Out of Her Tree: Echoes Into the Past

Most of the focus in the lgbt community on Holocaust Memorial Day has often been towards the thousands of gay men imprisoned and killed by the Nazis. It should be remembered that lesbians were also persecuted.

One of the many lesbian victims who were lost in history re-emerged in the 1990s when she became the subject of a book called “Aimée and Jaguar” by Erica Fischer. It was the true story of a lesbian couple who were separated because one of them was a Jew.

Felice Schragenheim and Lilly Wust met in 1942. Felice was a Jewish Resistance fighter and Lilly was the wife of a Nazi soldier. They fell in love and Lilly left her husband. The two women lived together and signed a form of marriage declaration in 1943.

In 1944 Felice was betrayed to the Gestapo and she was sent to the Theresienstadt concentration camp and later transferred to Auschwitz. Felice is thought to have died on the death march from Auschwitz to another camp in December 1944.

In the meantime Lilly was under constant observation by the Nazi authorities. Despite this she managed to hide three Jewish women in her home. They all survived the war, and in 1995 Lilly was recognised as Righteous Among the Nations by Israel, an honour given to non-Jews who risked their own lives to help Jews escape Germany during the war. Lilly died in 2006 and on her gravestone there is also an inscription in memory of Felice Schragenheim.

Felice was arrested because she was a Jew rather than her sexuality, and her ancestry shows a long history of her ancestors’ persecution because of their faith.

Felice’s family on both of her parents’ side fell victim to the Nazis. Her maternal grandmother had been sent to Theresienstadt, the same camp Felice was later sent to. Sadly, her grandmother died there in 1942.

Her father’s cousin, Ludwig Feuchtwanger, had a very close association with Adolf Hitler in the early 1930s. They were actual next-door neighbours. Ludwig’s son, the eminent professor Edgar Feuchtwanger (b.1925) remembers encountering Hitler outside their homes. Ludwig’s brother, Lion Feuchtwanger, became a prominent author and playwright, and wrote anti-Nazi propaganda. Naturally, once Hitler gained power the Feuchtwangers were persecuted and Lion was arrested. He managed to escape disguised as a woman and found asylum in the USA.

The Feuchtwangers, the family of Felice Schragenheim’s paternal grandmother, take their surname from the city of Feuchtwangen in Bavaria. All through the Middle Ages Jews were persecuted in many European cities. In 1555 Feuchtwangen conducted a pogrom (persecution and attacks on an ethnic, usually Jewish, minority) and expelled all remaining Jews. Felice’s ancestors fled to Fürth, a city about 60 kilometers away. There the family took the name of Feuchtwanger. In the middle of the 19th century the family moved to Munich.

Also in Fürth was the Fränkel family who had fled Vienna in 1650. Jakob Löw Feuchtwanger (d.1809) married Hanna Fränkel. The Feuchtwangers and Fränkels intermarried over several generations. The Fränkels were an influential family that extended into Poland and what is now the Czech Republic. Many male members of the family became rabbis.

A son of Jakob and Hanna was Seligmann Aharon Meir Feuchtwanger (1786-1852). He married Fanny Vogele Wassermann (1799-1875). She belonged to a wealthy family. Her father Amschel Elkan Wassermann was the court agent to the Duke of Öettingen-Wallerstein. He founded a bank in 1785 which became a leading German bank before Hitler’s rise to power.

Seligmann and Fanny’s son Jakob (1821-1890) married Auguste Hahn (1824-1896). The Hahns were, like a large number of Felice’s ancestors, from Frankfurt. Frankurt was a major centre of the European Jewish community in medieval times. Being centrally situated on trade routes that crossed the continent it attracted a large number of merchants and traders.

There were around 200 Jews in Frankfurt by 1241. There was no Jewish ghetto at that time and they travelled freely and had certain protections given to them by the emperor. However, in May 1241 unrest over the enforced Christian baptism of some Jewish children led to the citizens conducting one of the many pogroms against the Jews in Frankfurt. It is said that 180 Jews were killed and the handful that survived submitted to baptism.

