I Will Not Abandon You brings to life the unrelenting defiance of queer women in fascist Germany.
In his latest book, award-winning historian Samuel Clowes Huneke shows how love, queer resistance, and collective action survived in the harrowing circumstances of Nazi rule. Drawing on a decade of archival research, Huneke takes readers into a hidden world, from the wartime balls that lesbian activists continued to organize to the concentration camps where women accused of loving women were imprisoned. Following a diverse cast of characters, Huneke reveals both the oppression that queer women faced and how they resisted fascism in solidarity with one another. Arguing that this solidarity – which transcended race, class, and gender – offers a compelling alternative to today’s fractured identity politics, I Will Not Abandon You is a vital, new history of queer life under fascism and a call to rethink the foundations of progressive politics today.
Praise for I Will Not Abandon You
“I Will Not Abandon You brings to life the extraordinary history of lesbians under the Nazi regime. Huneke depicts the lively underground scene of hidden bars, raucous parties, and all-women balls that flourished despite Nazi attempts to eliminate queerness. He details the suffering of those who fell into Nazi clutches, and the heroic resistors who lived their lives bravely and helped others to survive. This book is a welcome contribution to the history of love between women in the 20th century.”
Lillian Faderman, author of Odd Girls and Twilight Lovers: A History of Lesbian Life in 20th Century America
“I Will Not Abandon You is not only a long overdue history of queer women in Nazi Germany. Huneke has written a profoundly gripping, moving, and beautifully researched account of solidarity, non-conformity, and ambivalent lives in a dictatorship. In our current time the book offers an urgent read.”
Anna Hájková, author of People without History are Dust: Queer Desire in the Holocaust
“A brilliantly argued case for recognizing that persecuting societies do not require a law to stimulate citizen cruelty. Huneke eloquently refutes long-held historical misunderstandings – also regarding the entanglements of trans and lesbian lives – and offers profound original insights into the vexing mess of overlapping categories of vulnerability (“work-shy,” “asocial,” “feebleminded,” “libidinal” deviance) that brought especially poorer queer women to the attention of the police, brutal imprisonments, and often untimely death.”
Dagmar Herzog, author of The Question of Unworthy Life and The New Fascist Body
“Piecing together a gripping account through painstaking archival research, Huneke illuminates the complexities of lesbian lives in Nazi Germany. He shows how, in the face of multiple agents of social control with inconsistent attitudes and policies, some lesbians, even Jewish lesbians, found ways to slip through the cracks in the system—and even throw queer dances. Be prepared for one amazing story after another detailing the “queer ingenuity” that troubles the victim/agent binary and reveals the possibilities of surviving a murderous regime. This is a stunning book, with lessons we need now.”
Leila J. Rupp, Distinguished Professor of Feminist Studies, University of California, Santa Barbara
“In this brave and original work, we learn that lesbians were persecuted as lesbians in Nazi Germany; Huneke conclusively does away with the argument that this was not the case. And further, we see that queer studies is, or should be, of interest to everyone who sees in scholarship one small contribution to building a world based on solidarity instead of division.”
Dan Stone, Professor of Modern History and Director of the Holocaust Research Institute, Royal Holloway, University of London