Surviving Auschwitz: on the sins of being intersex

Having been born and raised in the Netherlands, stories of the horrors committed by the Nazis not only during the occupation of the Netherlands, but also those elsewhere in Europe are something which one grows up with. I also read a lot of (children's) books which covered aspects of this, including of course Anne Frank's diary. Despite this, it wasn't until later that I also became aware of not only Jews having been deported to concentration camps, but also homosexuals, gypsies, 'feeble-minded individuals' and many others. Usually in the name of 'racial purity' and such concepts.

Because of this I wasn't too surprised to learn via a German study [1] that intersex individuals were also dragged into this. The general attitude towards intersex individuals under German National Socialism was that intersex (or 'hermaphrodites' as they were then referred to) people were symptoms of racial impurities, the degenerate result of mixing of races and the like. Advised was to 'normalise' them, but preferably in such a way that they would be infertile, lest they would produce offspring.

Although much of any evidence that may have existed of medical experimentation on intersex people - by Josef Mengele and other Nazi doctors - was very likely destroyed along with other documents as the Soviet Red Army and Allied forces approached, the remaining evidence shows that such experiments were very likely performed. Possibly along the lines of the twin experiments and on individuals with specific conditions, such as dwarfism.


What caught me by surprise was that even exposure to brief snippets of this work would provoke an incredibly intense traumatic emotional response in me. Considering the many years of having dealt with reading through unpleasant texts on the topic of intersex, I had not expected this. Yet, just a bit of this paper has so far managed to completely emotionally destabilise me for days straight on three occasions. Especially the first day immediately after initial exposure I feel beset by sadness, hopelessness and frustration, finding myself unable to stop crying.

Clearly there's something about this work that manages to trigger a traumatic PTSD callback in a way that rarely happens in such an extreme manner. But why a historical work? After all, I wasn't deported to Auschwitz, did not undergo those medical experiments and didn't spend years facing the inevitable demise of myself and everyone around me for years as we suffered through one day after another. So what's the similarity?

Having spent a few months thinking about it, I am quite certain that much of the issue lies in that although the phrasing of how one used to talk about intersex people in the 1930s and 1940s, and how people talk about intersex people today has changed, the underlying meaning and implications has not. For example:

• 'Symptom of racial impurity' turned into 'biological flukes'.
• 'Correcting intersex cases' became 'normalisation of genitals'.
• Justification changed from 'racial purity' to 'ensuring happiness of an intersex child by not appearing different'. [2]
• 'degenerate being' became 'disorder of sex development'.

Over the past years, I have expressed on many occasions (e.g. [3]) the feeling of being a part of medical experiments, rather than being treated as a patient by doctors. My diagnosis of post-traumatic stress disorder appears to have strong roots in these experiences [4]. It feels as though I have been subjected to human experimentation involving the 'normalisation' of an intersex person. Try different brainwashing and other methods, see what sticks. Even if this may have been done out of ignorance rather than as a wilful experiment. [5]


So then, the upsetting thing about Ms Klöppel's article then appears to be that it rams home the point that nothing has really changed between 1933 and 2020? At least at a cursory glance it does appear that way. It explains the intense traumatic response, provoking more intense and longer lasting PTSD flashbacks than I can recall having experienced before.

It's possible that what makes it so much more intense is the accompanying realisation that if things haven't really progressed in the past eighty years when it comes to treating intersex individuals like full human beings with their own will and desires, then why would they change in the coming years or decades? Cue hopelessness and depression.


This is not a pleasant topic. It is also not a topic which I enjoy dealing with today. As much as I have come to accept my own body [6], I cannot accept my circumstances. I cannot accept the way that society treats me and others like me [7].

It appears that today's society has a lot more introspection and soul-searching to do. Because clearly intersex folk like yours truly are not a cause of society's woes, just as we weren't back in in the 1930s.


Maya



[1] Ulrike Kloeppel - Intersex under National Socialism http://mayaposch.com/literature_intersex.php
[2] The Intersex Controversy http://mayaposch.com/intersex-controversy.php
[3] https://mayaposch.blogspot.com/2015/06/for-what-am-i-but-medical-experiment.html
[4] https://mayaposch.blogspot.com/2020/01/the-eternal-war.html
[5] https://mayaposch.blogspot.com/2020/01/erasure-of-intersex-identity-through.html
[6] https://mayaposch.blogspot.com/2020/01/the-five-stages-towards-accepting-ones.html
[7] https://mayaposch.blogspot.com/2019/12/societys-attitude-towards-intersex-is.html