Transgender Experiences in Weimar and Nazi Germany

This program’s original recording transcript is below. This transcription was created automatically during a live program so may contain inaccurate transcriptions of some words.

Ariel Kates: Good afternoon, everyone welcome my name is Ariel Kates i'm the director of marketing at the Museum of Jewish heritage, a living memorial to the Holocaust.

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Ariel Kates: Now, in its 24th year the museum is committed to the crucial mission of educating our diverse community about Jewish life and heritage, before, during and after the Holocaust.

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Ariel Kates: As a part of that mission our programs are meant to illuminate the stories of survivors broader histories of hate and anti semitism through time and stories of resistance against and justice.

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Ariel Kates: Today, we are here to discuss the experiences of transgender and non binary folks in weimer and Nazi Germany we've talked before about the pink triangle and gay experiences specifically.

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Ariel Kates: But as the rights healthcare access and really the very existence of trans people are being curtailed at the whim of legislation in the United States and around the world we're glad to be able to delve into this history today.

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Ariel Kates: we're so pleased to have such an international panel of scholars here to bring us many different perspectives experiences and languages, about a topic that is dear to each of us in different ways.

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Ariel Kates: it's tricky to talk about people in the past with contemporary language that didn't even exist at the time.

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Ariel Kates: We talked about this often at the museum and our programs and our exhibitions and more so i'm very grateful to our panel and to all of you for being here to navigate and explore this with us.

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Ariel Kates: i'm also so pleased to be here with my beloved congregation bates in cloud Torah or co host for today's Program.

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Ariel Kates: We are very honored to be joined by Dr Anna hi Dr katie Sutton Dr Brody Ashton and rabbi Melissa ilana chains and Dr Anna hi cola and i've got some bios i'm going to read them they're very impressive.

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Ariel Kates: Dr Anna hi cola is associate professor of modern European continental history at the University of Warwick in addition to her academic work, Dr heckuva is a queer history activists and public intellectual in her first book, the last ghetto and everyday history of tracing.

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Ariel Kates: Theresienstadt was published in 2020.

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Ariel Kates: Dr katie son is associate professor of German and gender studies.

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Ariel Kates: At the school of literature languages and linguistics at Australian national university she studies German culture, literature and history and the 20th and 21st centuries and focuses on the history of gender and sexuality.

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Ariel Kates: Dr sons most recent monograph sex between body and mind psychoanalysis and technology in the German speaking world 1890s to 1930s was published in 2019.

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Ariel Kates: Dr Brody Ashton is a postdoctoral researcher and lecturer at the university taught or front, where he is working on the Volkswagen Oh, this is so, this is going to be a rough for the body, forgive me.

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Dr. Bodie Ashton: Can I jump in then, if you.

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Ariel Kates: guys.

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Dr. Bodie Ashton: Go for it absolutely I I work on the folks five inch Stiftung so the folk swag and foundation fly guys to project the other global Germany So there you go.

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Ariel Kates: Yes, trance Thank you transnational criminality and deviant globalization in Germany.

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Ariel Kates: Dr questions reach research focuses on the construction and understanding of historical queer and particularly transgender and non conforming identities and modern German history.

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Ariel Kates: His first monograph the Kingdom of wartenberg the making of Germany 1850 to 1871 was published in 2017.

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Ariel Kates: rob i'm racing ilana James who will be serving as our moderator this afternoon is the director of social justice programming I congregation bates implied Torah.

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Ariel Kates: She is a graduate of the reconstruction is rabbinical college and before coming to CBS T rabbi Champs helped create a need the rabbinical student program for true.

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Ariel Kates: The rabbinical call for human rights, so just a little bit of zoom protocol i'm going to go off camera and on mute but I will be here in the chat.

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Ariel Kates: feel free to put questions for our panelists at any time during the talk into the Q amp a function that just helps us to keep better track of everything we're here for thoughts and questions, and thank you so much, everyone i'm going to hand this over to you now.

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Dr. Katie Sutton: Well, thank you so much of that really great introduction and thank you also to Sydney yoga for her organization and to rabbi James for hosting today.

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Dr. Katie Sutton: So as Mario just said i'm an Australian based historian of early 20th century, Germany and I focus especially on the history of gender and sexuality in the Weimar Republic.

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Dr. Katie Sutton: I myself identify as queer non Jewish non trends, but with a long affinity with gender queer endless and i'm happy with both she or they pronouns so i'm going to get started with a bit of a.

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Dr. Katie Sutton: bit of background on the rise of queer and trans communities in the Weimar Republic, and this was of course a really dynamic a really tumultuous time in Germany, following the end of World War one and the signing of that country's first democratic constitution.

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Dr. Katie Sutton: I realized that an important part of what we'll be discussing today is the ways in which trans or transgender and gender diverse individuals were targeted under national socialism.

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Dr. Katie Sutton: And this is something that bodie and enter, in particular, will speak to in a bit more detail.

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Dr. Katie Sutton: But I wanted to spend a few minutes pointing to the really diverse and quite thriving trans subculture that had began to emerge in Germany by the MID to late 1920s, and especially in the capital of building.

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Dr. Katie Sutton: So i'm just going to attempt a screen share.

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Dr. Katie Sutton: I hope that's working okay.

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Dr. Katie Sutton: So this is an image of young trans men get cutter and it's from 1928.

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Dr. Katie Sutton: Carter was an apprentice carpenter he was 18 years old, at the time, this photo was taken and was living in the working class suburb of Brits.

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Dr. Katie Sutton: So he'd gone into the Berlin police headquarters to apply for this piece of identity documentation which declares him as known to be wearing sorry, known as wearing men's clothes.

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Dr. Katie Sutton: And as you can see it's got the official stamp it's been signed by the Commissioner of the Criminal Police.

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Dr. Katie Sutton: And the idea is that it would protect cutter who had been assigned female at birth and raised as a girl from possible arrest and germany's gross mischief or public nuisance laws so basically to protect them against potential charges of cross dressing.

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Dr. Katie Sutton: It was known, it was an example of what was known colloquially as a transfer Stephen shine so a transvestite certificate or pass and there were quite a few of these issued in a during these years, especially in bigger cities like Berlin Cologne or Munich.

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Dr. Katie Sutton: and part of the process of applying for past like this was to get a medical certificate.

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Dr. Katie Sutton: So this was an early example of the kind of medical hoop jumping that trans people have often had to go go through to have their identity formally recognized.

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Dr. Katie Sutton: But an interesting aspect of cutters certificate was that it was signed by the famous sexologist Magnus hirschfeld of the Institute for sexual science in Berlin and i'm sure that many of you.

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Dr. Katie Sutton: are familiar with that Institute and with the name of here showed who, you can see there on the right.