The community managed to revive, aided by an influx of Jewish families from other parts of Germany escaping similar pogroms. By 1270 the community was once again flourishing. However, persecution continued to affect them, and they were taxed more heavily than the Christian community. More religious unrest led to another pogrom in 1349.

In 1462 the Jews were forcibly relocated into the Judengasse (Jew’s Alley), a street enclosed in a wall with entrance gates. It was the first ghetto in Frankfurt. As time went on and the population grew the ghetto became overcrowded, even though the ghetto limits had been expanded.

Despite the overcrowding and the persecution some Frankfurt Jewish families became some of the most influential in Germany. Many well-known modern families originated in the Judengasse – Oppenheimer, Rothschild, and Goldschmidt, among others. All of them feature in Felice Schragenheim’s ancestry.

In almost every generation of Felice’s ancestry there was anti-semitism. Some of her family bloodlines were affected more than others, but all of them show the resilience of the Jewish community that is echoed through many other families in other countries. Today, on Holocaust Memorial Day, we should remember that persecution of Jews existed before the Nazis. Let us hope that Felice Schragenheim was a member of the last generations of her family to suffer under a regime of hate.

Around the World in Another 80 Gays : Part 13) From the Ghetto to Hollywood

Previously : 23) The Harper Road Woman (c.60 AD) may have been a witness to the destruction of Roman London by Boudicca, whose name, according to 24) Judy Grahn (b.1940), was the origin of the term “bull-dyke”, a derivation also investigated by 25) SDiane Bogus (b.1946), whose poetry was nominated for a Lambda Literary Award in the same category as 26) Irena Klepfisz (b.1941).

26) Irena Klepfisz’s “A Few Words in the Mother Tongue: Poems Selected and New (1971-1990)” was one of five nominations in the Lesbian Poetry category of the 3rd Lambda Literary Awards in 1991. His collection of poems gives just a glimpse of Irena’s development as a poet. In particular it is a semi-autobiographical examination of the role of language in its power to unite and divide. Through her poetry, and “A Few Words in the Mother Tongue”, Irena presents past and present atrocities as a connected sequence of events. The politics and regimes may be different, the mechanics of persecution may be different, but divisions based on culture, race, belief and language remain.

Perhaps there has never been a period where language could mean life or death than during the Nazi Holocaust of the 20th century. Irena Klepfisz knew this herself as a Polish Jew in Warsaw. Irena’s father was an active member of the Jewish Labour Bund, an organisation which campaigned for the rights of Jewish workers and their families and the opposition of anti-semitism. He helped to get many Jews out of the Warsaw ghetto as World War II began to grow in momentum. The bund party went largely underground following the Nazi invasion of Poland in 1939 and some of its leaders were executed. Jews were forced into ghettos and the Warsaw ghetto was the largest with over 300,000 people. The Nazis then began to transport them to the Treblinka extermination camp in 1942. Almost the entire 300,000 Jews were killed at Treblinka before anyone in the ghetto discovered the truth – they were not being sent to labour camps, but to their death.

The remaining Jews in the ghetto began an armed revolt in January 1943 and Irena Klepfisz’s father was killed on the second day. Before the uprising Irena’s father had smuggled her and her mother out of Warsaw, and afterwards they fled into the countryside. In order to escape capture they posed as Christians. Because of this Irena was not exposed to the Yiddish language that her family spoke.

After the war Irena and her mother migrated to the USA. As a teenager Irena felt that she had “no language in which I was completely rooted”. Her native language was Polish, and she began to learn Swedish after fleeing Poland to Sweden, and a little Yiddish as a child after the war, and now she had to learn a fourth language, English. Together with the turmoil of her cultural heritage having been attacked by the Nazis Irena realised that language could be divisive as well as a unifier. English is the language which helped her to express her Yiddish heritage most personally in her poetry. By the 1970s Irena Klepfisz was a well-known Yiddishist and campaigner.

