09/08/2026
Some moments in Q***r history are hard to read about, but no one will teach us our history, so we much teach it to ourselves.
“Beaten to death, silenced to death. I am a surviving witness to the extermination of homosexuals and le****ns and I beg your forgiveness for still being alive.”
Holocaust survivor Pierre Seel is reading his telegram to French President Jacques Chirac September 8, 1996. Five decades earlier, teenaged Pierre and his boyfriend were arrested by the Gestapo under suspicion of homosexuality, found guilty, and sent to the Schirmeck-Vorbrück camp.
Pierre digresses for a moment and speaks to his interviewer in the present: “I’m making them uncomfortable, I know. In the prison in Mulhouse, I was r***d with a rod twenty-five centimeters long. And I said it on TV, but a journalist immediately cut me off. I should not have said that, it offended the good people of France.”
“Yes, so to come back to the telegram: ‘I beg your forgiveness for still being alive. I think it only right to ensure that all of France is educated. My aim: to find out the truth, and see it through to the end. We know and we must know that silence is guilty. We must acknowledge all the victims of Na**sm. On several occasions, I have called for complete rehabilitation. I wish for respect, understanding, and official national recognition of the deportation for homosexuality. I am aware of the delicate nature of my request. Please accept, Mr. President, my deepest respect.’”
“I sent this telegram on September 8, 1996. Today is the 29th. I have not received a reply yet, and I likely never will.” Pierre’s testimony is shocking and upsetting; difficult to hear. But we owe it to him, all of the individuals featured in season 14, “The N**i Era,” and all people who had the courage to speak up to bear witness to their suffering, their fortitude, their survival, and their will to live on.
Image: Pierre Seel at the memorial plaque for homosexual victims of the N**i regime in the former Mauthausen concentration camp in Austria, June 1996. Credit: Kurt Krickler/homopoliticus.at.
