If you burn the records, you erase the people. That was the logic behind the destruction of Magnus Hirschfeld's Institut für Sexualwissenschaft in 1933, when Nazi students set fire to one of the world's most important archives of LGBTQ research and history. It was one of the first great book burnings of the Third Reich.
But queer people refused to let the record disappear. In living rooms, storefronts, and back offices, they started rebuilding. Jim Kepner collected LGBTQ materials for decades in his Los Angeles apartment. ONE Magazine fought all the way to the Supreme Court for the right to mail information about homosexuality. The Lesbian Herstory Archives in New York became one of the most important preservation efforts in queer history, built entirely by community members.
This episode traces the courageous network of queer librarians, archivists, and collectors who preserved our history when no one else would, and why today's book ban movement makes this fight urgently relevant again.
Our stories survived because someone decided they were worth saving.
Watch the video version: https://youtu.be/PFTCfkBNwPg
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Website: https://thisweekinqueerhistory.com