The immediate post-war years were ones of establishing stability and unity in countries around the world in the aftermath of the war. Being “different” to the rest of society was not encouraged. I would suggest that once nations had begun to re-stabilise and a new generation was growing up minority groups felt overlooked and often victimised. Feminist groups, civil rights groups, and gay rights groups grew during the mid 1950s onwards. So too did other cultural and ethnic groups.

Yiddish was among the many diverse cultures which began to emerge from the shadows. A new generation of Jews who had hardly heard any Yiddish, except from elderly relatives, began to use the language widely. Irena Klepfisz was just one of many who began to teach Yiddish and produce Yiddish literature.

It was in more recent decades that there has been a growth in the lgbt Yiddish community, Queer Yiddishkeit. In the 2000s it seemed that a large proportion of lgbt Jews in America were embracing their Yiddish heritage.

One of the leading figures in Queer Yiddishkeit has been 27) Eve Sicular (b.1961). She is mainly associated with a style of traditional Yiddish music called klezmer, a style mostly associated with celebrations. Like Yiddish itself, klezmer regained popularity in the 1970s and was adopted by many members of the Jewish lgbt community. Eve Sicular has formed several klezmer bands since 1994. Her most successful band, Isle of Klezbos, won a Grammy award in 2007.

As well as traditional Yiddish music Eve Sicular has made her name as an expert on Yiddish film history. Inspired by “The Celluloid Closet”, the popular ground-breaking book by Vito Russo which chronicled the many lgbt references, influences and allusions in film, Eve produced a study called “The Celluloid Closet of Yiddish Film”. This was first published in “The Jewish Folklore and Ethnology Review” in 1994 and quickly developed into a video lecture. In 1986 Eve actually went to one of Vito Russo’s lectures, long before the documentary film of the same name was produced (1995), and later in 1989 she invited him to give the lecture in Seattle.

Eve used her knowledge and experience as a curator of the Film and Television Archives at the YIVO Institute for Jewish Research in the 1990s to create a project which is as ground-breaking as Russo’s original. It has grown and developed and remains popular. Eve is still presenting her video lecture 25 years later.

The original “The Celluloid Closet” by Vito Russo was published in 1981 and been reprinted and revised several times. Gay characters have appeared in film since the silent black and white days and were portrayed often as the “sissy” and “nancy boy” that Hollywood later preferred.

Next year is the centenary of an early silent film featuring a gay lead character. “Different From the Others” (“Anders als die Andern” in its original German) is a black and white silent film released in June 1919. It has been described as the world’s first pro-gay film. The plot is similar to that of the much later British 1961 film “Victim” in that the lead character is blackmailed because of his sexuality.

The film has a deliberate social message. At several points in the film one of the supporting characters, a doctor, gives speeches which are aimed more at the viewer (and the authorities) than the characters in the film. He describes homosexuality as normal and not to be suppressed. The film ends with the words “Paragraph 175” being crossed out in a book. Paragraph 175 was the anti-gay laws introduced into Germany in 1871 and which was the catalyst for the Nazi persecution that followed.

The doctor in the film was not an actor but a real doctor. No ordinary doctor, but one who was uniquely qualified to speak on homosexuality. He was the pioneering German sexologist and gay right campaigner 28) Dr. Magnus Hirschfeld (1868-1935).

Next time : We learn why most people weren’t able to see the film in full, and how the legacy of Magnus Hirschfeld takes us to Africa, Tonga and the Galaxy.

Extraordinary Lives : A Gay Pimpernel

On this Holocaust Memorial Day I want to bring you the story of another Holocaust hero. He was a great-grandson of the Chief Rabbi of England, the manager of the biggest department store in Berlin, and helped to rescue thousands of Jews from the clutches of the Nazis.

Dubbed “the Real Scarlet Pimpernel” by the Association of Jewish Refugees, with whom he worked during the war, Wilfrid Israel was born in London in 1899 into a wealthy Anglo-German Jewish family. He was destined to become the manager of the family business, a Berlin department store that was renowned throughout Germany. The store employed over 2,000 people and it was one of the first commercial businesses in Germany to offer sickness insurance and extra pensions for its employees. Facilities such as sports clubs, drama groups and long weekends were also provided. Being born into this atmosphere of philanthropy Wilfrid went on to go beyond this social conscience once the Nazis began their physical persecution of the Jews.

