Willy

"... Il s' tait ostensiblement d pouill de son cale on vierge et de ses deux chaussettes radieuses. De tous ses fameux dessous, il n'avait gard que sa flanelle immacul e, et il allait se pr cipiter vers le lit o s'allongeait la com dienne, nue, les pieds crois s, la nuque appuy e sur ses mains ouvertes, attitude qui avantageait ses seins, d'ailleurs rest s fermes, et beaux..."

" Fran ois Bergeron songeait, plus fr quemment qu'il ne l'e t souhait , Mademoiselle Thulette, pour laquelle il ressentait une tendresse platonique mais trouble, analogue au sentiment complexe qui fait du pr tre l'amant spirituel de sa p nitente la plus d sirable. Ne pouvait-il pr tendre, en quelque sorte, avoir la primeur de la virginit de Fanny, puisqu'il tait le premier auquel elle l'eut confess e ? Il gardait un souvenir mu de cette aventure intellectuelle: seuls, les v ritables vicieux, ceux qui vivent surtout par le cerveau, comprendront qu'en recevant les aveux rougissants de Mademoiselle Thulette, Bergeron avait go t des sensations sup rieures aux plus exub rantes coucheries..."

With great immediacy, the diaries of Willy Cohn, a Jew and a Social Democrat, show how the process of marginalization under the Nazis unfolded within the vibrant Jewish community of Breslau—until that community was destroyed in 1941. Cohn documents how difficult it was to understand precisely what was happening, even as people were harassed, beaten, and taken off to concentration camps. He chronicles the efforts of the community to maintain some semblance of normal life at the same time as many made plans to emigrate or to get their children out. Cohn and his wife Gertrud were able to get their three oldest children out of Germany before it was too late. However, burying himself in his work chronicling the history of the Jews in Germany, his diaries, and his memoirs, Cohn missed his own chance to escape. In late 1941, he, Gertrud, and their two young daughters were deported to Lithuania, where they were shot. Willy Cohn was a complex individual: an Orthodox Jew and a socialist; an ardent Zionist and a staunch German patriot; a realist but also an idealist often unable to cope with reality; a democrat and an admirer of certain Nazi policies and of their resoluteness. These contradictions and the wealth of detail that poured from his pen give us a unique view of those disorienting and frightening times in Germany.

A gold mine of information about a hidden queer cultureThirty-two years before Simone de Beauvoir's classic The Second Sex, popular French novelist Willy published The Third Sex, a vivid description of the world of European homosexuals in France, Italy, and Germany during the late 1920s. Stepping directly into the heart of gay men's culture, Willy follows homosexual nightlife into music halls, nightclubs, casinos, bars, and saunas. While he finds plenty of drug and alcohol abuse, he also discovers homosexual publishers, scientific societies, group rivalries, and opinions--both medical and political--about the nature of homosexuality itself. Lawrence R. Schehr's introduction provides context and translator's notes for this first-ever English edition.