Review: An untold Holocaust story

Jeffrey Condran / InReview

The plight of European Jewry at the hands of the Nazis has been well-documented, and most readers can conjure up concentration camp images of emaciated figures suffering from physical deprivation. Less well-remembered are those who were sent to camps such as Dachau long before the war years: intellectuals, political dissidents, and those the Third Reich deemed to be sexual deviants — including homosexuals and members of the trans community.

It is in large part to address this cultural blind-spot — the erasure of the history of trans people during the Second World War — that Milo Todd has written “The Lilac People,” a heartbreaking chronicle of the rise of Nazi Germany’s trans community and its swift eradication. The story is centered on Bertie Durchdenwald, a trans man, and his partner, Sofie Hönig, as they try to survive.

Weimar Berlin was famous (or infamous) for its social and sexual permissiveness, signaling a post-Great War shift in how people might be allowed to live. Sensing an opportunity, Dr. Magnus Hirschfeld founded the Institut für Sexualwissenschaft (Institute for Sexual Science) in 1919 to educate the public about homosexuality and what was then called “Das 3. Geschlecht” (the third gender). He also performed gender affirmation surgeries.

Bertie, an early recipient of these surgeries, is soon hired by Hirschfeld as his personal assistant — who better to help explain the procedures than someone who’s had experienced them? — and through the Institut quickly finds himself at the center of a growing trans community. Meeting at clubs such as The Eldorado, whose sign reads “Hier ist Richtig!” (“Here is right!”), Bertie and his friends drink, talk, dance and enjoy a kind of “world within a world” where they can simply be themselves.

However, when Adolf Hitler is appointed Chancellor, he immediately passes laws that limit the place of trans people in Germany. These laws embolden fascists to attack the Institut, and Bertie only narrowly escapes with his life. Soon trans people are being rounded up for transport to Dachau and Bertie and Sofie flee the city just in time.

Fortunately, Bertie has allies. The grandparents of one of his dear friends from The Eldorado hide the couple on their farm in Ulm. And when Opa and Oma Baumann die, Bertie and Sofie take over their identities, living quietly and frugally in the farmhouse, hoping to ride out the war.

This false life creates an existential crisis for Bertie. This is exactly the thing he hoped he’d left behind when he came out as a man. Further, knowing what he does about what’s happening in the camps, what does it mean that he continues to hide, and to survive, despite his being “one of the heads on the chopping block?”

Adding to these complex feelings is the ambivalence of what happens when the Allies win the war in Europe. This is the black gem at the heart of Todd’s novel. The revelation that while American troops freed the Jews in camps, they chose to prosecute the homosexual and trans people they discovered using the Nazi’s own laws and punitive measures — prison terms of often five years.

Imagine surviving the war, only to be imprisoned by your liberators.

The question for Bertie becomes one of endurance and memory. Even if they escape the country and the vengeful Allied troops, what will happen to them? One character asks, “Do you think history will remember us as bad people?” And Bertie responds, “I think we’ll be lucky if history remembers us at all.”

With this beautiful, necessary story, full of enthralling action and sharp moral questions, “The Lilac People” reminds history of what happened to the trans community during WWII, and asks us to see it as a warning for what might be happening in this country today.

Happily, it also announces an important new voice in American fiction.

Jeffrey Condran is the author of the story collection “Claire, Wading into the Danube By Night” and is the co-founder and publisher of the independent literary press Braddock Avenue Books.