As a very wealthy Jew he had the financial resources and connections in England to escape the persecution, but he chose to stay in Germany and use these resources and connections to help the less fortunate to escape instead.

Wilfrid’s humanitarian work began in the 1920s after establishing contact with the Jewish Youth movement in Germany, the League of Nations and British intelligence.

The beginning of 1933 saw a huge change in European politics. Adolf Hitler was sworn in as German chancellor in January. In February the German parliament building was destroyed by fire in what Hitler proclaimed was a Communist plot. This gave him the excuse to ban all Communists from parliament and establish the Nazi majority rule that led to his dictatorship.

Wilfrid’s store was raided in March and he was arrested for not firing his Jewish employees. His influential connections helped to secure his release. However, Jewish businesses like his own were boycotted. He was determined to stay put even when other Jewish businesses closed down.

As the persecution of the Jews grew with Hitler’s power many Jews, aware of Wilfrid Israel’s progressive social conscience, came to him for help. He formed secret networks within the Nazi establishment which enabled him to influence the release of many people from concentration camps by providing documents and money to help them to escape Germany.

Unlike the Nazi party who sought to indoctrinate children Wilfrid saw them as innocent victims of propaganda and played as huge part in what is called the Kindertransport, the international programme which saw thousands of children being taken away from Germany and central Europe to more safe nations.

Despite being a known Jew and potentially dangerous Wilfrid was allowed to travel internationally. This enabled him to visit Palestine and the kibbutz Hazorea which was founded by Jews who had already left Germany. Wilfrid was a pioneer of the youth migration movement to the kibbutz and aided many in settling there, and today it houses his vast collection of Asian artifacts.

In 1940 Wilfrid moved to Britain after being alerted by his spies that he was about to be arrested. In Britain he continued to work for German Jews. Many had been locked up as “enemy aliens” in British camps and he worked for several refugee organisations in getting many of them released. He constantly urged the British government to do more to help children escape from Germany after the termination of the Kindertransport programme in 1940.

Thousands of immigration documents for the settlement of British-controlled Palestine were printed and Wilfrid set about distributing them. At the same time he was persuading the Jewish Agency to help him rescue thousands of Jewish refugees from Vichy France and fascist Spain and Portugal.

In 1943 he was sent on a mission to Lisbon to begin the task of getting refugees out of Portugal. Two months later, on 1st June 1943, he was flying back to London to prepare for rescue work in France when the plane was attacked by Nazi fighter planes and shot down. All 17 people on board were killed. This attack became one of the most well-known events of World War II. Not because of Wilfrid Israel but because of a more well-known passenger who perished on that flight, actor Leslie Howard, himself a European Jew.

It has been rumoured ever since that the plane was shot down because Leslie Howard was on board. Howard was reputed to have been a spy. The real reason may never be known, but it is also possible that the Germans knew Wilfrid Israel was on that plane and that he was the intended target.

In later decades the name and work of Wilfrid Israel faded from war histories to be overtaken by other great rescuers such as Sir Nicholas Winton and Oskar Schindler. A recent biography and film have brought Wilfrid’s name and great works into the wider public arena. This modest, very private, hero deserves to be recognised for his extraordinary bravery and efforts to see an estimated 30,000 people resettled or released from incarceration.

Poster for the 2016 film biography of Wilfrid Israel

Perhaps the final words should be ones attributed to Leslie Howard. Two of Howard’s most famous film roles were as the Scarlet Pimpernel and Pimpernel Smith, the latter having a remarkable similarity to the work of Wilfrid Israel himself. It is reputed that when Howard and Israel met one said to the other “I have only played the part of the Scarlet Pimpernel, but you were the Scarlet Pimpernel”.

