We Were Marked with a Big A
- Director: Elke Jeanrond; Joseph Weishaupt
CGiii Comment
As far as we can find, there have only been 4 films made about the 'gay holocaust'...
Desire: Sexuality in Germany 1910-1945 (1990) - Directed by Stuart Marshall
Bent (1997) - Directed by Sean Mathias
Paragraph 175 (2000) - Directed by Rob Epstein & Jeffrey Friedman
and, this one...
We Were Marked with a Big A (1991) - Directed by Elke Jeanrond & Joseph Weishaupt.
Before the pink triangle...there was the big 'A'...the 'A' stands for...arschficker.
Sadly (and tragically), this is a very difficult film to get a hold of...film festivals take note...this film deserves to be seen over and over again.
We hear about experiences during the war, in the camps...cruel and sadistic as they were...but, after the fall of the Reich and the end of the war...the cruelty continued.
In 1957, the German courts ruled, upholding Paragraph 175 and stated that that gay prisoners were "common criminals" who were legitimately imprisoned. Thereby, any claims for compensation were routinely rejected.
Perhaps...this is the reason why this film is so hard to come by...the shame of it all. As if they hadn't gone through enough...yes, rub salt into those homosexual wounds.
A film that demands to be seen.
A subject that warrants more research and exposure.
No trailer...
The(ir) Blurb...
This deeply moving film reminds the world of the forgotten history of gay survivors of Nazi Germany. As many as 15,000 gay men were sent to concentration camps, targeted by the Nazis as subversives. In this powerful documentary, three gay survivors share their stories. The 'A' (which stood for 'Arschficker'/'Assfucker') refers to a symbol (which pre-dated the pink triangle) that gay prisoners were forced to wear.