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Dr. Katie Sutton: So he had to go to tested to the authorities that cutter was quote a transvestite in the clinical sense, unquote that he needed to women's clothing, to be able to function properly and to work.

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Dr. Katie Sutton: And i'm very aware as Arielle also indicated that you know transvestite is not the term that we use today for gender diverse people.

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Dr. Katie Sutton: Some people would consider it today offensive some people could see it as focus too much on clothes or cross dressing, some people do continue to own it for themselves as well.

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Dr. Katie Sutton: But I think it's important to remember that cutter and other trans people in the 1920s.

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Dr. Katie Sutton: were starting to proudly claim this term as one of the first labels that was really specifically available to describe people who didn't identify them who didn't identify with the six that had been assigned to them at birth.

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Dr. Katie Sutton: And the term had been coined by hirschfeld I hope that you can see that the cover of the book now.

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Dr. Katie Sutton: he'd also come up with other terms like the sex or sexual intermediaries and in 1910 he published a book on this topic, as you can see here.

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Dr. Katie Sutton: And this was followed in 1912 by an illustrated volume.

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Dr. Katie Sutton: And I think this illustrated volume is particularly interesting because.

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Dr. Katie Sutton: What i'm what i'm interested in here is that it wasn't just a case of doctors and scientists sort of talking down to patients or pathology rising sex gender otherness it was in many case.

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Dr. Katie Sutton: A case of individuals like that you know the person in the Center here going out getting their portrait taken and sending it to sexologist and really asking them to spend more time engaging with.

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Dr. Katie Sutton: different kinds of sex gender diversity, so it was a real back and forth.

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Dr. Katie Sutton: And what I think we're seeing by the MID 1920s, is an interplay then have a new scientific language for describing different kinds of sex gender identities and new kinds of identity political formation.

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Dr. Katie Sutton: So new kinds of organizations that were starting to campaign, the queer and trans rights.

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Dr. Katie Sutton: And this was certainly helped along by the fact that self censorship was drastically reduced, with the advent of the Weimar Republic and the mass print media has really come into being in a big way.

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Dr. Katie Sutton: So i'm going to show you some images from the Weimar queer and trans media, these are particularly from the MID to late 1920s, and you can see that there were columns with.

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Dr. Katie Sutton: titles like down the bottom, do you build that translates teton so transvestites world or simply the transvestite or on the right, you can see a magazine called the third six, which was quite specifically dedicated to trans trans and gender diverse interests.

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Dr. Katie Sutton: So in these magazines readers could get advice on how to avoid conflict with the police.

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Dr. Katie Sutton: were to shop for gender appropriate clothing and a really important aspect of the magazines were autobiographical writings where people.

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Dr. Katie Sutton: could share their own story, maybe of coming out as as trans the best time of going out in public in address, for the first time, just the first time they were really recognized as the gender they knew themselves to be.

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Dr. Katie Sutton: An important aspect of these magazines, is that they were starting to enable a sense of crap trans Community or trans culture, even for people who might not have been able to go in person to the trans organizations or clubs.

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Dr. Katie Sutton: Who might have lived very far away from building, but he could see themselves as no longer alone, but as part of a larger community.

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Dr. Katie Sutton: And I think you might be able to see in the middle there there's mention of the the for any given day on the D on association which was one of the new specifically trans clubs or social organizations in the Weimar period.

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Dr. Katie Sutton: But I wanted to point also to the limits of Weimar liberalism around trans rights and the limits of these magazines.

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Dr. Katie Sutton: And, as our colleague lori mark offer has so persuasively argued the right to greater freedoms for some members of society.

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Dr. Katie Sutton: tended to be argued for at the cost of other more marginalized groups, and this is a pattern that we also see happening in the trend scene in the 1920s, so there are certainly arguments being made for Trans people to be.

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Dr. Katie Sutton: counted as you know, citizens with a full set of citizen rights and that included having their identity recognized, but they tended to these magazines tended to be.

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Dr. Katie Sutton: dominated by very middle class interests they tended to exclude working class voices trans sex workers.

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Dr. Katie Sutton: People who had a criminal criminal record, for example, maybe people who were just a little bit more showy with their dress so there was a real emphasis on middle class respectability and this emphasis, you can see.

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Dr. Katie Sutton: In these images here where there's a lot of emphasis on words like well dressed or inconspicuously on being able to pass or fly under the radar and not draw the attention of police or society.

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Dr. Katie Sutton: So just to wrap up his opening remarks, the Weimar years represented a time of great promise for gender diverse people.

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Dr. Katie Sutton: There were new ways of expressing one's identity that when you basis for claiming a political identity and wider community.

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Dr. Katie Sutton: But there were also some important limits on who had access to that promise in community and the idea of middle class respectability played a very strong role in that.

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Dr. Katie Sutton: So on that note, I believe I will pass on to to bodie and I will stop sharing the screen.

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Dr. Bodie Ashton: Well, thank you so much katie and thank you to everyone who's been involved in putting this event together it's a remarkable thing to be doing, especially as pride month has just started, of course, and this is obviously something that's very dear to all of our hearts.

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Dr. Bodie Ashton: I just by way of brief introduction, my name is cody Ashton, I generally go by him pronouns I myself identify as being gender queer.

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Dr. Bodie Ashton: You might be able to tell from the accent that like katie Sutton I am Australian, but I have ended up.

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Dr. Bodie Ashton: In Germany, and I work at the University of airport and my focus here has largely been on how queer history can be understood in the context of sort of a so called deviant globalization, with very, very big scare quotes around the word deviant there.

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Dr. Bodie Ashton: So, how we can understand the movement of identities and the understanding of identities, as well as the policing of them.

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Dr. Bodie Ashton: So, in order to explain a little bit more of that I do want to tell you a little bit of a story.

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Dr. Bodie Ashton: Because, as has already been.

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Dr. Bodie Ashton: Rather.

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Dr. Bodie Ashton: signposted so far i'm sort of at the midpoint between what katie Sutton has just spoken about, so the the promise, but also the limitations of the early VI my years.

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Dr. Bodie Ashton: In terms of gender and sexual diversity and then laser what and a high level talk about where her focuses mainly, of course, the repression of the of the Nazi years.

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Dr. Bodie Ashton: So i'm sort of that that midpoint says Weimar begins to collapse and the Nazis begins again the ascendancy and I will just I wasn't actually going to share my screen but i've decided that I should because.

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Dr. Bodie Ashton: If i'm going to tell a story, then I want you to be able to see who i'm talking about and, hopefully, you can see that.

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Dr. Bodie Ashton: Because I want to talk a little bit about this extraordinary woman she's someone who's taken up a lot of my time for the last.

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Dr. Bodie Ashton: For the last nine months or so she's been the major focus of the research work that i've been doing an effort and her name, as you can probably tell from the top of the screen is ladybugs.