A Feast of Firsts for Passover

We’re coming to the end of the Jewish festival of Passover right now, so today we look at lgbt Jewish culture. Perhaps more than any other faith Judaism has become a form of secular cultural identity. Many Jews don’t think of themselves as having any belief at all but embrace their Jewish ancestry and heritage with pride.

As with other faiths there is a multitude of different denominations within Judaism with different doctrinal attitudes to the lgbt community. These differences range for the Orthodox Jewish opinion based on the much-quoted and even greater misinterpreted scriptural verse, as it is with extreme Christian groups, from Leviticus. The verse was translated into English many centuries ago as “do not lie with a man as you would with a woman, since this is an abomination”. Many extreme believers and atheists alike have misinterpreted, often deliberately to justify their bigotry, the word “abomination” which doesn’t even appear in the original scriptural texts.

While the debate about ordaining lgbt clergy is still going on in many faiths Judaism in one of the first to appoint openly lgbt clergy of all genders. Needless to say, it is in the newer, more liberal denominations that this has occurred. The traditional Orthodox Jewish denomination does not ordain openly lgbt rabbis though some have come out after ordination.

Among the first achieved by lgbt rabbis are the following, arranged by denomination.

ORTHODOX JUDAISM
1999    (USA) Rabbi Steven Greenberg comes out, the person most often referred to as the first openly gay Orthodox rabbi.

2009    (Israel) Rabbi Ron Josef comes out, the first openly lgbt Orthodox rabbi in Israel.

 

CONSERVATIVE JUDAISM

2011    (USA) Rachel Isaacs, the first open lgbt woman to be ordained a Conservative rabbi.
2014    (USA) Mikie Goldstein, the first openly lgbt man to be ordained a Conservative rabbi.

REFORM JUDAISM
1981    (UK) Rabbi Lionel Blue comes out, the first openly lgbt Reform rabbi.
1984    (UK) Sheila Shulman and Elizabeth Tilvah Sarah, both openly lgbt, ordained as Reform rabbis.
2006    (USA) Elliot Kukla, the first transgendered rabbi of Reform Judaism.
2014    (USA) Rabbi Denise Eger, the first openly lgbt President of a Reform conference.

RESTRUCTIONIST JUDAISM

1985    (USA) Deborah Brin, the first openly lgbt to be ordained a Restructionist rabbi.

2007    (USA) Rabbi Toba Spitzer, the first openly lgbt President of a rabbinical association.

2013    (USA) Rabbi Jason Klein, the openly lgbt male President of a rabbinical association.

 

RENEWAL JUDAISM

2005    (USA) Eli Cohen, the first openly lgbt man to be ordained a Renewal rabbi.

2006    (USA) Chaya Eisfield and Lori Klien, the first openly lgbt to be ordained Renewal rabbis.

 

OTHERS

1963    (USA) Sherwin Wine, and openly lgbt rabbi, founds the Humanist Jewish denomination.

1998    (USA) Malka T. Drucker, the first open lgbt rabbi ordained by a cross-denomination seminary.

2012    (USA) Emily Aviva Kapo, the first transgender rabbi ordained by “Conservadox” Judaism.

 

As a prelude to an article I’ll publish next month, there is also a Jewish humanist movement. It was founded in 1963 by Rabbi Sherwin Wine (1928-2007) and is the only major Jewish denomination founded by an openly gay man. Humanist Judaism is not specifically an lgbt denomination but is the most lgbt-friendly of all of them. Although a non-religious organisation it still uses the title of rabbi for its leaders and teachers.

 

There are many other lgbt Jewish religious and secular organisations and a list of them can be found on the JQ International website here.

History Month Launch

Tonight sees the official launch of the UK’s LGBT History Month 2016. It takes place in the hallowed surroundings of Queen’s College, Cambridge. The chosen theme for 2016 is “Religion, Belief and Philosophy”. It’s a subject which gets many people hot under the collar and it may not appeal to many in the lgbt community, but no matter what religious beliefs or philosophy you believe in (or not) there is no doubt that the lgbt community has been shaped by it, and religion, belief and philosophy have been shaped by members of the lgbt community.

