Originally released in 1999, Rob Epstein’s and Jeffrey Friedman’s documentary was another in the directors’ explorations of gay history and themes, with The Times of Harvey Milk (1984), The Celluloid Closet (1995), and the Oscar-winning Common Threads (1989) being their best known works. The title, Paragraph 175, refers to the German penal code that forbade homosexuality, though as the script, soberly narrated by Rupert Everett, points out, the law almost exclusively targeted gay men, as they tended to represent everything the Nazi sensibility seemed to abhor by “depriving Germany of the children they need.” (Lesbians were considered “curable” in that they were capable of giving birth.) 

As someone whose adolescent eyes were opened to the wider possibilities of sexual freedom by Cabaret, I found it fascinating to learn how vibrant the gay community was in Berlin between the wars. “So much joy!” as one witness remembers it. For the most part, the gay denizens of Berlin waved off anti-sodomy laws and the authorities tolerated their free spirits. There was a campaign to abolish paragraph 175 that seemed destined to succeed until the 30s rolled around and Hitler took over. Aryan purity became the thing. Abstinence was a virtue, and the new order looked askance at trendy youth movements that advocated for nudism (“nature and friendship”) and Zionism. Ironically, one of Hitler’s right-hand men was a well-known homosexual who actually organized the Storm Troopers. Hitler ignored his sexual predilection while he was useful and then arrested him when that usefulness ended, and he was put to death. The regime destroyed one of the most advanced research centers for sexual studies after the Reichstag fire and then the SS targeted every gay meeting place in the country, rounding up all the men they found and sending them off to the newly established archipelago of concentration camps. Because homosexuals weren’t always labeled as such, statistics were difficult to nail down, but it’s estimated that 100,000 were arrested and up to 15,000 were locked up in camps, where many perished. 

The story is mostly explicated by the dozen survivors that the directors located. Almost all are men who don’t necessarily trust their interlocutors. “You have to see this romantically,” one insists, and goes on to describe how the terrors of Nazism and the war in general brought these men (and boys—the movie isn’t squeamish about the love between minors and adult men) together. “We had sex on the train,” another says forcefully when the interviewer fails to get his drift. A French nonagenarian reveals he still can’t talk to anyone with a German background. The archival footage is extensive and remarkably evocative, but it’s the descriptions that carry the film. One man recalls the “singing forest” where Nazis captured gay men and tied them to trees, torturing them to death. Another admits to enlisting in the German Army because that’s where all the men were. Many survived the war only to end up in prison for violating paragraph 175, which wasn’t rescinded until 1969. (For a more dramatic recreation of that postwar milieu, see the Austrian film, Great Freedom.) There is even one woman who tells the heartbreaking story of receiving a precious travel permit to England from her lover, a woman who “looked like Marlene Dietrich.” Though the witnesses are probably dead by now, this topic can never be exhausted. 

In English, German and French. Now playing in Tokyo until March 29 at Shinjuku K’s Cinema.

Paragraph 175 home page in Japanese