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Dr. Bodie Ashton: ladybugs have is an extraordinary woman and one of the reasons for that is because she gives us an extraordinary a really unique example.

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Dr. Bodie Ashton: of someone who, in this time and place and space is defining herself and defining how she understands herself and brings back this idea as katie has already pointed out here that.

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Dr. Bodie Ashton: What we really want to be for grounding when we start looking at transgender histories and gender non conforming agenda diverse histories of this time.

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Dr. Bodie Ashton: Is that we really want to bring the Agency back to the people who inhabit these identities.

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Dr. Bodie Ashton: So, all too often, what we have done in the past and we continue to do this in many ways is that we've sort of given the keys to to defining an identity to people who are not part of that identity.

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Dr. Bodie Ashton: katie has already mentioned Magnus hirschfeld, for example, and I certainly don't want to suggest that here shields work is.

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Dr. Bodie Ashton: is not in any way, shape or form important, but the thing about him is that he was a sexologist, which means that he was a scientist, which means he was an empiricists he himself was a sister and a gay man.

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Dr. Bodie Ashton: And what he is doing throughout the period of the early the early parts of the 20th century, starting from about 1908 onwards, is that he's actually writing works that are reporting what he is.

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Dr. Bodie Ashton: Observing as an empirical scientist, so, in other words he's not inventing the identity of the transfer steeds he is in fact inventing a vocabulary to describe that identity but he's really reporting on the experiences of people who inhabit that identity.

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Dr. Bodie Ashton: And what i'm trying to do with the with my focus on liddy barcroft is using the the extraordinary keep using the words, the word extraordinary here, but really it suits.

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Dr. Bodie Ashton: Using the extraordinary sources that she has left behind, we can actually see an example of how an individual.

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Dr. Bodie Ashton: understood their identity and created their identity and and constructed, it not only for themselves, but in order to present themselves to a broader public to the people they knew and so on.

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Dr. Bodie Ashton: So i'll keep it as short as I possibly can hear so that we can then move on to to your honor to be able to talk about her brilliant research but.

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Dr. Bodie Ashton: liddy back off was a transgender woman who was also a sex worker who lived and worked in Hamburg, having originally been born rather further south in.

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Dr. Bodie Ashton: In Germany, but she moved up to Hamburg, in order to really take a place within the burgeoning and and very strong.

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Dr. Bodie Ashton: sex industry in Hamburg, of course, Hamburg, being a port city, it has a large number of visitors in terms of itinerant sailors, as well as tourists and so on, and therefore the red light district in Hamburg is even today very, very well known that the Bourbon, for example.

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Dr. Bodie Ashton: Lady back have played her trade around the vapor barn and in the district, known as poly.

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Dr. Bodie Ashton: And she presented the whole time as a woman, so she understood herself to be a woman, she presented herself outwardly to other people as a woman.

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Dr. Bodie Ashton: This was not a case of simply sort of taking on the clothing and pretending as much of the much of the discourse surrounding this at the time, and even today would suggest.

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Dr. Bodie Ashton: One of the ways that we know so much about what about her or, rather, we have the potential to know so much about here is the fact that she was a She was arrested many, many times.

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Dr. Bodie Ashton: Because, of course, she was still regardless how she presented herself, she was still regarded by the authorities as being a SIS gender homosexual man and again as katie has already said, there were limitations to the the supposedly liberalism of divine my years.

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Dr. Bodie Ashton: So we need to remember, of course, that homosexual sexual acts were still illegal.

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Dr. Bodie Ashton: And she was arrested on many occasions was sent to prison on many occasions, and while she was in prison, actually, for the first couple of years, so 1930 and 31 she wrote a number of prose pieces that are intended to be sort of a creative nonfiction approach to her own life.

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Dr. Bodie Ashton: So this was a way basically for liddy to through text and through writing prose.

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Dr. Bodie Ashton: To use her and creativity to put down on paper her own for want of a better term because it is of course a cliche but her agenda journey, so to speak.

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Dr. Bodie Ashton: which includes not only her feeling out how she feels about clothing and how she feels about makeup and how she feels about expressing herself as a woman.

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Dr. Bodie Ashton: But even finding her name so to begin with, she signs her pieces in her dead name in the name that she was assigned by her parents at birth, that being handled habits and gradually this changes so ultimately she takes on the name of the protagonist of his first story liberty.

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Dr. Bodie Ashton: Then adds a surname to it so she's literally van Monte then takes on the name at liddy barcroft i'm not at all certain where she gets the surname.

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Dr. Bodie Ashton: But she adds the term consisted at the end of this but I heard the end of her output in 1931 she's actually dropped the term transfer steed completely from her own works so she now refers to herself solely as lady backed off, there is no more.

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Dr. Bodie Ashton: Mediation of this identity, in other words she no longer sort of sees herself as being a woman with an asterisk terms and conditions apply she is a woman.

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Dr. Bodie Ashton: there's a lot more to say about lydia, of course, but I might leave that so later until we can get a few.

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Dr. Bodie Ashton: questions and answers going and and a conversation with rabbi James, of course, and of course we need to hear from Anna hi cover but suffice it to say that this story has been the thing that has really taken my interest in the last better part of a year.

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Dr. Bodie Ashton: And I think it's it's one of those vital things that we really do have to delve into into these periods to bring new lights.

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Dr. Bodie Ashton: To the sort of diverse and vibrant histories that for so long have been lacking.

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Dr. Bodie Ashton: In our understanding of this past so without further ado, I will stop sharing my screen and I will handle it for them to cover, but it is again once more a great pleasure to be able to speak with you here today, so Emma.

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Dr. Anna Hájková: Thank you buddy this was wonderful and thank you katie this was it's a great honor to speak in your presence.

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Dr. Anna Hájková: Many, many things to submit and a real for inviting me and I want to say today my pronounce I she her, and I am assists woman who is clear and kind of partly Jewish.

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Dr. Anna Hájková: Even though I still am trying to figure that out, and I guess the reason why i've been invited to speak here today is that i'm a Holocaust history and, unlike my two predecessors and, of course.

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Dr. Anna Hájková: We are hosted here today by a Jewish history museum by Holocaust Museum, and I cannot stress enough what an enormous step that is that you guys are organizing they said I hope.

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Dr. Anna Hájková: it's one of many, many events to come not only with your particular in Europe but around the world.

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Dr. Anna Hájková: And you've already mentioned that a real i've worked in my second project after today's in shirt on clear Holocaust history is that.

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Dr. Anna Hájková: I explored us who have been persecuted by the Nazis as Jews in ghettos concentration camps in hiding and elsewhere, who spent the war in article goodbye to Europe, that is, people who stay after 38 or 39 who.

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Dr. Anna Hájková: Either consensually or romantically our core civil participate in same sex desire romantic relationships and so on.