As before with the theme for the UK LGBT History Month I intend to run a whole series on articles on this blog on the subject throughout 2016. The title I’ve chosen for these articles is “Believe It Or Not…” To whet your appetite, and to illustrate the massive range that the theme covers, I hope to include articles on subjects ranging from astrology to atheism, Christian homophobia to lgbt churches, Wicca to Utopia, and ancient Babylon to outer space.

Back to tonight’s launch at Queen’s College. The city of Cambridge has a rich lgbt heritage, largely due to the university.

Below is a list of colleges at Cambridge University and I have selected one lgbt alumnus from each. I haven’t been able to identify alumni from all the colleges.

Christ’s College – Sir John Finch (1626-1682), ambassador.

Churchill College – Rev. Diarmaid MacCulloch, Kt. (b.1951), historian.

Clare College – Kwame Anthony Appiah (b.1954), philosopher.

Corpus Christi College – Christopher Marlowe (d.1593), writer and spy.

Downing College – Hamish Henderson (1919-2002), poet.

Emmanuel College – Graham Chapman (1941-1989), member of the Monty Python team.

Fitzwilliam College – Brian Paddick, Lord Paddick (b.1958), ex Metropolitan Police commissioner.

Girton College – Dawn Airey (b.1960), CEO of Getty Images.

Gonville and Caius – Simon Russell Beale (b.1961), actor.

Homerton College – Dame Carol Ann Duffy (b.1955), Poet Laureate.

Jesus College – Philip Hensher (b.1965), novelist and journalist.

King’s College – E. M. Forster (1879-1970), novelist.

Lucy Cavendish College – Sandi Toksvig (b.1958), broadcaster and comedian.

Magdalene College – Prof. Peter Coles (b.1963), cosmologist.

Murray Edwards College – Sue Perkins (b.1969), comedian.

Newnham College – Miriam Margolyes (b.1941), actor.

Pembroke College – Chris Smith, Lord Smith of Finsbury (b.1951), ex Labour minister.

Peterhouse College – Guy Black, Lord Black of Brentwood (b.1964), media mogul.

Queen’s College – Stephen Fry (b.1957), broadcaster and writer.

St. John’s College – Sir Cecil Beaton (1904-1980), fashion designer and photographer.

St. Catherine’s College – Sir Ian McKellen (b.1939), actor and activist.

Selwyn College – Simon Hughes (b.1951), ex Liberal Democrat MP.

Trinity College – Sir Francis Bacon, Viscount Verulam (1651-1626), statesman, philosopher, scientist.

Trinity Hall – Edward Carpenter (1844-1929), philosopher and socialist poet.

Out Of Their Trees : Colombian Genes

Today I’m looking at the ancestry of a member of the lgbt community from the Hispanic world as part of my celebration of Hispanic Heritage Month in the US which began last week. His name is Virgilio Barco Isakson (b.1965), pictured below.

Virgilio is the co-founder and board president of Colombia Diversa, an lgbt rights organisation. His immediate ancestry couldn’t be more illustrious. He father was Virgilio Barco Vargas (1921-1997) who was President of Colombia from 1986 to 1990, in between being Colombia to the USA and the UK. His mother is of mixed USA/Scandinavian blood.

At the time of writing Colombia has the most out lgbt politicians currently in office in South and Central America. They are 2 Ministers of State, a Senator and a member of Congress.

President Barco’s term of office was dominated by his battle against the drug lords, leading to much violence and murder. Controversially, he negotiated peace talks with leftist guerrillas. But, on the whole, his presidency is seen as one of the most liberal the country has seen, and he gave back land to indigenous communities.

