Articles
Witnessing History
with © Academy Award winning filmmakers Rob Epstein and Jeffrey Friedman
originally appeared in QSF magazine, Fall 2000
by David Ortmann
A film's greatness is sometimes judged by the immediacy of applause at its conclusion. In the instance of Paragraph 175, Robert Epstein and Jeffrey Friedman's documentary about gay men persecuted during the Nazi Holocaust, this was not so, at least not immediately. The greatness of Paragraph 175 was apparent in the utter silence that fell across the Castro Theater audience on June 20, 2000 when the film finished.
Following this one-night only screening of Paragraph 175 at the San Francisco Gay and Lesbian Film Festival, the standing room only crowd did not applaud. They were silent for almost ten seconds. I remember thinking that I couldn't hear a single breath. Silence. Then the entire theater erupted into tremendous and enthusiastic applause.
That Paragraph 175 was a sensational film, an unforgettable film, was implicit not so much in that thunderous applause, but in the awesome silence that preceded it.
Paragraph 175 refers to the section of the German Penal Code of 1871 which states that "an unnatural sex act committed between persons of male sex or by humans with animals is punishable by imprisonment; the loss of civil rights may also be imposed." Between 1933 and 1945, according to Nazi documentation, approximately 100,000 men were arrested for homosexuality and sent to prisons or to concentration camps. Labeled with the pink triangle, so many of these men perished that, by 1945, only about 4,000 survived. Following the war, gay men were not seen as political prisoners. Rather, they were viewed as criminals under the Nazi sodomy law, which remained on the books even after liberation. Some were actually re-arrested after the war and imprisoned again. All were excluded from reparations by the German government. The Nazi version of the sodomy law remained on the books until 1969.
In the 1990s researchers began to document the histories of the men who wore the pink triangles. The United States Holocaust Memorial Museum was one of the first institutions to change public perception by including Nazi persecutions of homosexuals in their exhibits. Encouraged by historians and the museum, several gay survivors began to come forward and tell their stories. Paragraph 175 is a feature documentary built around personal stories of homosexual men who experienced persecution under the Nazis. Their story fills a crucial gap in the historical record, and is a testament to human resilience in the face of unconscionable cruelty.
Join me as I discuss with Rob Epstein and Jefferey Friedman, the filmmakers who brought The Celluloid Closet to the screen, their experience creating their latest film, the extraordinary Paragraph 175.
David Ortmann
How did the process of creating Paragraph 175 affect or change you?
Rob Epstein
Until we got into the subject, it was all just mythology. Until you meet somebody who says, "This happened to me," it's just myth. The fact that gay men wore pink triangles and were put in concentration camps was mythology. No one had ever heard from a living witness before, ourselves included. We became interested in the project when Klaus (Müller, European Project Director for the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum) said to us, "I've been interviewing these people. They are out there and there are a few who are willing to talk. That was the beginning. That was when we decided to take the project on as a film.
Then it got more complex and layered as we talked to each person. Each ones experience is different. This is no archetypal experience that is emblematic of what happened to all gay men. We wanted to show the ranges of these men's experiences. On one hand there is Heinz (Dörmer) who was in different concentration camps for eight years to Al Becker who was in a prison and found it all to be quite comfortable, as he described it. Then when he got out he joined the army. These are two very different experiences.
Jeffrey Friedman
There was a real complexity in dealing with the moral ambiguities involved. We were challenged and excited by the prospect of making a film in which there are not simple heroes and villains. We had to accept the fact that there was a whole range of gay experiences: there were gay people who supported the Nazis. We had to represent that in a way so as not to add to the myth of "the gay Nazi," which was used as a propaganda tool of the opposition during the war. We felt as though we were walking a fine line in being true to the complexity of the subject.
RE
Ultimately, I think the audience makes their own judgements about the people in Paragraph 175.
DO
I think what was most challenging to me in viewing the film was that the audience was forced to confront the questions of moral ambiguity you refer to. Paragraph 175 delved into the gray areas between right and wrong, between good and evil, and I think there is a resistance on the part of some people to go into these gray areas. It's much more simple to judge something as either all good or all bad and move on to the next topic. Paragraph 175 did not do that. Was that your intent from the onset or did it develop as the project unfolded?JF
That was a position we realized we had to take.
RE
One we got into it.
JF
Yes. Once we understood the complexity of the subject. We decided it was time for gay audiences, and straight audiences, to go there with us.
RE
We couldn't have made this film, in this way, fifteen years ago. We wouldn't have been mature enough as filmmakers and gay audiences might not have been ready.
DO
Do feel as though the audience was with you. Is with you?
RE
Yes. Paragraph 175 has been shown all over the world. Israel. Germany. Italy. I think audiences everywhere have been with us.