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Dr. Anna Hájková: And, unlike my two wonderful predecessors, until recently, I have not really worked for too much about transistors here I taught it.

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Dr. Anna Hájková: And when I came across the story so pass it on to my colleagues, but when I got invited to this event, I thought selfishly, it is a good intellectual chica moment.

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Dr. Anna Hájková: For me, to think about stories in my research that are gender queer relevant and kind of give myself a challenge, how can I feed it to the bigger research but also.

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Dr. Anna Hájková: I am constantly aware of the topic that my research is often interpret this as uncomfortable or even if people want to make me feel particularly unwelcome as.

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Dr. Anna Hájková: controversial and there's a bit of a binary thinking in which three people in the Holocaust are always Gentile and all of the Jews are heterosexual and therefore I thought it is actually worthwhile taking in this interpretation or to explore some of the topics here.

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Dr. Anna Hájková: I want to before I go to a three case studies that I want to discuss with you make a point about pronounce I will be discussing all of three people.

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Dr. Anna Hájková: Using the somewhat anachronistic pronounce as day because I do not know how they have themselves self identified and in a way, I use here they as a placeholder in there, not knowing more about them and.

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Dr. Anna Hájková: I thought the following three case studies, a bit of a tastemaker of what research could be done for people who will come after me or who are working.

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Dr. Anna Hájková: At the same time, and I will come to that, at the end so without further ado, I want to start sharing my screen and I want to introduce you.

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Dr. Anna Hájková: To our image Greenspan who was born in 1904 in what is, today, the Czech Republic and then after 45 was Czechoslovakia in chernoff or in Germany and off, and this is an area that inserted eight was annexed to greater German it doesn't go, he was sorry, they were have Jewish.

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Dr. Anna Hájková: But because they were not members of the Jewish community live and not persecuted, to send you the mother was deported to today's lunch.

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Dr. Anna Hájková: And in 1944 our machine was sent to forced Labor in what is today France on the Atlantic fortification incredible person.

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Dr. Anna Hájková: After the word they got married and in the 1950s, they got into large difficulty socialist authorities ironically i'm.

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Dr. Anna Hájková: Never accused of fascism, the reasons in the eyes of different bodies that are most stayed in touch with this is their ethnic German friends and relatives who were exposed to Austria and Germany.

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Dr. Anna Hájková: Because they check was for and, eventually, they were sentenced to four years in prison and spent two and a half years in prison.

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Dr. Anna Hájková: After the after the release in the 60s and 70s and died they died in the 1980s, with unknown and kind of as a person who wore women's clothes.

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Dr. Anna Hájková: But what is important here, and what is so inspirational and that kind of gets you a bit of a sense of what fragments we deal with.

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Dr. Anna Hájková: Not only when we get to the Holocaust history, because now i've been working on that the last seven or eight years and I have somewhat more of sources but decided fragments fragments and we have sound like i'm not good in Japan, who is told.

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Dr. Anna Hájková: As secure is it in, and I find it so difficult sharing these images, in a way that do not make fun of them.

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Dr. Anna Hájková: But see them for whoever they self identified, what is important here, and what I can share is that we know from the memories of the physician, who led to the hospital that when grunge one was ill they insisted on being a patient in the women's swimming.

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Dr. Anna Hájková: So for that, then I want to also show you an example of light LM, and that is the story of the other items on who was a physician nearby tubing and in this catalog.

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Dr. Anna Hájková: tubing and wonderful catalog on clear stories around to bring in some of them are Jewish is also the story of items on.

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Dr. Anna Hájková: There the otter professors on VOD speculates and I really appreciate that well it's work, but the driver intersects.

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Dr. Anna Hájková: I was very curious when I heard both district Alfred was published.

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Dr. Anna Hájková: Because Adams on died briefly after doing a petition to today's interested I looked at that are people very closely, by the way it was not so easy because so often German publications.

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Dr. Anna Hájková: You cannot get it through interlibrary loan, so you had to get a friend.

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Dr. Anna Hájková: And to bring a sneak into the museum shop and photographed article, for me, because the only other way would be chilling out 50 euro and buying it and.

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Dr. Anna Hájková: We all know that well paid in the UK i'm afraid I have to say and what turned out that adamson who was Jewish was the voltage to there is insured and.

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Dr. Anna Hájková: was murdered, who died of the conditions, very briefly, afterwards.

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Dr. Anna Hájková: You have the separation between the first traditionally male names on in that is here in Dallas added Mr enforced a female middle name Sarah.

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Dr. Anna Hájková: And deflect gender viably but then the middle of the profession is our physician male physicians are there and female physician and traditionally every seat me know about Adams on is that Devon mail.

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Dr. Anna Hájková: When I looked at that I was a bit taken aback because of when they died in 442, this is the moment of the headstone highest mortality.

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Dr. Anna Hájková: In the tourism transit get over there are thousands of people dying every month, and this is not the only case of the death certificate Where are you come across arrows even.

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Dr. Anna Hájková: Eros engender and in the situation where the only evidence, leading to any.

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Dr. Anna Hájková: Information about gender clearness about intersex or whatever, I would add on some is the mistake and the death certificate.

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Dr. Anna Hájková: I would be very, very careful and that moment I picked up the phone and calls on Walden said, is this your neighbor and, as you have because I have seen either the certificates that the gender.

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Dr. Anna Hájková: Was erroneous simply because the Jewish functionary so filling out so he took them every day.

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Dr. Anna Hájková: And this is, I thought would be worthwhile also showing you how incredibly important it is when you think about this history is to have a very, very firm.

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Dr. Anna Hájková: context in the histories of the ghetto concentration camp at hand because I would actually not see this as a sufficient evidence.

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Dr. Anna Hájková: So and visit, I want to come to my last example, that is the position of the clown and female impersonator humble or hurry hyman.

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Dr. Anna Hájková: And that is an example for career and possibly gender non conforming gender queer person in the victim society and they complicity.

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Dr. Anna Hájková: disturbs the needs sexual and gender categories in which the prisoner society operated katie you have already mentioned lori more hoofers work that already pointed it out for the Weimar, Germany, now we know from the work offline a hand with some female impersonators self identified.

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Dr. Anna Hájková: As heterosexual but those who have sex with men about often persecuted castrated Center concentration camps and some of them murdered.

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Dr. Anna Hájková: howdy hi mom who was bought in Berlin in April 7 of from affirmative socialists, of course, nine was like escape that feed, but they life was not the lucky one.

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Dr. Anna Hájková: They grew up in a middle class Jewish family and trained us opera singer at the University of music in Berlin, after the education they started working as a clown under the nickname humble.

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Dr. Anna Hájková: specializing a female impersonator they've attacked by the so by the storm trooper sentence 33 is came to Finland and went from there to Denmark.

