Lest We Forget: Pierre Seel

Mémorial de la Déportation Homosexuelle
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In Memory of Pierre Seel (1923 - 2005):
A Key Figure in the Public Recognition of the Nazi Persecution of Homosexuals Dies at Age 82

PARIS -- The Mémorial de la Déportation Homosexuelle (MDH), the French national association that works to commemorate the homosexual victims of the Nazi regime, has announced the death of Pierre Seel on Nov. 25 at age 82 in Toulouse, France. Of some 200 men from the annexed French region of Alsace-Lorraine deported to Nazi concentration camps as homosexuals, Mr. Seel was the sole survivor who had spoken out publicly about his experience.

He was recognized internationally for his book, "I, Pierre Seel, Deported Homosexual: A Memoir of Nazi Terror," first released in French in 1994 and subsequently published in English, German and Spanish, and for his deeply moving testimony in the American documentary film "Paragraph 175" (Telling Pictures, 2000).

In a statement released in conjunction with three other French national gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgender organizations, Bruno Gachard, president of the Mémorial de la Déportation Homosexuelle, noted that "Pierre Seel died peacefully in his sleep, leaving us the memory of his martyrdom. Through his example, through his kindness and through his openness, he enabled us to know who we are and where we came from." Mr. Seel was a member of the committee of honor of the MDH and had worked closely with the organization since it was founded in 1989.

In 1941, at the age of 17, Mr. Seel was seized by the Nazis in his boyhood hometown of Mulhouse in Alsace because his name appeared on a list of suspected homosexuals that had been complied by the local French police; the Nazis had invaded Alsace and annexed the territory in 1940, declaring it to be part of Germany. Mr. Seel was violently tortured by the SS, then sent to the Schirmeck-Vorbrück concentration camp in Alsace.

During his internment, he was forced to witness the murder of his 18-year-old partner, Jo, who was torn to shreds by guard dogs on the order of the camp authorities. After six months of severe privation and brutality, Mr. Seel was released from the camp, only to be drafted against his will into the German army and sent to the Russian Front.

Following the Second World War, Mr. Seel returned to France determined to establish a safe and quiet life. As with many homosexuals during an era when French culture continued to sharply disapprove of homosexuality, he married and founded a family.

He eventually established himself as a shopkeeper and later a department store manager, looking after his wife and three children--but remaining resolutely and painfully silent about his homosexuality and his traumatic experience of persecution. In his memoirs, Mr. Seel recalled this period of his life as "years of shame" from the unhealed psychological and physical wounds he had suffered at the hands of the Nazis.

After nearly four decades, with his children grown and with the French gay liberation movement well under way, Mr. Seel ultimately decided to break his silence in 1982. He spent the remaining 23 years of his life as an emblematic figure of the gay movement, playing a key role in demanding public recognition that there were indeed French victims of the antihomosexual policies of the Nazi regime.

The French government granted this acknowledgment only in 2001, when Lionel Jospin, then the prime minister, finally mentioned homosexual victims in his speech for the national commemoration held annually to recognize all French citizens who were deported to the Nazi concentration camps.

Historians estimate that the Nazi regime sent a total of 5,000 to 15,000 men from Germany and the annexed territories to concentration camps specifically on charges of homosexuality; the majority of those men perished before the liberation of the camps in 1945.

Paragraph 175, the Nazi law against male homosexual behavior, was applied in Alsace-Lorraine because the Nazi regime annexed the region in 1940 and regarded it as part of Germany; by contrast, the law was not applied in occupied France. With the death of Mr. Seel, fewer than 10 homosexual internees who have publicly borne witness to their experience are known to be alive anywhere in the world.

Mr. Seel is survived by his partner, Eric Feliu, of Toulouse; by his wife, from whom he had been separated since 1978; and by two sons and a daughter. After private funeral services in Toulouse, he was buried in the communal cemetery of Bram in France on Nov. 28.

There's more HERE.

And so it goes.