NONFICTION - Sept. 3, 1995

I, PIERRE SEEL, DEPORTED HOMOSEXUAL: A Memoir of Nazi Terror by Pierre Seel (Basic Books: $21; 186 pp.) In the spring of 1941, Pierre Seel was, in many ways, an ordinary 17-year-old growing up in Alsace, France. He had a weakness for good clothes and pastries, and enjoyed spending time with a boy named Jo. The major difference with Seel was his homosexuality, which he kept a closely guarded secret from his parents and siblings. When the Nazis arrived, Seel, who unbeknown to him had been on a list of suspected homosexuals, was taken to a concentration camp, starved and tortured. Jo was interned there as well and his brutal murder, witnessed by the whole camp, is perhaps the most horrible moment of Seel’s memoir. After finally being released, Seel, by now an utterly demoralized human being, was forced to fight for the German army in Berlin under Allied bombing, and later in Russia where he was able to escape.

It is difficult to judge a book like “I, Pierre Seel, Deported Homosexual.” Looking at it in terms of the quality of the writing doesn’t seem quite fair, nor is it appropriate to discuss Seel’s persona since what he went through is almost beyond comprehension. Ultimately, Seel is an ordinary man who did the best he could in extraordinary circumstances. His story is important because there are so few first-person accounts of Nazi persecution of homosexuals.