Jake Newsome’s YouTube Channel

Jake shares original content on his YouTube channel, as well as curating reliable videos created by the world’s leading scholars into playlists by themes, including: gay men during the Holocaust, pre-Nazi queer history, lesbian Holocaust history, and trans* Holocaust history.

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“They’re Enemies of the State!” The Nazi Persecution of LGBTQ+ Communities during the Holocaust

Lecture by Dr. Jake Newsome (Public Scholar)
Sponsored by “Unspoken” feature film
(2022. Runtime 20 minutes)

In this lecture, presented by ‘Unspoken’ feature film, Dr. Jake Newsome draws on archival material to sketch the lived experiences of members of the German LGBTQ+ community during the Holocaust. The lecture explores how Nazi understandings of sexuality and race were related. In doing so, Dr. Newsome untangles the complex motivations that convinced Nazi leaders that combating homosexuality was vital to the success of the Third Reich. The result was the destruction of the vibrant gay communities that had emerged during the Weimar years, and the targeting, torture, and murder of tens of thousands of LGBTQ+ Germans. And while the Holocaust ended with the defeat of Nazi Germany in May 1945, gay survivors soon learned that the era of state-sanctioned persecution was not over. Visit http://www.UnspokenTheFilm.com for more.

Count Their Names: The Nazi Persecution of LGBTQ People

Interview with Dr. Jake Newsome (Public Scholar);
Co-sponsored by Congregation Rodeph Shalom, the Philadelphia Holocaust Remembrance Foundation, JProud (of the Jewish Family and Children Services of Greater Philadelphia), and the William Way LGBT Community Center
(January 2022. Runtime 1 hour 15 minutes)

When the names and numbers of Holocaust victims are commemorated and mourned, one group of victims is often uncounted – LGBTQ+ people. It is for the most shameful reason – the persecution of gay people in Nazi Germany successor states continued after World War II. Download this viewing guide that provides the questions discussed during the digital program as well as clickable timestamps that take viewers to the corresponding spot in the YouTube video.

Transgender Experiences in Weimar and Nazi Germany

Panel Discussion featuring: Dr. Anna Hájková (Associate Professor of Modern European Continental History at the University of Warwick), Dr. Katie Sutton (Associate Professor of German and Gender Studies, School of Literature, Languages and Linguistics at Australian National University), and Dr. Bodie A. Ashton (Postdoctoral Researcher and Lecturer at Universität Erfurt); Moderated by Rabbi Marisa Elana James (Director of Social Justice Programming at Congregation Beit Simchat Torah in New York)
Sponsored by the Museum of Jewish Heritage
(June 2022; Runtime: 1 hour 5 minutes)

Before 1933, Germany was a center of LGBT+ community and culture, with several renowned organizations serving and supporting trans and gender non-conforming people. Hitler’s Nazi government, however, brutally targeted the trans community, deporting many trans people to concentration camps and wiping out vibrant community structures. As transgender people are now increasingly targets of discriminatory legislation and hate, join the Museum for a program exploring these stories and experiences prior to and during the Holocaust.

Gay Berlin: Birthplace of a Modern Identity

Interview with Dr. Robert Beachy (Professor of History, Yonsei University). Moderated by Eric Marcus (founder of the “Making Gay History” podcast)
Sponsored by the Museum of Jewish Heritage
June 2019. Runtime: 1 hour 7 minutes

Decadent, pre-WWII Berlin was the undisputed gay capital of the world—as imagined in “Cabaret,” and more recently in the TV shows “Babylon Berlin” and “Transparent.” Professor Robert Beachy’s book Gay Berlin chronicles the milieu that gave rise to the international gay rights movement, with key strides made for scientific research, advocacy, and visibility—before the Nazis came to power. 

The Nazi Policy against Homosexuals: Policing Behavior in the People’s Community

Lecture by Dr. Jennifer V. Evans (Professor of History, Carleton University, Ontario)
Presented by the Center for Austrian Studies and CHGS, cosponsored by Metropolitan State University and the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum.
(March 2018. Runtime: 1 hour)

In this lecture, expert Jennifer Evans walks viewers through the homophobic and transphobic ideologies that motivated the Nazis’ policies against queer people.

Transgender Identities and the Police in Nazi Germany

Lecture by Dr. Laurie Marhoefer (Professor of History, University of Washington) 
(May 2019. Runtime: 52 mins)

Before the Nazis came to power, Germany was one of the global centers of trans activism and home to a thriving subculture of people with transgender identities. You could legally change your birth-assigned sex in some German cities even before 1900. The Nazis changed this. They brutally enforced Germany’s law against “cross-dressing.” Yet many trans people seem to have nevertheless found ways to escape the violence, especially if they were not defined as “racial enemies” of the state. This talk looks at transgender activism before 1933 and discusses what happened to trans people under the Nazi State.

The Daring Life and Dangerous Times of Eve Adams

Book Talk & Panel Discussion by Jonathan Ned Katz
Sponsored by the Museum of Jewish Heritage and the NYC LGBT Historic Sites Project
(June 2021. Runtime 1 hour 11 minutes)

Eve Adams was a rebel. Born Chawa Zloczewer to a Jewish family in Poland, Adams emigrated to the United States in 1912. She took a new name, befriended anarchists, sold radical publications, and ran lesbian and gay-friendly speakeasies in Chicago and Greenwich Village. Then, in 1925, Adams risked all to write and publish a book titled Lesbian Love. In a repressive era, when American women had just gained the right to vote, Adams’ association with notorious anarchists caught the attention of the young J. Edgar Hoover and the U.S. Bureau of Investigation, leading to her surveillance, arrest, and ultimate deportation into the Nazis’ reign of terror, where she was sent to Auschwitz and killed. In The Daring Life and Dangerous Times of Eve Adams, historian Jonathan Ned Katz has recovered Adam’s extraordinary story of Adams. He shared his research and what went into the first biography of Adams. He was joined by speakers from the NYC LGBT Historic Sites Project to provide historic context for Adams’ story in our neighborhoods.

Persecution of Homosexuals in Germany during and after the Holocaust

Lecture by Dr. Geoffrey Giles (Professor Emeritus of History, University of Florida) presented at Claremont McKenna College
(October 2016. Runtime: 1 hour 15 mins)

In this lecture, scholar Geoffrey Giles presents his research on the Nazi persecution of gay men in Nazi Germany, with a particular focus on the Nazis’ use of Paragraph 175.

The Nazi Persecution of Gay People

US Holocaust Memorial Museum Facebook Live episode with guest Dr. Jake Newsome (Public Scholar) 
(June 2019. Runtime: 33 minutes)

Within weeks of the Nazis’ rise to Power in January 1933, the Nazis drove Germany’s gay culture underground and waged a violent campaign against homosexuality. Over the next 12 years, more than 100,000 men were arrested for violating Germany’s law against “unnatural indecency among men.” During this time, proof was often not required to convict an individual. Some were sent to concentration camps and subjected to hard labor, cruelty, and even medical experiments aimed at “curing” them. Join the USHMM a Pride Month Facebook Live as they give voice to a community silenced during the Holocaust.