Interview with 2024 Lev Student Research Fellow Sarah Ernst

Interview conducted by Grace Shaffer (PhD student in History, University of Southern California, and Center Graduate Assistant)

How did you get into the field of Holocaust Studies?

I feel like for me learning about the Holocaust and modern Europe has always been my interest – even when I was little. I was the kid who would be going to the library and getting the nonfiction books, on top of like my fifteen fiction books. And so, I would be reading the kind of short biography stories that are geared towards kids, and so it’s always been something of an interest. And then going to Brandeis and taking undergrad classes in the Holocaust – that just really sparked an interest. There was so much more that was still to be talked about, even though it, it feels like a heavily researched field, and then you actually sit in it and realize that, no, there’s so much more to look at and think about. And so that, I would say, was what drew me more in.

How did you come into the topic of specifically queer and other lesser-studied groups as your dissertation project?

I think that has also been something that’s been on the back of my mind for a very long time. I distinctly remember – even before college – in my high school AP European History class, we were talking about the Holocaust and my teacher was going over statistics. And I asked “What about like, other victims, like those with the pink triangle or other groups?” And he said “Well, the numbers are not as significant.” So that sparked a little questioning in me where I thought, “wait a minute.”

Another thing that interested me about this topic were the ways in which we in academia talk about it. It is very different from the ways in which public history is discussing it. But also, on the flip side, now that I’m doing my dissertation, I am realizing that there are so many more discussions regarding queer topics in public history than in the academic realm. I want to expand this with my work. I would say my project hopes to think about the layers of (un)belonging that individuals face when multiple identities are persecuted and how foregrounding queerness can help uncover alternative spaces of community and kinship that have gone unrecognized in the mainstream narratives. Also bringing in conversations how we can queer the field to address the histories that have been silenced despite being there since the beginning. I think that, as someone who identifies as queer, queer history matters to me. I am wanting to be able to kind of look and see how life experiences are for those who were in different positions, but nevertheless, still had these desires and identities, even though they might not have had the same labels that we have. But I also think just getting more at what the field has been trying to do in the past thirty years, which is more of an integrated history that is bringing up the voices of those who were persecuted, and I think that includes on all levels. I am interested kind of getting into the nitty gritty of that.

What would you say is unique about your approaches to these sources and stories and how do you go about finding them?

What I hope is the unique aspect – and we’ll see as this develops and continues – is really trying to not pigeonhole myself into looking at one specific group or aspect. While there is work on queer Jewish individuals, as I have outlined in my prospectus and things of that nature, I also want to look at queer Roma or queer disabled individuals and see how their experiences are impacted. This is especially because these are groups that scholars like as Sybil Milton identify as being some of the ones that were heavily targeted for the initial mass killings compared to other groups like communists, although they were still experiencing violence.

I also think having a background where my undergraduate degree was both in History and Women’s Gender and Sexuality Studies, and getting a bit more of the sociological theory aspect helps guide my perspective when I’m doing the historical research. I’m comfortable with “okay, let’s think about the different ways in which to read the archive” – which isn’t necessarily a unique thing or unique approach, but I am looking for or at people who might have been overlooked, or reading material with curiosity and thinking “huh, I want to look into that.” So for example, something that I hope to do in future research is looking more into the people who were labeled by the Nazis and Nazi doctors as hysterical. This is because often that hysteria has connotations with sexuality, whether it’s rampant sexuality or no sexuality. So, delving more into that—which I again, haven’t done as much—but I think that is an area that has been overlooked or underdiscussed. When it comes to talking about the experiences of disability, we look at the categories that the Nazis were assigning, but there is more to it than that. It becomes a matter of delving more into that and hoping to find sources that are not just the perpetrators.

This is something you have touched on a little bit, but are there any influences from outside the field that you’ve incorporated into that research? Are there any other theories or approaches and perspectives that you’ve incorporated?

I think for me I have tried to not just looking at the people in the field, but also those outside it. So for example, Anna Hajkova, who is in the foreground of queer Holocaust history, is obviously a very big influence for me. But also so is Samuel Huenke, whose first book discusses the post-war experiences of gay men in East and West Germany. I think that’s really important to bring in those post-war experiences and things like that and incorporate them more. Laurie Marhoefer’s work researching queer and trans life in both the Weimar Republic and Nazi Germany also kind of straddles the sphere, and I think that that is an important thing to consider when doing histories of people who have been placed on the outside. You should be able to bring in other stories. An example of that that comes to mind is Jennifer Evan’s new book Queer Life After Fascism: Kinship and the Queer Art of History, in which she draws a lot on indigenous scholars and trans scholars. I really look up to and kind of build off of that model. By thinking about the multiple intersecting identities and how they work, you begin to think about how you can apply their knowledge and understanding even though it is based on perhaps a completely different frame to the work you are doing yourself.

