num_pages: 200
description: At the age of seventeen, in the arms of a thief, Pierre Seel felt his watch sliding off his wrist. So begins the astonishing chain of events that led to the Schirmeck-Vorbruch concentration camp, where Seel suffered unspeakable horrors for the sole "crime" of being a homosexual.The story of survival in the camps has been told many times, but Seel's is one of the only firsthand accounts of the Nazi roundup and deportation of homosexuals. For nearly forty years he kept his experiences - including torture, humiliation, and witnessing the vicious murder of his lover at the hands of the Nazis - a secret in order to cover up his homosexuality. He found a wife through a personal ad, married, and raised three children. "The Liberation," he writes, "was for others." Finally, haunted by his experiences and by the silence of others, he decided to bear witness to an aspect of the Holocaust rarely seen. As he noted, "If I do not speak, I will become the accomplice of my torturers."
language: English
title: Liberation Was For Others
titlecomplete: Liberation Was For Others
genres: Holocaust, Gay, Biography, History, World War II, Queer, Nonfiction, Biography Memoir, Memoir, LGBT
ratings_count: 476
awards: awardedAt: 820483200000
name: Lambda Literary Award
category: Gay Men's Studies
publisher: Da Capo Press