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Dr. Anna Hájková: they've worked as a member of the Covenant clown groups to Europe and America at work this table in Copenhagen damn able to know that, because I was able to pull their reparation file.

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Dr. Anna Hájková: from Berlin reparation office in global three humble was among those about 500 use in Denmark who were captured by the Nazis and the border to the research that.

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Dr. Anna Hájková: And the disintegration shuts did humble became a picture of the cultural life as a comedian clown and female impersonator, this is a little bit more of a neutral drawing of humble by financial crash, to be held in yet by sharing.

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Dr. Anna Hájková: The stories about humble, unlike two of the better known career men and Allah will start using men, because we know about it to either of them thread harish would my publish and 12 Oppenheimer about whom Soviets had been his written.

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Dr. Anna Hájková: That humble was not interpreted in this context, and this is how they interpret it so far, or a dad and I have a record no longer so young and beautiful woman.

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Dr. Anna Hájková: And why do I say interpret it or not interpreted because pretty much, no one has written a board clear nice interesting shape until I came along.

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Dr. Anna Hájková: And then I started thinking about humble and for the longest time I made sense of humble acid amen and it is only in the last few weeks, as I was being kind of wondering.

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Dr. Anna Hájková: How to prepare this presentation that I thought, in order to make space, I also needs to meet the next step and change the pronounce, so this is what I wanted to make always.

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Dr. Anna Hájková: humble where the woman 37 years of age and very thin Oppenheimer fellow the party from Denmark younger and more conventional attractive.

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Dr. Anna Hájková: mentioned his fellow in made a few times in the diary and often quite cruel and I will share a quote, and I want to give a trigger warning because it's quite in your face like what.

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Dr. Anna Hájková: we're smarter in the coffee House over invited by Peter George who directed the orchestra MED humble who entertained us much thinner more sharp in his face water can have caused that according to PC for any cases so out of his body.

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Dr. Anna Hájková: He however got more to eat more than most other people apart aren't performing and have probably earned by lying down.

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Dr. Anna Hájková: How the Fuck Is this possible, this is this music appearance little one and, of course.

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Dr. Anna Hájková: i've learned to this is pretty much in your face, and this is really how Oppenheimer has written about most of the people around him.

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Dr. Anna Hájková: Oppenheimer and he wants to build on bodies important point about sex work and gender deviance Oppenheimer speculated a humble earn extra food as sex work.

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Dr. Anna Hájková: indicating that there was a market for career prosecution, that is insured, which is quite important, because I looked for it, and this is one of the very few indications that I have.

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Dr. Anna Hájková: But it's also possible that open house remark was simply nesting rather than informative.

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Dr. Anna Hájková: humble was also place in context of other forms of transgressive sexuality, just like ready harish about whom I have written in tablet.

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Dr. Anna Hájková: humble to was rumored to have tried to be close to the admin and boys on, and I must listing the famous chick Jewish Holocaust survivor at novelist has written a short story, but he kind of depicts him, but he picks them as.

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Dr. Anna Hájková: Yes, a pedophile and deity holy a check a colleague in literature has analyzed that point.

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Dr. Anna Hájková: And one more shows that I want to show is the image humbled the zynga kept by the Los Angeles museum of the Holocaust that i'm happy to see in the audience today it's.

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Dr. Anna Hájková: More times catch by lls clean redrawn after the war, speaking poignantly to humbles campiness in that he chose the red lips and fake eyelashes they felt that the voices alluded in the rising nodes to take.

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Dr. Anna Hájková: But all this is shown in combination with signs of an aging visibly Jewish men, the receding hairline wrinkles glasses and actually knows the big nose.

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Dr. Anna Hájková: To get ready to homophobic message at the homophobia is also expressing something that alludes to end by semitism.

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Dr. Anna Hájková: To the viewer humble does not come across as congenial noted the Epiphany by the actions we laugh about them not wisdom, because they appear a special anti aging.

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Dr. Anna Hájková: drag queen humble was lucky they survived and they helped us really bad so whenever able to work as a clone again we know from memories of a fellow so vibrant friend that they closed in marriage of convenience, but then, when I looked for them.

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Dr. Anna Hájková: To be passed away in 1995 and they publish an article in a big finish newspaper I got only one letter that was already very confused because the lead writer.

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Dr. Anna Hájková: Will so old so like so often what we have our gifts silence is fragments and illusions and visit I come, and I have spoken too long to a conclusion.

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Dr. Anna Hájková: As you have probably already suspected, I do not necessarily have answers I want to join the work of katie bodies are a non all over him or her for.

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Dr. Anna Hájková: That isn't mental inspiring and will help us push how to reach the things that have become so familiar to us and that i've tried different horizons you hear me also struggling Mr Brown as hard as I try.

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Dr. Anna Hájková: To re animate interesting how we think about gender belongings, and to read them against the grain.

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Dr. Anna Hájková: There is similarly to lori him or her first work a fatal interconnection in judgment of prisoner society in the construction of sexual engender deviance that can touch on homophobia as.

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Dr. Anna Hájková: My former students that automatic has pointed out, but it is even more in your face on the example of humble for people who would be read this gender queer.

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Dr. Anna Hájková: And finally, trans history if we continue applying it, I think, can help us a lot about the mechanics and the mentality and the judgment and the rules of the end for society of Holocaust victims, thank you.

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Rabbi Marisa Elana James: And bodie katie Thank you each so much this was.

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Rabbi Marisa Elana James: just such a richness of material and such a fantastic opportunity to see and to hear about some of these stories and.

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Rabbi Marisa Elana James: I love how we kind of went on a timeline through from from the Weimar Republic.

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Rabbi Marisa Elana James: into activities and spread in this this this arc of what people were experiencing.

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Rabbi Marisa Elana James: I do want to encourage people i've seen a few questions come up in the Q amp a box of please feel free to ask questions in the Q amp a box, specifically that i've been trying to keep notes from the chat, but it does fly back fly on very quickly.

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Rabbi Marisa Elana James: I actually want to start by asking and i'd love to hear from all of you on this.

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Rabbi Marisa Elana James: I think something that that came up a lot is about the the the tension between pushing boundaries and conforming to expectations, and like we you know what.

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Rabbi Marisa Elana James: What in a gender conforming stuff right this comes up in queer Community so much I see young trans people, especially talking about this so much.

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Rabbi Marisa Elana James: As katie put it like right into the visibility versus trying to be in conspicuous and people have different goals individually right, but in terms of in terms of that.

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Rabbi Marisa Elana James: The you know who's trying to change the way people see them and who is trying to fit the images that they assume people will have of them and how do you see that shifting and the time periods that you're each working in.

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Dr. Bodie Ashton: Who wants to start does it have to be me.

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Dr. Bodie Ashton: Okay, apparently it's me.

