âWhat would it do to someone, to survive the Holocaust only to realize that the other side wasn't going to save you? To understand that you were as subhuman under the stars and tripes, or the hammer and sickle, as you had been under the swastika? That everyone else was going to the biggest celebration in the history of the world while you died of hunger because people found you uncomfortable to think about?â â Gretchen Felker-Martin, Black Flame
No. This is exactly about queer history. This is about the gay people who were sent right back to the death camps they were freed from when their liberators realized they were gay, not Jewish. To say that the Holocaust was ONLY about Jews or that there was no further suffering or persecution after Nazi Germany fell is as much a denial and erasure as any other. Erasure of queer history, erasure of disability history. Jews were the primary target, but they were not the only, nor the final, victims.
Perhaps you're unaware that what Gretchen describes here is also exactly what happened to Jews. Many returned to their former homes only to find their neighbors had looted their property and they had nowhere to go. Others were awkwardly ignored. Most survivors never received any form of compensation for their suffering or loss of property. Quite a lot of Holocaust-era desecrations, like church steps built out of smashed Jewish gravestones, are ongoing and the desecrators are resisting or outright refusing to make things right. There's actually a Tumblr user whose grandfather lost his home and store in the Shoah, and although the building still stands, Polish authorities have threatened the family against trying to reclaim it even visit it. Even with support from Israel, most Shoah survivors live in poverty to this day.
The anger here comes from the fact that Felker-Martin is demonstrating a marked lack of knowledge about the very thing she's claiming authority in. Jews were treated in the exact way she describes and positions as a hypothetical. Conditions for Jews were so dire in the USSR that the moment emigration became possible, the population of Israel temporarily doubled. Many of the Russian Jews who went there didn't even want to live in Israel--they were using it as a jumping-off point because they were terrified Gorbachev's decision would be reversed and they'd be trapped again. We don't know how many Soviet Jews were killed by the regime. We do know they were given the choice to practice and believe only a Soviet-approved form of Judaism that hollowed out most of its teachings, convert, or die. The other side didn't save them. It just subjected them to a different kind of genocide.
So yes, what happened to queer men at the end of the Holocaust was horrible. About ten thousand queer men were in the work camps (queer men were not sent to the death camps unless they were Jewish), and many were indeed imprisoned after liberation.
But it most certainly wasn't unique to queer men. The lack of support after the Holocaust is a huge part of Jewish history, and in fact it's where the phrase "never again" comes from--never again will we trust that our neighbors would hold out a hand instead of shutting the door. Never again will we rely on others to protect us, because we can't.
So in positioning this as uniquely queer history, Felker-Martin is, ironically, doing the same thing she accuses others of in the quote. It's uncomfortable to think about the fact Jews continued to be shunned and hated after the Shoah...so people don't. Including Gretchen Felker-Martin.
