Toward a queer history of the holocaust

This article offers an original exploration of queer Holocaust history, that is, same-sex desire between Jews who had been deported to ghettos and concentration camps. The prisoner society in the Nazi camps was characterized by extensive homophobia, which used the construction of sexual deviance as a tool of othering. This prejudice brought about the stigmatization of queer desire, effectively silencing survivors who could have spoken about same-sex experience. The author examines the homophobia in survivor testimonies, its impact on scholarly literature, and the subsequent archival erasure of queer experience. The article also offers examples of how to map the queer biographies of Holocaust victims