Paragraph 175 (film)
Encyclopedia
Documentary film
Documentary films constitute a broad category of nonfictional motion pictures intended to document some aspect of reality, primarily for the purposes of instruction or maintaining a historical record...
released in 2000, directed by Rob Epstein
Rob Epstein
Rob Epstein, also credited as Robert P. Epstein, is a director, producer, writer and editor. Epstein has won two Academy Awards for Best Documentary Feature for the films The Times of Harvey Milk and Common Threads: Stories from the Quilt....
and Jeffrey Friedman
Jeffrey Friedman (filmmaker)
Jeffrey Friedman is a non-fiction filmmaker, director, producer, writer and editor. Friedman has won an Academy Award for Best Documentary Feature for the film Common Threads: Stories from the Quilt....
, and narrated by Rupert Everett
Rupert Everett
Rupert James Hector Everett is an English actor. He first came to public attention in 1981, when he was cast in Julian Mitchell's play and subsequent film Another Country as an openly gay student at an English public school, set in the 1930s...
. The film was produced by Rob Epstein
Rob Epstein
Rob Epstein, also credited as Robert P. Epstein, is a director, producer, writer and editor. Epstein has won two Academy Awards for Best Documentary Feature for the films The Times of Harvey Milk and Common Threads: Stories from the Quilt....
, Jeffrey Friedman
Jeffrey Friedman
Jeffrey Friedman is a political scientist and the editor of Critical Review: An Interdisciplinary Journal of Politics and Society.Friedman graduated from Brown University in 1983 with a double major in History and Philosophy, and received an MA in History at the University of California, Berkeley,...
, Janet Cole, Michael Ehrenzweig, Sheila Nevins and Howard Rosenman. The film chronicles the lives of several gay men and one lesbian who were persecuted by the Nazis. The gay men were arrested by the Nazis for the crime of homosexuality
Homosexuality
Homosexuality is romantic or sexual attraction or behavior between members of the same sex or gender. As a sexual orientation, homosexuality refers to "an enduring pattern of or disposition to experience sexual, affectional, or romantic attractions" primarily or exclusively to people of the same...
under Paragraph 175
Paragraph 175
Paragraph 175 was a provision of the German Criminal Code from 15 May 1871 to 10 March 1994. It made homosexual acts between males a crime, and in early revisions the provision also criminalized bestiality. All in all, around 140,000 men were convicted under the law.The statute was amended several...
, the sodomy
Sodomy
Sodomy is an anal or other copulation-like act, especially between male persons or between a man and animal, and one who practices sodomy is a "sodomite"...
provision of the German penal code, dating back to 1871.
Between 1933 and 1945, 100,000 men were arrested under Paragraph 175. Some were imprisoned, others were sent to concentration camps. Only about 4,000 survived; see Paragraph 175
Paragraph 175
Paragraph 175 was a provision of the German Criminal Code from 15 May 1871 to 10 March 1994. It made homosexual acts between males a crime, and in early revisions the provision also criminalized bestiality. All in all, around 140,000 men were convicted under the law.The statute was amended several...
for full details.
In 2000, fewer than ten of these men were known to be living. Five come forward in the documentary to tell their stories for the first time, considered to be among the last untold stories of the Third Reich.
Paragraph 175 tells of a gap in the historical record and reveals the lasting consequences, as told through personal stories of gay
Gay
Gay is a word that refers to a homosexual person, especially a homosexual male. For homosexual women the specific term is "lesbian"....
men and women who lived through it, including: Karl Gorath
Karl Gorath
Karl Gorath was a gay man who was arrested in 1938 and imprisoned for homosexuality at Neuengamme and Auschwitz...
; Gad Beck
Gad Beck
Gad Beck is a retired educator, author and gay Holocaust survivor.-Early life:Beck was born in Berlin, Germany, along with twin sister Margot, to a Jewish father and German mother who had converted to Judaism. The family lived in a predominately Jewish immigrant section of the city...
, the half-Jewish resistance fighter
Resistance movement
A resistance movement is a group or collection of individual groups, dedicated to opposing an invader in an occupied country or the government of a sovereign state. It may seek to achieve its objects through either the use of nonviolent resistance or the use of armed force...
who spent the war helping refugees escape Berlin
Berlin
Berlin is the capital city of Germany and is one of the 16 states of Germany. With a population of 3.45 million people, Berlin is Germany's largest city. It is the second most populous city proper and the seventh most populous urban area in the European Union...
; Annette Eick, the Jewish lesbian
Lesbian
Lesbian is a term most widely used in the English language to describe sexual and romantic desire between females. The word may be used as a noun, to refer to women who identify themselves or who are characterized by others as having the primary attribute of female homosexuality, or as an...
who escaped to England
England
England is a country that is part of the United Kingdom. It shares land borders with Scotland to the north and Wales to the west; the Irish Sea is to the north west, the Celtic Sea to the south west, with the North Sea to the east and the English Channel to the south separating it from continental...
with the help of a woman she loved; Albrecht Becker
Albrecht Becker
Albrecht Becker was a production designer, photographer, and actor, who was imprisoned by the Nazi regime for the charge of homosexuality....
, German Christian photographer, who was arrested and imprisoned for homosexuality, then joined the army on his release because he "wanted to be with men"; Pierre Seel
Pierre Seel
Pierre Seel was a gay Holocaust survivor and the only French person to have testified openly about his experience of deportation during World War II due to his homosexuality.-Biography:...
, the French Alsatian
Alsace-Lorraine
The Imperial Territory of Alsace-Lorraine was a territory created by the German Empire in 1871 after it annexed most of Alsace and the Moselle region of Lorraine following its victory in the Franco-Prussian War. The Alsatian part lay in the Rhine Valley on the west bank of the Rhine River and east...
teenager, who watched as his lover was eaten alive by dogs in the camps.
External links
- NPR, All Things Considered - Rob Epstein remembers Pierre Seel - 2 December 2005 (audio file)