

Imagine this...the *entire*reason* Pierre had to endure the horrors he was forced to undergo was one simple act of responsible citizenship, of simple human need: He lost a watch to a trick (who obviously didn't trade names with him!) and reported it to the police station. He was young and naïve, answered the police's questions honestly, and was ever after branded a homosexual...an undesirable. Well, anyway, after an amazing wartime changeup and a forced conversion to straightness in the 1950s, Seel finally came to peace with himself in 1981 and, in 1994, finally wrote down the painful facts of his past. Inspired by this review getting blogged, I decided that I'd like to know some more about Seel's post-memoir life. I was appalled to learn that the Mayor of Strasbourg, from whence he was deported, actually refused to shake his hand because of his effrontery in telling his own story. That same person later went on to national office under a Socialist government...so much for Leftists having good credentials with QUILTBAG folks.

Better than that revolting little contretemps, however, was the throw-away line, "He spent the last 12 years or so with his long-term partner, Eric Féliu, with whom he bred dogs in Toulouse, which helped him to overcome the fear of dogs he had developed after Jo's death," referring to his lover torn apart by guard dogs on the Russian Front in 1943. I myownself would recommend reading the Wikipedia entry after the book...I'd especially like to see the book have an Afterword or Epilogue in place of the somewhat bloviating Introduction it has now. Eric Féliu is someone I'd like to know a whole lot more about. (The Endnotes aren't very well organized, either, and Basic Books is one of the acknowledged leaders in non-fiction publishing. It's a shame, really.)

It's not easy to read, but I wish I could make every religious person and every anti-gay bigot read it. I can't, so there's no point in going on about it. If something in you thinks that it's okay to say "sure, fine, be that way but ewww don't talk about it" then you're the reason books like this are necessary. ( )