Due to the absence of any specific criminal law article that condemned intimate relations between women, queer females were not systematically persecuted by the Nazis who primarily saw them as women – that is biologically capable of fulfilling their primary function. However, it does not mean such contacts did not exist among camp prisoners. The thing is that queer women often were detained for other reasons the regime was more concerned about: as communists, Jews, Roma and Sinti, or criminals (in the latter case, marked with a black triangle as “asocial”). It should also be noted that girls or women could discover their attraction to the same-sex already in camps without necessarily identifying themselves as lesbians or queer at all.
One of the tragic documented cases known to queer Holocaust scholars is the fate of Jewish lesbian Henny Schermann. In 1940, she was arrested and sent to the Ravensbrück women’s concentration camp, where Nazi doctor Friedrich Mennecke, involved in the implementation of “T-4” euthanasia program, classified her as “licentious lesbian, only frequents [homosexual] bars,” leaving this comment on the back of her photo. The remark suggests that her subsequent transfer to the Bernburg Euthanasia Venter, where Henny was killed in a gas chamber, was likely due to her sexual orientation rather than her Jewish origin. How many more queer women died in similar centers is now unknown – documented confirmation of sexual orientation found in case of Henny is extremely rare.
German lesbians, showing cautious behavior, had a chance to remain relatively safe. The aforementioned cabaret singer Claire Waldoff, for example, after Hitler’s appointment, moved with her partner Olga von Roeder from gay Berlin to quiet Bavaria, where they lived out their days.
Due to the peculiarities of Nazi camp record-keeping and low research interest in non-obvious Holocaust stories, in addition to the masterly logic necessary for finding and comparing parts of prisoners’ biographies in order to trace their sexual orientation, literally the only source of information about the lives of queer women in camps are their memories: interviews, diaries, or (should we be lucky) books. However, here lies an even bigger problem – almost no one mentions intimate attraction to the same sex for example (check, for example, the vast archive of the USC Shoah Foundation with over 52,000 interviews with former prisoners). The reason, according to historian and Holocaust queer history specialist Anna Hájková, is the impossibility of discussing such topics within the “heteronormative framework of Holocaust research.”
Certainly, intimate relationships between women could not help but arise in camps or ghettos. However, due to the sensitivity of the topic and often also because of fear of judgment, few spoke about them later – just as few were actually ready to get such stories heard… “Such memory is not History; research has always focused on other voices and dimensions: political and national,” bitterly summarizes Dr. Ostrowska.
A vivid and rare example is Erica Fischer’s novel “Aimée & Jaguar: A Love Story, Berlin 1943” (1994) based on the story of the relationship between German housewife Lilly Wust and Jewish underground activist and poet Felice Schragenheim. Their rapidly developing romance led to Lilly’s divorce and a civil partnership with Felice in March 1943 – by then they had already been living together for several months. In July 1944, however, Felice got arrested by the Gestapo and sent to a transit camp, then to Theresienstadt and later Auschwitz. After her partner’s arrest, Lilly risked her life trying to secure a meeting with her – unfortunately, without success. Felice died in custody, presumably in one of the death marches between December 31, 1944, and March 1945.
In the last years of the war, Lilly continued helping Jewish women, hiding them from the Nazis. She would recall her first love for a woman and the awareness of her sexual orientation all her life (whatever romantic it may sound today): in a 2001 interview, Lilly called the relationships with Felice “the most tender love imaginable”. “I never felt so alive in my life!” she emotionally confessed.
Another exception is the case of German lesbian Margot Heumann. In an interview given in 1992, she mentions her affection for a Viennese girl Dita Neumann, whom she calls “a very, very good friend.”. Symptomatically, however, the woman still describes this teenage passion in terms of support and care, rather than attraction. Thirty years later, in another context and with more sensitive listeners, Heumann reflects on her experience much more boldly and through different vocabulary. In June 2021, her memories were presented on stage in the play “The Amazing Life of Margot Heumann.”
