Making Gay History
Intimate, personal portraits of both known and long-forgotten champions, heroes, and witnesses to history brought to you from rare archival interviews.
Episodes
April 10, 2025 • 28 mins
In this final episode, we reflect on why there are so few testimonies from LGBTQ people who survived the Nazi era and on the responsibility we have to honor the testimonies we do have in the face of the unfolding dark times here at home. Visit our episode webpage for additional resources, archival photos, and a transcript of the episode. For exclusive Making Gay History bonus content, join our Patreon community. ——— -Audio of the 1...
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April 3, 2025 • 31 mins
Charismatic German Jewish athlete Fredy Hirsch dedicated himself to inspiring and protecting children imprisoned by the Nazis. In this episode, survivors of Theresienstadt and Auschwitz whose lives were made tolerable, sometimes even joyful, thanks to his selfless efforts share their memories. Visit our episode webpage for additional resources, archival photos, and a transcript of the episode. For exclusive Making Gay History bonu...
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March 27, 2025 • 37 mins
Kenneth Roman was 15 when the Nazis rolled into his Polish hometown. After they liquidated the Jewish ghetto to which he and his family had been confined, he was sent to a series of forced labor camps and finally a concentration camp, where a sadistic block elder made him his “batman.” Visit our episode webpage for additional resources, archival photos, and a transcript of the episode. For exclusive Making Gay History bonus content...
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March 20, 2025 • 30 mins
German Jewish survivor Margot Heuman attributed her survival of the Nazi concentration camps to her friendship with another teenage girl. It wasn’t until the end of her life that she confided in lesbian historian Anna Hájková about the intimate nature of the friendship. Visit our episode webpage for additional resources, archival photos, and a transcript of the episode. For exclusive Making Gay History bonus content, join our Patre...
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March 13, 2025 • 36 mins
Lucy Salani was assigned male at birth, so when she came of age she was conscripted into the Italian army. She soon deserted—the first of several daring escapes that eventually landed her in Dachau. She’s one of the only trans people to testify about their experiences in Nazi concentration camps. Visit our episode webpage for additional resources, archival photos, and a transcript of the episode. For exclusive Making Gay History bo...
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March 6, 2025 • 28 mins
After the 1942 deportation of his boyfriend, 19-year-old Jewish Berliner Gad Beck vowed to help others escape the same fate. He became a prominent resistance member and used his resourcefulness, sexual barter, and chutzpah to save fellow Jews from the Nazi murder machine. Visit our episode webpage for additional resources, archival photos, and a transcript of the episode. For exclusive Making Gay History bonus content, join our Pat...
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February 27, 2025 • 31 mins
When the Nazis invaded the Netherlands in 1940, 36-year-old conductor Frieda Belinfante disbanded her orchestra and dedicated herself to helping others. She forged IDs to save Jews from deportation and joined a resistance group that carried out a daring act of sabotage. Visit our episode webpage for additional resources, archival photos, and a transcript of the episode. For exclusive Making Gay History bonus content, join our Patre...
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February 20, 2025 • 27 mins
In 1939, French teenager Pierre Seel had his watch stolen at a cruising spot in his hometown. When he reported the crime to the police, he was placed on a list of suspected homosexuals. Two years later, with the city now under Nazi occupation, he was summoned by the Gestapo. A note about language: the person featured in this episode refers to Roma people by the now offensive term gypsies. To stay true to the original French testimo...
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February 13, 2025 • 30 mins
Polish teenager Stefan Kosinski was beaten, tortured, and sent to prison. His crime? He fell in love with a Viennese soldier serving in the German army. When the soldier was sent to the Eastern Front, Stefan sent him a love letter, which was intercepted by the Nazis. Visit our episode webpage for additional resources, archival photos, and a transcript of the episode. For exclusive Making Gay History bonus content, join our Patreon ...
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February 6, 2025 • 40 mins
In our second introductory episode, we focus on life in the Nazi concentration camps and offer a glimpse into the experiences of LGBTQ people in occupied countries during WWII as we continue to set the context for the eight profile episodes to follow. Visit our episode webpage for additional resources, archival photos, and a transcript of the episode. For exclusive Making Gay History bonus content, join our Patreon community. ——— -...