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Dr. Bodie Ashton: I think this is, this is an absolutely vital question to ask not just as as he points out rabbi James not just.

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Dr. Bodie Ashton: Not just historically, but also in in a contemporary sense we constantly come across this question of well you know what what exactly is.

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Dr. Bodie Ashton: Gender conforming and conformity and what does that mean and what does it actually we get down to very, very basic questions here, what is it to be a a man, a woman, a a gender diverse person and non binary person so on and so forth.

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Dr. Bodie Ashton: And I think one of the things that often.

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Dr. Bodie Ashton: comes up, especially in in the contemporary sense.

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Dr. Bodie Ashton: As i've i've seen on many occasions from critics of you know, the sort of reactionary critics that we don't really want to spend too much time paying any attention to, but this idea that trans people basically are playing to the the stereotypes of the genders.

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Dr. Bodie Ashton: From my research, for instance, and I can I can really refer back here to to this research that i've been doing on liddy Barker off, for example, and a couple of others who come up in this.

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Dr. Bodie Ashton: liddy barcroft is i'll use that word again an extraordinary example you'll get sick of the word extraordinary by the end of this but.

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Dr. Bodie Ashton: she's an extraordinary example, primarily because of the sources she leaves behind, and they are what we see in that is not a straight forwards.

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Dr. Bodie Ashton: i'm a woman, therefore, I will put on lipstick and I will wear stockings and I will whatever.

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Dr. Bodie Ashton: it's a much, much deeper engagement with WHO she is as a person, where she begins by engaging with WHO she understood herself to be before.

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Dr. Bodie Ashton: She attempted to to construct this identity for herself and identity is always constructed, the way that we approach, how we understand ourselves and how we present ourselves is always some sort of construction.

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Dr. Bodie Ashton: And so, she engages with her understanding of herself, as previously high much habits and then what parts of that habits identity are important to her in her actual understanding of self as lady Barker off.

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Dr. Bodie Ashton: The reason I find these creative nonfiction pieces that she writes so so exciting to work with is just how deeply they go into these really intimate questions.

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Dr. Bodie Ashton: Of not just you know what is it to be a woman, but what is it to be this specific woman named lydia Barker off at this specific time.

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Dr. Bodie Ashton: In this specific place and I think that this is something that we can we can definitely apply to the history, but also to be the contemporary setting that each one of these stories is an individual story.

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Dr. Katie Sutton: i'm happy to jump in Now it is a fabulous question and i'm sitting here, trying to think you know from what angle, could you approach it because this question of visibility is just so.

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Dr. Katie Sutton: so crucial, but I think I mean an interesting point that I think bodie made was that.

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Dr. Katie Sutton: You know, trans people were actively creating.

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Dr. Katie Sutton: I guess a new sense of trans visibility and they were doing that also through visual media and photography at this.

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Dr. Katie Sutton: At this time, so one of the things i'm interested in is how is a new specifically trans aesthetic being created, and in some ways, you know people were also using sex sex illogical textbooks as a kind of.

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Dr. Katie Sutton: channel to to you know, to communicate with others who you know, had a similar identity as well, so there's a lot of agency, I think, in happy boy engaging with sexologist that I would just sort of.

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Dr. Katie Sutton: Add I guess in conversation with with bodies' comments.

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Dr. Katie Sutton: But perhaps picking up on a point that I see I think mj Calvin made in the chat you know also, what are the differences between you know trans masculine and.

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Dr. Katie Sutton: feminine experiences, and I think that the politics of visibility environment was was quite different for these groups and that caused also in some ways, different kinds of tension, I think.

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Dr. Katie Sutton: Trans feminine people were much more likely to come into conflict with the police they're much more likely to to be.

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Dr. Katie Sutton: pulled up into a court case I can think of the case of like Tony see man who went to court in 1929 um who.

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Dr. Katie Sutton: As a trans feminine person who did decide to wear a dress to court quite bravely I think really claiming that trans feminine space in court.

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Dr. Katie Sutton: The judge did find them 100 marks, but they also said well actually if the police.

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Dr. Katie Sutton: are issuing transvestite certificates, we really need to go along with that so there's also kind of Liberals to the police approach that the courts were having to follow i'm getting a little bit off track, but I think that for Trans feminine people there were a lot of.

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Dr. Katie Sutton: There was a lot of vulnerability, I think, in trying, especially in trying to go out on the street and be with your agenda in public, and particularly in the workplace and for.

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Dr. Katie Sutton: Trans masculine people there was a lot more capacity to on the one hand fly under the radar and to very easily pass through a lot of stories in the media, people who were discovered after their.

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Dr. Katie Sutton: After the death, I mean that trope of discovery already sort of undermines the identity that they live, but I think it points to the capacity to sort of pass will live according to the gender identity for long periods.

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Dr. Katie Sutton: And at the same time, there was an incredibly masculine eyes aesthetic in the 1920s, that with short hair cut to the straight.

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Dr. Katie Sutton: Straight dresses that with the suits and when we think of marlena Dietrich you know spinning around in a tuxedo and smoking cigarettes, I mean.

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Dr. Katie Sutton: it's a very clear masculine aesthetic that was being propagated right across sort of popular culture and all the mainstream women's magazines and fashion magazines so.

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Dr. Katie Sutton: In some ways, they were kind of the queer radical edge of something that was really sexy and popular anyway so there's quite a different.

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Dr. Katie Sutton: Dynamic going on, and you can imagine the kinds of couples is caused as well in the trends scene between.

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Dr. Katie Sutton: On the one hand between trans people identified as heterosexual or homosexual so that was one big line of contention.

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Dr. Katie Sutton: Between trans feminine trans masculine people, but also within the lesbian sane because it was a lot of crossover between the lesbian scene and people who identified as masculine women or as.

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Dr. Katie Sutton: Or, as transvestite.

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Dr. Katie Sutton: They would have identified themselves as transvestite women.

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Dr. Katie Sutton: And they were quite explicit debates that played out in the transmedia between these different groups so slightly.

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Dr. Katie Sutton: Word he response to the question so i'll pass over to Anna.

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Dr. Anna Hájková: Thank you, I will spend the question a little bit differently, and I will speak it about why do we talk about transistors today and why have we not talked about them.

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Dr. Anna Hájková: Five years ago 10 years ago 20 years ago, and that is that histories and done about topics that are seen as permissible and that there is a push for us to engage with, and we all know that.

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Dr. Anna Hájková: In field of history and in clear studies transistor topic of today, not only is there very significant pushback.

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Dr. Anna Hájková: And since this event takes place online, but takes place in the US, you know what has been happening in Texas and elsewhere.

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Dr. Anna Hájková: But it is kind of the big topic and it's good to take it on board and visit it becomes permissible.

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Dr. Anna Hájková: But this permission doesn't come from Jewish studies and doesn't come from Holocaust history is definitely comes from gender history and it's kind of good to be quite aware of that is also a very good point from jake newsome.

