This talk will explore same-sex desire among Holocaust victims in ghettos and concentration camps, the homophobic reaction of fellow prisoners, and the ongoing erasure of queer Jewish survivors from memory.

Sexuality was for Holocaust victims a crucial coping mechanism, an important resource, and a source of pleasure. However, it has hardly been researched in the Jewish history of the Holocaust, and has at best been used to provoke curiosity or titillation.

Anna Hajkova discusses how queery sexuality was perceived by protagonists and observers, how it came to be marked as deviant, and how it came to be one of the most stigmatised and erased aspects of the genocide. Finally, she asks how we can use erased queer voices to write a more inclusive history of the Holocaust.