- Born
- 16 August 1923Haguenau, France
- Died
- 25 November 2005Toulouse, France · aged 82
Pierre Seel
The only French survivor to testify publicly about his deportation as a gay man – after forty years of silence.
Pierre Seel grew up in a Catholic family in Mulhouse in Alsace. At 16 he reported the theft of his watch at a meeting place for gay men; the police noted his name on a list of homosexuals.
When the Germans annexed Alsace in 1940, the list fell into the hands of the Gestapo. In 1941 Seel was arrested, tortured and sent to the Schirmeck-Vorbruck camp. There he had to watch his 18-year-old lover, Jo, being killed by guard dogs. After six months he was released and forcibly conscripted into the German army, with which he had to serve on the eastern front.
After the war he returned home, kept silent, married and had three children. But he never got over the trauma. In 1982, when the bishop of Strasbourg called homosexuality an illness, Seel came out publicly and began to talk about his experiences. In 1994 he published his memoir, “Moi, Pierre Seel, déporté homosexuel” (I, Pierre Seel, Deported Homosexual).
He fought for years for official recognition of the persecution of gay people under the Nazis. He died in Toulouse in 2005, aged 82.