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January 30, 2025 • 30 mins
In this first of two introductory episodes, hear how the walls closed in on LGBTQ people after Hitler came to power through the recorded and written memories of multiple queer people who witnessed or fell victim to the Nazis’ persecution. Visit our episode webpage for additional resources, archival photos, and a transcript of the episode. For exclusive Making Gay History bonus content, join our Patreon community. ——— -The interview...
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January 27, 2025 • 10 mins
Host Eric Marcus welcomes listeners to MGH’s “Nazi Era” series by going back in time to 1980 and a darkened Broadway theater where his interest in LGBTQ Holocaust history was kindled. Join Eric as we embark on a 12-episode journey and honor Holocaust Remembrance Day. Visit our episode webpage for a transcript of the episode. For exclusive Making Gay History bonus content, join our Patreon community. ——— -1993 interview with Pierre ...
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November 8, 2024 • 21 mins
Frank Kameny lived by three rules: have absolute confidence in your beliefs; fight for what’s right; never, ever give up. Let them be a battle cry in these dark times. Visit MGH’s webpage for the original 2016 episode featuring Frank Kameny for background information, archival photos, and other resources, as well as the episode’s transcript. ——— To learn more about listener data and our privacy practices visit: https://www.audac...
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July 24, 2024 • 44 mins
In 1983 Evan Wolfson wrote a law school thesis that asserted that gay people had a constitutional right to marry. Thirty-two years later, the U.S. Supreme Court affirmed as much. In this guest episode from But We Loved, get to know the man behind one of the biggest victories in the history of the LGBTQ civil rights movement. Learn more about Evan Wolfson and the Freedom to Marry campaign here. Find more episodes of But We Loved, a...
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June 28, 2024 • 40 mins
Like so many other acts of LGBTQ resistance, the 1969 Stonewall riots could have become a footnote in history. But the protests and organizing that followed launched a new phase in the fight for LGBTQ rights. Hear how anger found its voice and how joy propelled the first Pride marches. First aired June 20, 2019. Visit our episode webpage for background information, archival photos, and other resources, as well as the episode’s tran...
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June 21, 2024 • 34 mins
The Stonewall uprising began in the early morning hours of June 28, 1969. Revisit that moment, and the hours and days that followed, with voices from the Making Gay History archive. Relive in vivid detail the dawning of a new chapter in the fight for LGBTQ rights. First aired June 13, 2019. Visit our episode webpage for background information, archival photos, and other resources, as well the episode’s transcript. To hear more of...
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June 14, 2024 • 37 mins
Conflict has context. In this first episode of Making Gay History’s Stonewall season, we hear stories from the pre-Stonewall struggle for LGBTQ rights. We travel back in time to the turbulent 1960s and take you to the tinderbox that was Greenwich Village on the eve of an uprising. First aired June 6, 2019. Visit our episode webpage for background information, archival photos, and other resources, as well as the episode’s transcript...
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June 14, 2024 • 31 mins
Can historical and emotional truth coexist? For the 55th anniversary of the uprising, Eric and fellow LGBTQ history expert Ken Lustbader talk to Stonewall National Monument visitors and let a few myths slip by to uncover Stonewall’s moving resonance as a symbol of LGBTQ liberation and joy. This episode is a co-production of Making Gay History and the NYC LGBT Historic Sites Project, in partnership with the National Park Service. Vi...
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May 23, 2024 • 29 mins
As a bookish lesbian growing up in working-class England, June Thomas developed an early love of bookstores. After moving to the U.S. in the 1980s, she found community in the feminist bookstores of the era, as she recounts in A Place of Our Own: Six Spaces That Shaped Queer Women's Culture. Visit our episode webpage for a transcript of the episode. For exclusive Making Gay History bonus content, join our Patreon community. Episode ...
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February 15, 2024 • 37 mins
Valerie Reyes-Jimenez called it “The Monster.” That’s how some people described HIV and AIDS in the 1980s. Valerie thinks as many as 75 people from her block on New York City’s Lower East Side died. They were succumbing to an illness that was not recognized as the same virus that was killing young, white, gay men just across town in the West Village. At the same time, in Washington, D.C., Gil Gerald, a Black LGBTQ+ activist, saw hi...
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