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Dr. Anna Hájková: And I have myself experienced quite significant pushback on my work that is not on transit streets and career history.

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Dr. Anna Hájková: And then, it was the solidarity and support of my colleagues have katie and cody and taking some Atlanta from others who are here today.

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Dr. Anna Hájková: Who enabled me to carry on, because they created the space for it, so what I wanted to say, with all that we all are here today.

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Dr. Anna Hájková: carry the responsibility but also have the possibility of creating this as a valuable herbicide space.

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Dr. Anna Hájková: But it is also quite a burden to carry we can just drop out because suddenly when you have 20 people working on that and two people drop out.

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Dr. Anna Hájková: Then it just eating people, so this is not just your research like working on, you know Jewish housewives in that instance your homework.

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Dr. Anna Hájková: This is really a research, we are creating the oxygen that we live in, and I did want to put it out on the table, even though I know that katie and body are very aware of this topic.

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Rabbi Marisa Elana James: And i'll i'll say that I think one thing I was aware of coming into this is.

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Rabbi Marisa Elana James: You know, as you were each presenting these stories of individuals just have remarkable, it is that we have stories of individuals, given how much was destroyed.

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Rabbi Marisa Elana James: I feel like that's something that you know that that history does pop up every year that that it was the Institute for sexual listen shaft the Magnus hirschfeld Institute for sexual knowledge that.

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Rabbi Marisa Elana James: That library was one of the first to be destroyed and the book burnings and so even thinking about and people, some of the questions coming up are like, how do you find this material is any of this material available to read an English for a non academic.

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Rabbi Marisa Elana James: And I guess that's that's a that's a question that i'll put to you, I mean said I thought one link in the chat but if there are ways to find these stories and how, how do you find these stories.

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Dr. Bodie Ashton: I feel like we're all undergraduates again not wanting to be the first one to answer so i'm just going to do it.

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Dr. Bodie Ashton: Now we.

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Rabbi Marisa Elana James: taught university for a while, so i'm good at being quiet and waiting.

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Dr. Bodie Ashton: Well that's that's fine.

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Dr. Bodie Ashton: I actually i'm perfectly happy to jump into be the first one for this one again because I do like telling the story about how I ended up becoming involved with the story of Lady backcloth.

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Dr. Bodie Ashton: which was completely serendipitous it was entirely the case that I happen to be trolling through God I can't actually entirely remember which which secondary materials at the time I was looking for generally queer people so queer.

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Dr. Bodie Ashton: Experiences in this sort of period within Germany as casting my net very, very wide.

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Dr. Bodie Ashton: And then I discovered that there is this in in Germany in many places in Germany, there are these sharpish diner the the stumbling blocks there the the memorials to people who were deported and usually not always but usually killed as a result of the Nazi terror.

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Dr. Bodie Ashton: And you often see them in Berlin and in Hamburg and so on they're there in the ground there brass they usually have the name of the person so here von.

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Dr. Bodie Ashton: to whoever.

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Dr. Bodie Ashton: And then, followed by a modded in Auschwitz, or something along those lines, and the year that that might have happened.

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Dr. Bodie Ashton: And I came across a photograph of one particular stylish diane which was one that had two names on it.

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Dr. Bodie Ashton: And as far as I know, it's really the only one in Germany that has two names for the one person on there, and it was here on to high English habits in big letters and then in much smaller letters would scare quotes around it lady backed off.

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Dr. Bodie Ashton: And so, this sort of started the question well why what's happening here.

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Dr. Bodie Ashton: And then, of course, once that question came up and then sort of finding out a little bit more about obviously it meant searching for this person came of age habits, because the records that existed.

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Dr. Bodie Ashton: and continue to exist in the Hamburg stays archive very, very extensive but they're all listed under the name habits hamish not backer of liddy because the the authorities still considered liddy Barker have to actually be handled the charlotte's and not a woman, but a man.

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Dr. Bodie Ashton: So then there's there's dealing with that, but also why, in the remembrance of we for grounding the name that the person did not live by and therefore the experience and the identity that they did not inhabit in their lives.

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Dr. Bodie Ashton: So these were really the questions that started firing my research here, and then, as I said, I was extremely fortunate to have the the amount.

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Dr. Bodie Ashton: That was there remaining in the Hamburg state archive, which is why I continue to say how unique this this case is that there is just so much that's there.

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Dr. Bodie Ashton: But a lot of this, I feel does come down to a bit of a bit of luck and certainly reading between the lines, because so often we do you have to very much read between the lines and read into a silence.

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Dr. Bodie Ashton: And at least try and start feeling out what could that silence mean and therefore where can I, maybe hear the whispers rather than only the silence.

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Dr. Katie Sutton: I think that they're really good point and that point about often dealing with really fragmentary records, with a few hints or with.

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Dr. Katie Sutton: it's just piecing together people's stories.

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Dr. Katie Sutton: Also, working on, I mean there are a lot of I think researchers in Germany who for many years, have been doing a lot of really detailed archival research, often without any institutional support, and I think also you know.

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Dr. Katie Sutton: paying tribute to that you know hard research that has gone before us as well, to enable us to know some of the names.

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Dr. Katie Sutton: I think, more recently, one of the ways of getting the stories out there, especially to an English speaking audience, I mean T TV and podcasts are really interesting avenue.

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Dr. Katie Sutton: i'm cautious to mention transparent, because I know that it has been mired in all sorts of political issues.

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Dr. Katie Sutton: Related to me, too, but I do think that series to was super interesting in the way that it Reno revisited here shields Institute for sexual science and brought together trans and Jewish histories and sort of ideas of.

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Dr. Katie Sutton: trauma across multiple generations as well in in very interlinked ways and I thought the way that they represented that Institute was was very well researched and a really.

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Dr. Katie Sutton: Emotionally effective way of connecting with with those histories and those stories, even if in a in a fictionalized sense.

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Dr. Katie Sutton: And I would also point to there's a great podcast adventures in time in gender no that yellow conquer who's online was involved in that.

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Dr. Katie Sutton: Also, a great way it sort of unpacking some of those early trans histories and gender diverse histories as well in a really kind of.

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Dr. Katie Sutton: Accessible but extremely well researched fashion, so I think there's a lot of exciting work going on at the moment in this space and I have heard of another.

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Dr. Katie Sutton: Potential TV series in in development as well, that would be looking specifically at Weimar gender diverse live, so I think that TV is a really exciting option and.

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Dr. Katie Sutton: I guess this to the question of how do we, you know what kinds of written sources might be out there, especially if you can't read German and I do think there probably are some some gaps there as well, and and how to do that well is sometimes a bit of a an issue as well.

