It was a pioneering trans library – until the Nazis burned it

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Within months of Hitler becoming chancellor of Germany in 1933, pro-Nazi students publicly burned books by Jewish authors. Troves of research on sexuality also smoldered in those piles. Our culture reporter Irene Katz Connelly has the details…

Doctor is in: The Institute for Sexual Research, housed in a Berlin mansion, was the first medical center devoted to the study of gender and sexuality. It was founded by the pioneering sexologist Magnus Hirschfeld, a gay Jewish doctor and activist who lobbied against the criminalization of homosexuality.

Library is open: The Institute offered medical care and health education, printed scientific journals, hosted lectures and screened films. Hirschfeld and his colleagues also developed an enormous library of rare texts and notes on gender-affirming surgery.

Setting it ablaze: Joseph Goebbels drew on pro-Nazi student organizations to purge cultural institutions of “degenerate” art, and on May 6, 1933, students broke into and occupied the Institute. Four days later, they burned its entire library. Though much of his research was destroyed, Hirschfeld nonetheless helped pave the way for today’s LGBTQ+ rights movement.

Read the story ➤

Patrons at the Eldorado, a popular LGBTQ+ cabaret in Berlin during the Weimar years. (Getty)

Opinion | Historians are learning more about how the Nazis targeted trans people: Toni Simon, a transgender woman, was “the sassy proprietor of an underground club where LGBTQ people gathered,” writes Laurie Marhoefer, a historian of queer people in the Weimar and Nazi eras. Simon was deemed “a danger to youth” and a Gestapo officer suggested she be sent to a concentration camp. Simon’s story is but one of many trans people whose stories are now coming to light. Read the essay ➤

Related: How the Forward covered LGBTQ+ history

ALSO IN THE FORWARD

Ato Blankson-Wood rehearses the title role in ‘Hamlet,’ for Central Park’s Shakespeare in the Park. (Joan Marcus)

How a Jewish scholar is helping to make ‘Hamlet’ relevant: James Shapiro, a Columbia University professor and author of Shakespeare and the Jews, is a consultant on this summer’s Shakespeare in the Park production of Hamlet. It’s set in Atlanta amid a backdrop of racial and political divisions. “I know this play, I love this play,” Shapiro said. “But it opens up for me things that I had not seen in it.” Read our interview with Shapiro ➤

Why are neo-Nazis targeting Disney World? Videos showing more than a dozen protesters waving flags with swastikas at the entrance to Walt Disney World went viral this weekend. It’s not the first time this has happened. The protests seemed to be linked to Disney’s anti-racism training and initiatives to promote inclusivity. Some Florida Republicans are calling on Gov. Ron DeSantis, who has also clashed with Disney over these issues, to condemn the protesters. Read the story ➤

Plus…

• Cormac McCarthy, the Pulitzer Prize-winning novelist, died Tuesday at 89. In two books, published last year, he introduced his first Jewish characters.
  
  
• About half of older Jewish Americans are not engaged with the Jewish community, according to a new survey.
  
  
• The UJA-Federation of New York, one of the largest Jewish philanthropies in the nation, has appointed Daniel Rosenthal, a Democratic member of the New York Assembly, as vice president of government affairs. 

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WHAT ELSE YOU NEED TO KNOW TODAY

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu leaves a meeting today at the Knesset. (Emil Salman/Haaretz)

??  Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s party decided this morning to delay by a month a vote related to the government’s judicial overhaul plan, threatening to blow up compromise talks over the plan and inflame the protest movement. (Haaretz)

?  A senior Biden administration attacked Israel’s diaspora affairs minister saying that he “does not understand the American Jewish diaspora.” Earlier this week, the minister, Amichai Chikli, called the liberal pro-Israel group J Street a “hostile organization” and one of its backers, George Soros, “one of the greatest haters of Israel in our times.” The Biden aide also mentioned a photo of Chikli at last week’s Israel parade in New York that some viewers thought showed him giving protesters the finger. Ambassador Deborah Lipstadt, the U.S. antisemitism envoy, met with Chikli on Tuesday in Israel. (JTA, Twitter, Haaretz)

⚖️  The gunman on trial for killing 11 people at the Tree of Life synagogue in 2018 ranted online about his hatred for Jews prior to the attack, according to evidence revealed in court Tuesday. The prosecution is expected to rest its case today. (AP)

?  An effort to ban a graphic-novel adaptation of The Diary of Anne Frank from public schools is gaining steam, with some critics calling the book “pornography” and “antisemitic.” Our colleagues at the Jewish Telegraphic Agency did a deep dive. (JTA)

?  The curator at the Bavarian National Museum in Munich is trying to return more than 100 silver objects to the descendants of the original Jewish owners. Meticulously tracking ownership through Nazi-era records and genealogy websites, he’s already given back 50 items, including kiddush cups and candlesticks. (AP)

?  Ed Sheeran’s Sunday concert drew 89,000 to New Jersey’s MetLife Stadium, which some said was its all-time attendance record. Turns out, that honor remains with the 2012 Siyum Hashas, when 93,000 Jews gathered to celebrate the completion of a seven-and-a-half year cycle of studying a page of Talmud each day known as Daf Yomi. (JTA)

Mazel tov ➤  To Rabbi R. Tamara Cohen of Philadelphia, Allison Cook of Cambridge, Massachusetts, and Nicole Nash of Brooklyn for winning this year’s Covenant Awards honoring Jewish educators.

We’re everywhere ➤  In the Washington Post, the Forward’s innovation editor Talya Zax reviewed a new book that takes a modern and maternal approach to Frankenstein. And here’s an essay I wrote for The New York Times on how Einstein coped with a Nazi disinformation campaign.

ON THE CALENDAR

(iStock)

On this day in history (1777): The Continental Congress approved the Stars and Stripes as the first national flag of the United States. A poem by an early Forward contributor, Abraham Liessin, comically referred to the flag as farfl un lokshn, or noodles and egg barley. 

7 p.m. ET: Around 4,000 people are expected to participate in a Yiddish sing-along tonight in Central Park. Among the tunes will be a rendition of “Happy Birthday” for Dr. Ruth, who turned 95 earlier this month.

VIDEO OF THE DAY

There’s fewer than 100 hours until Father’s Day (but who’s counting). Spend 1 minute and 6 seconds of it watching this video our predecessors made a few years back showing their favorite Jewish fathers in pop culture.

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Thanks to Tani Levitt and Talya Zax for contributing to today’s newsletter. You can reach the “Forwarding” team at [email protected].