JF
One of the things that made the process unique and added some logistical difficulties were the age of the interview subjects, their reticence to be filmed, and poor health. It dictated a different kind of filmmaking rhythm. The rhythm of the film follows the rhythm of their storytelling, which is more thoughtful and retrospective. I think of it as a film about memory. It had a sort of dream-like quality at times.
There was so little archival material of the gay experience. The Nazis destroyed what little there was. We were pushed to be creative in terms of what we did visually. We used the memory theme to find visual metaphors for the stories, with the help of a really talented cinematographer named Bernd Meiners.
DO
In my work, I've seen an interesting phenomenon that happens to oppressed or persecuted people or communities: the need to separate and compare their oppression or persecution with that of others. For example, gays and Jews arguing who was more or less oppressed in the Holocaust. This phenomenon fosters a separation, a "my oppression is greater than yours" sort of argument. Paragraph 175, encourages its viewers to do the opposite: to see the connections and the commonalties all oppressed persons share. What was your experience in finding these connections?
RE
By the same token, we felt a responsibility to make a clear distinction between what happened to the Jews in Nazi Germany and what happened to these gay men. To do that, we had to define exactly what the Holocaust was: the systematic annihilation of six million Jews. Of course there were many victim groups who go swept along in that tidal wave. I think we were just truthful to what the experience was. So whatever connections people are able to make about what happened to other groups, stemmed from our ability to get to the truth of our participant's stories.
JF
There was a time when we wondered if we should be making this film at all as Jews because it seemed to us that this was a German story. We were doing the same thing you talk about -- separating one experience from another. We had to overcome our own prejudice about Germans, and Germans of that age specifically. But this is history. These things did happen. They happened to Jews, to gay men, and to other groups. It's history and it needs to be told.
RE
There was a concern in the very beginning that we firmly establish gay men as a victim group during the Holocaust. The concern was that if we got into some of the grayer areas it might dilute the reality of what happened to gay men, as a group. But I think in the end, this friction helped to make a better film and we were able to talk through some of the larger issues.
DO
What affect has the film had and what hopes do you have for it in the future.
JF
Well, if the Associated Press is to believed, it has already has an effect on the German government. It's ironic that we are American filmmakers and this is an American film. I wonder if the film would have had the similar results if it was a German film. It really is a German story and we our outsiders telling their history.
RE
After awhile our outside perspective made sense. In our interpretation of this history, it began to make sense that we were approaching it from an outside perspective. The fact that we aren't German enabled us to access different levels that someone with an inside perspective might have not been able to access.
DO
Tell us about some of the things the German government has done or is thinking about doing in response to Paragraph 175?
RE
In March of this year, the governing Social Democratic and Greens parties introduced a bill to acknowledge Nazi persecution of gays and ask the government to review whether to annul convictions under the Nazi-era anti-gay law that remained on the books until 1969.
JF
One of the spokesman for the Greens Party stated that it's shameful that there is only now a Parliament majority for such an apology and rehabilitation. The San Francisco Chronicle article detailing this news from Berlin credits Paragraph 175 with helping to bring attention to the plight of gay men during the years of the Holocaust and the years following.
DO
Are you surprised by the political response the film is receiving?
JF
I was surprised, amazed in fact. I've never had such a tangible political result from my work as a filmmaker. It's exciting.
DO
It's interesting when art influencing politics, especially when they are often seen as separate entities.
RE
It's even more interesting because we don't see ourselves as political filmmakers. We really didn't have an agenda going into this film besides creating something out of this history that would mean something.
DO
How did you reach the people that you ended up interviewing in Paragraph 175?
RE
The men that we interviewed lead, and have lead, very isolated lives. We reached them because they perhaps had one young gay friend who served as their connection to contemporary culture. I think there is a lot of irony and unfairness to their situation. All those years that gay people were marching in parades and carrying pink triangles and Holocaust remembrances were being conducted around the word, no mention was being made about homosexuals who were persecuted during the Holocaust.
JF
The men we interviewed and worked with made me think about how I would like to be when and if I am an old gay man. With some of the men, it was a cautionary tale while others seemed fairly happy with themselves and their lives. One aspect we were committed to conveying was the fact that these men really had no institutional support systems from the community. They lived very isolated lives.
DO
There was no gay movement around them?
RE
No. And I am sure that is true for many old gay people. For the people we spoke with, it is that much more tragic because of what they have been through in their lives.
JF
I think for young people in general, old age doesn't exist. When I was twenty, I didn't think I was going to live past thirty-five, and that was before AIDS. Thirty-five seemed so unfathomably old to me, that it had no meaning.
RE
It was centuries away.
JF
Yes. It was the world of parents and grandparents and ancestors. It had nothing to do with me.