Outside of the strictly Holocaust work, there’s also folks who write queer life in other places or time periods, such as London. Some examples that come to mind are Matt Houlbrook, who has written on queer life in twentieth century Britain, and Craig Griffiths, who specializes in queer culture in present-day Germany. I think research is all about being able to look around in different areas, especially because these spaces are not static at all. It’s very much a fluid movement of space. That is why reading across the spectrum, and even coming back and looking at some of the foundational United States sexuality books, is so important. For example, George Chauncey’s Gay New York is definitely a big influence for me, just for the ways in which he grounds his work and is looking through and thinking about it.

A book that I like that is completely out of left field but has still influenced my approach is Floating Coast by Bathsheba Demuth, which is an environmental history book on the Bering Strait. The way Demuth positions her argument is that the animals are having history alongside the people I think it’s just such an interesting approach. You don’t know what is in the mind of the whale, but it’s still being written in a way that you get the history and you’re seeing the impact colonialism and imperialism has on the actual environment. Fields like environmental history are good places to look, because they do work a lot with the non-human that are still writing these histories. I think using different fields like that can help to understand queer life and how we can recover queer history when so much of it has been erased.

When researching queer history, do you find that there is an abundance of sources? Or are there silences in the narrative or in the archive that you’re having to reconstruct?

I would say yes there are some silences. I think too, there’s also the question of what exactly is being defined as ‘queer’? I hope, with my work—and what I hope to show in my lecture – that is that it’s not only just the sexual desires or desire in that way, but also thinking about like ‘queer’ as a thing that is outside of the heteronormative, able-bodied, hegemonic narrative of society and what is ‘normal’. I’m drawn to the ones that are like, “huh – this is like queer kinship embodied,” but because it stands outside of the idea of the family being a biological entity that reproduces, it’s not being written about. But it is there and it is present. I am also thinking about the ways in which—and this is something that I’m still working on – disability and queerness are very much intertwined. Going off of that, I am interested in the ways in which, especially for the video testimonies, queerness and disability are talked about. There are also ways to bring in other angles, such as race and things like that – that was just something I didn’t have time to really look into over the month.

It is all those questions of, it’s not only like the personal identity, but then queering the narrative by kind of taking a step back and reconfiguring. I would say it’s a lot easier to find someone who identified by the marker given by Nazi authorities. For those who have other intersecting identities, I would say they would probably lean more on the identities that were like target more heavily. This could be for a variety of reasons, like stigma or other things of that nature. It’s much like anything that comes to be discussed with like sex and sexuality in the field – there is still some degree of stigma. This is another thing that a lot of scholars are doing amazing work on – there was a recent special issue that came out the Journal of Holocaust Research about sexual violence and testimonies, so there is important work being done.

Are there any stories in particular that have stuck with you more than others or that you just can’t stop thinking about?

There is one that just really sticks with me – both for what has been written about this person’s life and what I’m focusing on. This one in particular sticks with me because the way the person being interviewed breaks the fourth wall actively talks with the interviewer. I was surprised by that! They were talking about post-war experiences and things like that. And she just looks at the interviewer and asks “can I say something that’s not politically correct?” And she says “you don’t agree with me, do you? Because your face—” and just goes on and talks. As she continues, she is making these claims that are really not correct. But you have to ask okay, what is it that’s sticking with me? Is it’s what she’s saying, where she’s saying that no gay people are happy and we should bring back different ‘therapies’? Or is it the way the thing that is ‘queer’ or odd about this testimony is not the homophobia, but rather the breaking of the fourth wall. What does that do to like the listener when it’s going way outside of the boundaries of what a normal testimony is, where the interviewer is supposed to be quiet outside of asking questions? So, that one has stuck with me not just for the content but the ways in which the interviewer responses. And that’s not the only one, that’s just one example.

Another thing that has stuck with me are other times where the interviewer is very much trying to very much tying things into sex and asking questions very much making it seem like all the queer prisoners wanted was sex. But if you see their responses, sometimes you do have some where sex is relevant but then you have others where no, all we wanted was bread. And so it’s very interesting, because how do you navigate those conversations? It is the question of okay, what are we really focusing on here? Are we focusing on what the one who experienced it is saying, or are we focusing on what the interviewer is asking them? Especially if the interviewer asks something that can become a leading question, which then shapes how we write about this history. It’s very interesting and like hard to kind of grapple through, because my interpretation of what I listen to could be very different than the person sitting next to me. For example, I could say they’re just being sarcastic, or something like that and someone else could be think no, they are deadly serious. And then that’s also a question—how do we do these histories when there is so much room for interpretation within the medium of video testimony? I think that’s an exciting but scary part of queer history where there is so much that you can unpack in those layers.

Is there anything about your research that you would like to share that you haven’t been asked yet, or anything like anything you want to highlight in particular?

I definitely think this is in the early stages, but I’m so excited to see how I can get the threads to connect. I’m also really interested in not only considering experiences during the war, but also post-war experience because the ways in which the memory can help or hinder the discussion of queerness. That’s a question where I’m think this just makes me want to delve more into the archive again and think about it.