Virgilio Barco Isakson is President Barco’s only son. Most of his ancestry is centred around the city of Cúcuta in north-eastern Colombia near the border with Venezuela. A large portion of the lands covered by Cúcuta was given to the municipal council by Virgilio’s great-great-grandfather in the 1850s. His name was Juan Manuel Atalaya y Pizano (1784-1860). In fact he was very generous to his adopted home town (he was Spanish by birth and emigrated to Colombia in 1815), that one of the barrios, the municipal districts of Cúcuta, is named after him. Juan’s wife, however, was of a long Colombian bloodline and she tragically died of injuries she sustained during the earthquake of 1875 which virtually destroyed Cúcuta.

Juan Atalaya y Pizano’s grand-daughter married the first Virgilio Barco (1858-1922), a general, our Virgilio Barco Isakson’s great-grandfather. General Barco was perhaps not the philanthropist that Juan Atalaya was, as he was a leading figure in the exploitation of the oil reserves and destruction of much of the rain forest. However, he was also a councillor in Cúcuta and established a medical foundation.

The ruling Hispanic dynasties of South America create a complex web of family relationships that means Virgilio Barco Isakson is related to most of the presidential families of the South American republics. Several of these dynasties feature prominently in Virgilio’s ancestry, mainly though his father’s mother who was born Julia Dúran Dúran (yes, it is a real name and not a 1980s pop group). Through both of her parents Julia is descended from the Rueda family several times.

The Rueda family arrived in Colombia around the year 1589. They were a Jewish family, and Cristóbal de Rueda González (1569-1610), a merchant, was the founder of the Colombian dynasty. The family settled in San Gil in the Santander province. As with most European invaders into the new World they established large plantations by taking land from local indigenous communities and making slaves of some of them.

One of Virgilio Barco Isakson’s ancestors through the Rueda family was the Conquistador Bartholomé Hernández Herreño (1502-1558). He and one of his sons met their deaths on the points of poisoned arrows shot by indigenous warriors in one of the many battles.

Herreño’s grandson was a Catholic priest. He had an illicit relationship with a woman called Beatriz who was half-Spanish, half-indigenous. Through this liaison Virgilio has native South American blood. It is very likely that he has more through other unresearched lines.

Another Conquistador ancestor was Pedro Gómez de Orozco (1517-1601), called “El Viejo”. He too attacked indigenous tribes and was struck by a poisoned arrow. Unlike Herreño he survived, though he was crippled for the rest of his life.

El Viejo’s great-grandson, also called Pedro Gómez de Orozco, married the aristocratic Doña Ana de Gorraiz Beaumont y Dega, a member of a noble Spanish family descended from Luis II de Beaumont, 2^nd Count of Lerin (1430-1508) and his wife Doña Leona de Aragón. Leona was an illegitimate daughter of King Juan II of Aragon (1358-1479), while Luis’s mother was an illegitimate daughter of King Carlos III of Navarre (1361-1426). So, Virgilio Barco Isakson has royal Spanish blood in his veins as well as that of native South American tribes. Added to his North American, Scandinavian and Jewish blood this gives Virgilio Barco Isakson, as the name of his lgbt organisation suggests, a diverse heritage.

City Pride : Tel Aviv and the Aguda

The Aguda is Israel’s first lgbt organisation and in 9 days time will begin celebrating its 40^th anniversary with a 3-day conference in the city in which it was founded, Tel Aviv. The celebrations are timed to coincide with Tel Aviv Pride, and as this is the largest Pride event in Asia we’re looking at some of its lgbt heritage.

First of all, we’ll look at The Aguda itself. The name is taken from the Hebrew for “the association” and is the short version of its full English name, the Israeli Gay, Lesbian, Bisexual and Transgender Association. It was founded in 1975 under the name of the Society for the Protection of Personal Rights. The present name was officially adopted in 1999, and organised Israel’s first lgbt Pride in 1997.

The anniversary conference is the largest world gathering of lgbt community leaders to be held in Tel Aviv and is being organised by The Aguda in conjunction with A Wider Bridge, an American lgbt organisation. The first keynote speaker will be Christophe Girard, the openly gay French mayor, and the conference ends with another by Seattle mayor Ed Murray.