RE
The concept of growing older, of reaching old age, is something I don't think people begin to think about until they are reaching mid-life.
DO
By that time, given our youth-obsessed culture, no one under the age of twenty-five wants to talk to you anyway.
JF
Some do.
DO
I do.
JF
The smart ones do.
DO
I remember being offended on a number of occasions when associates mock gay bars where older men gather. I am sure we've all heard slurs directed at "Twin Peaks"... like "the glass coffin" or "the wrinkle room."
JF
(laughing) Twin Peaks... yes... one of the only gay bars in this city you can actually have a conversation in.
DO
I've learned so much sitting in that particular bar and listening to stories about San Francisco from before I was even born. I am grateful we have old gay men around, willing to share their stories. Paragraph 175 helped to remind me that these old people, so often marginalized or disregarded, are treasure chests of information, stories, and history. It's easy to forget that in a culture where everyone is fighting to remain "young."
RE
America is a very youth-driven culture and it's been that way for as long as I can remember. I think in San Francisco this reality is complicated by the fact that we lost scores of men to AIDS. There were so many men who would have been now reaching their forties, fifties, and sixties who are gone. That loss leaves a real imbalance, a real void in the gay community.
DO
Many people have drawn comparisons between the loss of lives during the Holocaust and the loss of lives during the early days of AIDS.
RE
Yes.
DO
Will this youth-driven culture to which you refer forget the stories and lives of these men who battled AIDS early on, just as the world forgot, until now, about the gay men persecuted during the Nazi Holocaust?
RE
I think we've forgotten already.
JF
Maybe it's time to re-release "Common Threads."
DO
Maybe it is.
I noticed many photographs in the film of the interviewees when they were young, beautiful, smiling and full of wonder at the life that lay ahead of them. During that photographic montage, you had a musical accompaniment of a very young Marlene Dietrich singing "Falling In Love Again." I couldn't help but notice that you selected the version from the 1929 German film The Blue Angel. Now this was Dietrich at 28 years old: the rotund, energetic, beer-drinking frau that she was in the 1920's. Now at the end of the film, you selected the same song, but it was Dietrich singing it circa 1970: world weary, aging, stalwart Dietrich... defiantly singing the song that made her famous in her youth. Accompanying this older version of "Falling In Love Again" was a visual montage of your interview subjects as they are today. This theme of going from youthful idealism to elderly isolation really touched me. Was this the intent of selecting that song and those visual montages?
RE
(laughing) Yes. Yes. Sheila Nevins at HBO, a very important person to this project, suggested "Falling In Love Again." We thought it was a great idea and began to listen to recordings.
JF
And there are as many recordings of Dietrich singing "Falling In Love Again" as there are of Judy Garland singing "Over The Rainbow." We found this youthful, sweet version of the song and a harsher, older version and it just seemed to be where they belonged.
RE
We didn't plan it so much as we allowed our intuition to lead us to where the songs should be placed. Hopefully, it works.
DO
It does.
RE
One of the universal responses during initial screenings of this film was that viewers wanted to know what happened to these people. At that point, we didn't have the character updates at the end of the film. It became important for us to show at the end of the film what happened to each of these people following the war. What better place, we thought, to reprise the song.
DO
As gay men, what are some of the issues in your own lives and in that of other gay people and how do you see film and art as addressing these issues?
RE
In my own life, I feel less interested in being ghettoized. I think that is partly a function of age and party feeling more comfortable with myself as a gay man in all aspects of my life.
JF
I think a corollary to that is that young people these days are feeling less polarized about their sexuality. There seems to be less pressure to identify as exclusively straight of gay, there seems to be more freedom to explore the gray areas.
DO
Allow me to play devil's advocate for a moment and ask the question some people who are not so familiar with the issues Paragraph 175 examines might ask. Why did you make this film? What is so important about this? It all happened in the past, right? We are certainly more civilized as a world, as a culture, than we were then. Nothing this atrocious could possibly ever happen again. Why not just leave it alone? Why not move on to things that are happening to gay people today?
RE
I think probably the best films are the ones in which you can't answer that question. This was just one of those projects that had to be done.
JF
(laughing) I'll try to answer it anyway. There is a striking resemblance between the rhetoric used against gay people in that era and the rhetoric we hear today from the right wing. Now that is not to say that Pat Buchanan is a Nazi. But it is worth looking at the similarities between the Nazi rhetoric and the family values rhetoric. Also, as remote in both time and geography as these stories are I can't help feeling that there is some residue of that experience in our experience of being gay today even though it happened to other people in another place. I have this almost mystical belief that there is a resonance today from what happened then. By exploring it and trying to come to terms with it we are better able to come to terms with where we are and who we are today.
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Purchase Paragraph 175 on DVD today
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