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Dr. Katie Sutton: yeah maybe i'll just leave it there, except to note that, in terms of the silences in the archives, I think that.

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Dr. Katie Sutton: Trans and gender diverse people of color we know very little about those experiences environment other people who have not tended to leave many traces in the archives and I think it's a silence it's very important to acknowledge.

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Dr. Anna Hájková: Okay um I want to add my two three fences of bends.

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Dr. Anna Hájková: One is.

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Dr. Anna Hájková: Unlike my first book length, that is insured, where I basically figured out all the collection, so that is insured and then I would like to copy the lumber and such freedom or an effort, a lot of what what it means, and then I sat down and wrote the book.

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Dr. Anna Hájková: Now i'm looking for fragments and I find equals and then I start researching and sometimes I find some more, and then I can start thinking about writing the book.

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Dr. Anna Hájková: and basically half of my case studies are things that friendly colleagues who most often don't work on anything clear at all just send my way, because otherwise it's looking for a needle in a haystack and then image and you're looking for this needle in a haystack and it's just.

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Dr. Anna Hájková: clear desire, when you start looking about trans topics, it will be 10% of that I have something like 50 case studies for same sex desire.

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Dr. Anna Hájková: and have that history that's the totality of what I found Of course I have sent European bias, because I don't read Polish very quickly I don't speak any additional Hebrew.

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Dr. Anna Hájková: But that is something where one could look, but you definitely need to build on your colleague, support and the good news is people largely are incredibly collegial and helpful The second point that I wanted to make is on what I would call stuffing the goose quite often I meet young.

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Dr. Anna Hájková: younger people of the age of my students who wants to have the Trans fates who wants to.

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Dr. Anna Hájková: Listen to stories about people of color in the concentration camps, and we know that divider but if there are no sources, we can all try to these histories and I think it's important to write the exhibitions and the histories, the sources, we have.

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Dr. Anna Hájková: There is, for example, I think, somebody wrote in the chat this beautiful novel from bow and it's a very important and.

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Dr. Anna Hájková: productive way to reimagine the stories, but his friends and the scholars we work with the sources at their head.

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Dr. Anna Hájková: And they just are almost none of those sources, at least from what I have seen my last point about TV.

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Dr. Anna Hájková: And podcasts and graphic novels and what i'm about to say since katie and body spent a lot of time with me on Twitter day now that my favorite beef is.

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Dr. Anna Hájková: That people who produce these for TV come to scholars and kind of expect we will be so grateful that somebody wants to put our stories for wide audience that we were just forget over without much of a payment or maybe a tiny line and.

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Dr. Anna Hájková: that's just really not fair and people who have been working for the longest time on these histories and have experienced significant backlash and have been having difficulties getting jobs, and you know the three of us are pretty smart and.

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Dr. Anna Hájková: You know kiddies incredibly accomplished, but it's not like we have a chair at the Ivy league university and katie has to have one.

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Dr. Anna Hájková: So it is important to not to just get you know 10 pounds an hour and I do want to give a shout out to the hundred people are listening here, we need to have the same page like then we'll decide or entity.

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Dr. Anna Hájková: Not only because clear and transistors are the hot topic, right now, but I would also quite like to be paid in the heart level and of rent.

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Rabbi Marisa Elana James: Right, how we how we invest in making these stories available how we invest in making sure that this research happens.

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Rabbi Marisa Elana James: Right, I think, and I want to say how grateful I am to to the Museum of Jewish heritage for investing in this panel today because.

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Rabbi Marisa Elana James: we've had 120 people over the course of this hour learning these stories and and even with the gaps, even with the lack of I so appreciated the the note about.

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Rabbi Marisa Elana James: What it means to give agency to people right so often we learn about people who are queer people who are Jewish people who are disabled, right in the in in early Germany through the lens of what happened to them.

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Rabbi Marisa Elana James: and through the lens of who was keeping the records of the terrible things that were being done to them.

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Rabbi Marisa Elana James: and bringing these stories from from their from their mouths, and I understand that we have a you know that it's hard to find the primary sources about a lot of these people.

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Rabbi Marisa Elana James: Although i'm deeply curious now about about liddy and these these writings but even just being aware that, looking at these photos.

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Rabbi Marisa Elana James: Right, I feel like the photos that people set for and took these portraits.

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Rabbi Marisa Elana James: As who they are, is one of the best texts, we could possibly have where they're really saying this is the lens through which I want you to see me.

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Rabbi Marisa Elana James: And so, even if I feel like it, you know I as a rabbi especially I always want stories I want written texts, I want lots of words.

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Rabbi Marisa Elana James: And yet, you know when somebody is sitting for a portrait photographer and saying here's what I here's what I look like and here's how I want you to take this photograph of me so that other people see me the way I see myself.

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Rabbi Marisa Elana James: I think that's so important, historically, and also for the present moment I, as we were talking about earlier, I spend a lot of time on Twitter and people have a lot more of an opportunity, these days, to present themselves to the world through their own lenses.

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Rabbi Marisa Elana James: And that that's something incredibly valuable that we have now.

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Rabbi Marisa Elana James: Ariel i'm aware that it is 105 and I just wanted to check in and see how we are doing with Q amp a time.

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Ariel Kates: Oh, and Hello Hello.

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Ariel Kates: I actually think that this This observation is a really beautiful place to wrap.

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Ariel Kates: to wrap this.

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Ariel Kates: I am so wildly grateful to all of you, I can't wait to continue these conversations with you and with others, the scholars that you've mentioned the books that you've mentioned.

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Ariel Kates: we're going to gather a bunch of this information and include it in our follow up email from this program which will also include the video please share it as broadly as you please.

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Ariel Kates: And, and also just a short survey, because we always we always love everyone's feedback about our programs how to make them better etc.

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Ariel Kates: I yeah I just i'm so i'm so grateful to take the time to think about all of this and to start pride month in this way, with all of you.

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Ariel Kates: your time and your knowledge is incredibly valuable and I think you all so much for sharing it to those of us who joined us Thank you so much for being here for your feedback for your questions, for your participation in the chat and for your work and existence in the world.

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Ariel Kates: So so grateful for that.

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Ariel Kates: I will say that public programs at the Museum of Jewish heritage are free and open to the public, but we always love donations to support our work.

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Ariel Kates: you please consider making a donation, the link is mgh nyc.org slash donate and please check out our upcoming events mth nyc.org slash events.

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Ariel Kates: We are, we are here planning, as many as many conversations, as we can, about Jewish heritage and Jewish life, before, during and after the Holocaust so.

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Ariel Kates: yeah Thank you Thank you again everyone from from all time zones have a good afternoon have a good evening.

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Rabbi Marisa Elana James: and happy pride month.

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Ariel Kates: Happy pride.

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Dr. Katie Sutton: Thank you so much.

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Ariel Kates: Thank you take care, everyone.