So many stories, both harrowing and heartwarming, have been told about World War II that it can be hard to imagine what a new novel might add. But as we move farther from the 1940s and the secrets of that time, different kinds of accounts have come to the surface — including some that were previously ignored or deliberately covered up.
Milo Todd’s debut historical novel, The Lilac People, published in April by Counterpoint Press, illuminates the experiences of transgender people in that era who lived in secrecy or were sent to concentration camps.
With The Lilac People, Todd, who is a co-editor at the Bay Area-rooted Foglifter Journal, tells an essential part of that history. It’s a book that seems particularly timely now. On May 29, Todd will be at the Provincetown Bookshop in conversation with Christopher Castellani, whose novels and nonfiction works also focus primarily on the queer experience.
The novel is full of historical information based on extensive research, much of it done at the Magnus Hirschfeld Society in Berlin — for which Todd had to learn German. The Society seeks to preserve the legacy of the Institute for Sexual Research, which was founded by Hirschfeld in 1919 and plundered and destroyed by the Nazis in 1933.
“I want readers to take with them the truth of these times,” Todd says, “and to recover a part of history that was deliberately obscured for the past 100 years.” The novel provides an engaging narrative whose main characters, Bertie, a trans man, and his partner, Sofie, are easy to empathize with.
The Lilac People immediately has the couple confronting shocking news in a radio broadcast: the war has ended, but “we’ve received word that the liberation of the camps is not the celebration we’d hoped. The Allied forces are sending all pink triangles and any qualifying black triangles to jail to start the sentence for their crimes.”
Indeed, Prussian-era laws criminalizing homosexuality and elaborated on by the Nazis persisted long after the end of the war. Queer concentration camp prisoners were not acknowledged as victims of Nazi persecution. Many were forced to serve out prison terms after the liberation and so left few testimonies.
A pink triangle was used by the Nazis to identify a gay man in the same way a yellow star was used for Jews. A black triangle was for those deemed “asocial,” which included transgender people, who were seen by the Nazis as an existential threat to the project of purity. Todd uses the term “transvestite” in the novel for historical accuracy — the word was used at the time in a way that approximates what is now meant by “transgender.”
From this beginning, the narrative follows Bertie and Sophie along two timelines, switching back and forth between Berlin in 1932, when Hitler was just coming to power and the end of the war in 1945 in the country town of Ulm.
When we meet Bertie, he is working as an assistant to Dr. Hirschfeld and has recently undergone gender affirming surgery at the pioneering institute. He meets Sofie early in the novel at a queer club in Berlin. Her easy acceptance of the vulnerable Bertie brings the two together.
Before Hitler’s rise, queer people in Germany experienced a time of relative safety and freedom. The joy of that period is evident. Early in the novel, Bertie and his friend Gert have a raucous evening at The Eldorado, a queer nightclub in Berlin. Readers see the tables at the club through Bertie’s eyes: “All of them were full with the stepchildren of nature.”
There is an acknowledgment of vulnerability in this short description. Despite their good times, Bertie seems aware of how precious and precarious this little moment of freedom is. And as the reader also knows, there is a shadow hovering just outside.
That shadow — Hitler and his goals for the eradication of anyone he deemed “unpure” —eventually works its way in: clubs close; the Institute is destroyed; and with their lives in danger, Bertie and Sofie flee Berlin to a farm in Ulm, acting out the roles of man and wife.
Although Sofie and Bertie care for and protect each other during their time in Ulm, there is little of the passion they had together in Berlin. It’s unclear whether their relationship is based on love or purely on the need for safety.
Adding to the couple’s worry is the arrival of Karl, a young, emaciated trans man who managed to escape a prison camp and wander, barely conscious, into their field — likely with the goal of eating some asparagus. This becomes yet another test for Bertie and Sophie. When they see the black triangle on Karl’s prison clothes, they take him in.
Todd deftly keeps the couple’s vulnerability present by interrupting the narrative with short radio broadcast-style missives detailing the progress of the Nazi enterprise. The news arrives of the revocation of “transvestite cards” (these had permitted transgender people to avoid arrest for crossdressing); the opening of the prison camp at Dachau; the closing of queer clubs and newspapers; the self-appointment of Hitler as Führer.
The speed at which the reader begins to turn the pages mimics the speed with which all these actions take place. The reader feels the weight of each announcement, though each ends with some small encouragement: “Hold steady, fellow lilac people. We will see this heartache through.”
When it becomes clear that even after the liberation, Bertie, Sofie, and Karl could be imprisoned, they realize they will have to leave Ulm. They set their sights on America, where they imagine they will be able to disappear and start anew.
Tension builds in the final pages as Bertie, Sofie, and Karl watch without understanding as some refugees are allowed entrance to the U.S. and others are denied. As they reach the customs officials, Bertie consoles a trembling Karl: “One day,” he whispers into Karl’s ear, “you’ll forget that you were supposed to be scared.”
We leave the characters overwhelmed but hopeful as they enter a new life here — a not unsatisfying ending to a story of hardship.
Writing the novel, Todd says, “I realized I had the chance to remind the world that these people existed. I just wanted them to be remembered.”
Post-Liberation
The event: Author Milo Todd in conversation with Christopher Castellani
The time: Thursday, May 29, 5 to 6 p.m.
The place: The Provincetown Bookshop, 229 Commercial St.|
The cost: Free
