Being Homosexual in the Third Reich | American Artifact Episode 131

[Music] I'm going to share with you today this um this Holocaust grouping that recently came in uh Holocaust groupings are very rare um they're they're in a few museums and um sometimes you'll see something like this like a concentration camp uniform on on the market um a lot a lot of them are fake but this was recently Source from the family of this person and I I have never seen one quite like this where it had so much with it um like like a fairly complete grouping um so this this one woman's name was vlasta fabroa and she was from uh she was Czech she was born in 1918 and in 1942 she was arrested by by the Nazis and she was put into ravensbrook concentration camp which was a concentration camp for women uh one of the really interesting parts of this is the the triangle over here is the color pink and I've seen a few few of these uniforms out there and they're almost always a red triangle for a political prisoner the pink triangle means that she was a homosexual in this case a lesbian and that's what she was in ravensbrook for um so this grouping consists of her concentration camp uniforms some some doctor's forms a few letters um one one was written to her some were written by her and um some of her various IDs over the years and after she survived uh the concentration camp and when she got out she became a stage actor and later a film actor and so we have some of her acting photos here and picture of her as a little girl and as a teenager and um it it's one of those really moving groups you know that just you know you start looking at this stuff and looking at these photographs of her and and wonder what she was going through at that time and um it's one of those real poignant artifacts and in the new Museum we are going to do um a whole exhibit on the Holocaust I think um if you're going to do a World War II a proper World War II uh exhibit including the Holocaust is necessary and um proper as Eric already mentioned this is an expansive grouping that is really unique because it gives us more of a personal connection to the the Concentration Camp outfit and a more connection to who vasta was so here uh I'm assuming that we are looking at a photo of her parents uh what happened to them or where they were during this whole whole ordeal is is unknown to us uh here's another photo here with um group of what appears to be school children okay and then uh we also mentioned that that vasta was an actress so there are a lot of these uh Studio photos uh here you can see her with what I'm assuming are some friends and then here she is uh right here uh participating in in a play and again here is what what we are assuming is a photo of her as a little girl but in addition to that there are all of these other things and by the way I do need to mention that we we do think that the photos of her as a stage actress are postwar but take a look at this these are a few letters that she received and sent while she was in ravensbrook so this one here was sent on the 21st of May 1943 we haven't had these professionally translated yet because this is a fairly new grouping that has come to the museum uh just a quick rough translation using Google translate uh the the individual who is writing her is describing a wedding uh that that she was a part of and she's describing her dress and things like that and then here is one from December of 1943 December 19th to be specific and this is a letter from vasta to someone else and the the writing is incursive so using Google translate I was unable to have any success seeing what she was writing about but we can see here that we can get some details about where she was while in ravensbrook okay so she was in Block 8 so really just an incredibly historically important grouping that tells us a lot about the woman who wore this uniform so this is an oswi or ID of a woman that worked for the SS in the ravenbrook concentration camp and her name was frine Maria gra or graph and uh we got this to go along with this exhibit fairly recently and you know I I look at her photo and I I look at the photo of uh the inmate at the concentration camp and I think you know how how how different were their lives between 1942 and 1945 um it's a it's a very interesting uh comparison or contrast and uh you know we we we know that Vesta favorova survived the war and went on to have a a a life after the after World War II and became an actress but we don't know what happened to frine Maria gra um you know did she get killed by the Russians or you know did she get arrested and imprisoned for working for the SS we don't know we also don't know really what she did at the at the Concentration Camp it you know it's whether she was a secretary or or a camp guard or something is is unclear but it's it's just interesting to see their two photos side by side and think about the differences in their lives [Music]

Channel: The History Underground

Views: 19,505

Keywords: american artifact, gettysburg museum of history, gettysburg, wwii, wwii history, eric door, erik dorr, eric dorr, erik door, ravensbruck, ravensbrook

Id: U1MgNrll01s

Length: 8min 4sec (484 seconds)

Published: Sat Jun 15 2024