So, what are the snippets of Tel Aviv’s lgbt heritage have I chosen to feature in today’s City Pride? Well, here they are:

1) Gan Meir Park : Possibly the main hub of lgbt heritage in the city. The municipal LGBT Community Centre is located in this park. The park contains the memorials to lgbt Holocaust victims and to the victims of the 2009 shooting outside The Aguda’s office (no. 6). The annual Tel Aviv Pride parade had begun from here in recent years.

2) Rabin Square (formerly known as the Kings of Israel Square) : This was the location for Tel Aviv’s, and indeed Israel’s, first ever lgbt  Pride parade called the Tel Aviv Love Parade which took place in 1997.

3) Tel Aviv City Council building : The first lgbt elected to political office in Israel was Tel Aviv lawyer Michal Eden. She was elected as a city councillor in 1998. A campaigner since she was in her 20s Michal fought to secure registration for lgbt couples. Before being elected she founded an emergency refuge for lgbt teenagers.

4) Independence Park : For several years this was the venue for Tel Aviv’s annual drag festival called Wigstock. In 1998 there was confusion between the festival organisers and the police over what time the event was supposed to finish. Crowds and police spilled out of the park and into the streets in what has been called the “Wigstock Riots”.

5) The Aguda’s head office.

6) The Royal Beach Hotel : The venue for the Aguda’s 40^th anniversary conference.

7) The French Consulate : To tie in with Mayor Girard’s keynote speech at the conference I include the French Consulate because it was the work place of gay French diplomat called Gérard Araud. He began his diplomatic career here as First Secretary from 1982 to 1984. He returned as full Ambassador to Israel from France from 2003 to 2006.

8) Evita Bar : Tel Aviv’s oldest permanent gay bar. It started life as a coffee-restaurant in 2000 and has developed and grown into one of the city’s main lgbt venues.

Simeon's Dignity Restored

Regular readers will know that I’m a fan of Pre-Raphaelite art and have a special interest in the work of Simeon Solomon, a gay Jewish associate of the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood.

Over the past couple of years Frank Vigon has been campaigning and raising funds to have Simeon’s grave restored to some sort of dignity after he found it neglected and derelict. I’ve been following this campaign on this blog.

Last July the grave was finally restored and I was invited to go down to the Willesden Jewish cemetery to attend the small ceremony that had been arranged. Unfortunately, I was unable to go down due to work commitments. I hope to go down later this year to pay me respects this undeservedly under-recognised gay artist.

Simeon Solomon was not one of the “official” Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood, but he knew them all. His paintings usually depicted Biblical or Hebrew subjects and his figures were often androgynous in appearance. In 1873 he was arrested for homosexual activity and imprisoned. In jail he continued to draw, though the only materials he was allowed to use were pastels, chalk and charcoal.

After his arrest many of Simeon’s friends abandoned him, and when he was released he struggled to achieve the position in society and the art world he had previously held.

Simeon’s reputation suffered throughout most of the 20^th century. One of the first academics to do serious research into Simeon’s life and work was Lionel Lambourne. Since then, the 1960s, Simeon’s reputation had grown as his full story has become more widely known and many people, myself included, were first attracted to Simeon Solomon through his art and not his lifestyle.

At the unveiling ceremony of Simeon’s grave were several members of his family who have always been proud of their famous relative. Also there was the widow of Lionel Lambourne, and members of the Simeon Solomon Research Archive. Several dozen enthusiasts and admirers of Simeon’s work gathered with them at the grave side where Frank Vigon, the prime mover in the fundraising and restoration, thanked everyone (present and absent) who had helped him to reach this proud day.

Below you can see two photographs of Simeon’s grave (Ó Simeon Solomon Research Archive). At the top is the grave in its dilapidated state as it was discovered by Frank Vigon several years ago. Underneath is the newly restored grave with the original headstone reset and a new memorial stone placed over the grave.  An inscription around the edging stones reads “This grave has been restored with donations received from individuals, museums and galleries, arts and social organisations, and religious communities in admiration and appreciation of the art of Simeon Solomon.”