All language subtitles for Walter Schwarze Umsonst Gelebt aka A Life in vain_Track03

A Life in Vain

Why do you now have the courage to tell
your story? ls it a sign of development?

Probably. I always hid myself.

L'm afraid because of what happened to me,
despite my harmlessness.

It happened because I was stupid
and admitted having such tendencies.

I first noticed it...

I had a school friend, Helmut.
He sat next to us on the bench in class.

They called him “Coffee Table” because he
always had chocolate, oranges, cake, etc.

One day he said, “Walter, I have to tell you.
I think I love men.”

I said, “That's great! I think I do, too.”

I was just as young as he was.
I had a right to live my life.

But I had to pay
such a monstrous price. For nothing!

Just because I admitted it.
When the Gestapo arrested me,

the SS man asked,
“Do you have such tendencies?”

I could have avoided the whole thing
by saying, “No!”

I said, “Yes, I am [homosexual].”

They locked me up
at a police station in Leipzig.

Above me were the death cells.

At night I heard the screams
when they were taken off to the scaffold.

A Gestapo officer came to my cell
with a document: “Sign this!”

What do I do in my foolishness and fear'?

I signed it: “Return to society undesirable.”

My fate was sealed.

They brought me down to see my mother.

The officer told me, “You're not going home.

“You're going to the concentration camp
at Sachsenhausen.”

National Memorial Site of
Remembrance Sachsenhausen

What did I know then
about concentration camps'?

I thought it was
a political education camp

where I'd have to work.
Then I read, “Each gets what he deserves.”

What year was that?
4940.

I had to Wear the pink triangle
which branded me [as homosexual].

“Return undesirable.”

I should understand quickly that we were
“folk pests”. That's what they called us.

When I got to Sachsenhausen, they said
“Here's a rope. Hang yourself.

“Go through the cordon.
You'll disappear within 14 days.

“You won't survive 14 days here.
Not you!”

I was no beauty,
but I was a good-looking boy.

I don't like to mention that,
but somehow...

Personal appearance is crucial
in every situation.

If you saw an inmate
with the pink triangle, and he looked like -

l'll use the vulgar word - like shit,
then you knew he had nothing to hope for.

The gays had to do the hardest and
worst jobs, like cleaning the shit houses.

At night we weren't allowed
to use the toilet.

There was a vat with disinfectant
in the room.

When we carried it out to empty it,
it slopped over on the person behind

and we slipped and fell.
Enough said. It was horrible.

I had no feelings at all anymore.

Going into the tub
of disinfectant against lice, or...

I was a dead soul,
a person completely without feelings.

Even hunger and cold didn't touch me.

I fought against that,
but I don't know Where I found the strength.

We were isolated with hardened criminals.

The company consisted of homosexuals,
the worst criminals, and so on.

One day I had a terrible toothache.

I couldn't stand up,
and an SS man punched me in the face.

He did me such a favor:
the abscess burst, and the pain was gone.

My diseases saved my life
by getting me deferments.

First typhus, then enteric fever.
That was bad.

One day in quarantine
I woke up in delirium.

In my fever I managed to wander outside.
I collapsed and lay there until morning.

My fingers were frozen, but I didn't die.

They carried me in, and I recovered.

For the other inmates I was always a wonder.

I was at Sachsenhausen
for 4 or 5 months.

Then I was transferred
to the Gross-Rosen concentration camp.

There was a murderous stone quarry there
Where people died like flies.

Bruno Roes was there,
a restaurant owner from Berlin.

I was at the end of my rope,
and Bruno was so perfect...

He was transferred to the crematorium
to burn corpses.

Once he said to me,
“You take the feet, I'll take the arms.

“We'll toss him onto that pile of bodies.”

1, 2, 3, and it was rne who went flying, and
I landed with my face in a corpse's crotch.

That was the end! Maybe that's the source
of my disgust for certain things.

Then he said, “If you end up here,
I'll burn you alone.

“You're such a good guy.

“L won't stick you in an oven
with others and mix up the ashes.

“L'll bury you nicely in a corner.”

Suddenly there was a bang.

Guard Post 1 had fired a shot.
Another inmate trying to escape.

Post 2 fired. They didn't shoot to kill.
They made a sport of it.

A shot in the leg, one in the arm,
the chest, until he was dead.

Two inmates had to carry him off
on a stretcher. I was one...

When I saw the dead man,
his brain oozing out...

You can never forget that.

When someone says reports of the camps
are exaggerated... It was much, much Worse!

I was there, and we're dying out.

Claims that I'm making things up
won't confuse me.

I saw it, and I lived it!

It was really my mother
who gave me strength.

Mother was God to me. For her I found
strength to go on, to see her again.

And I knew she suffered agony with me.

One day among some new inmates was Sepp,

a picture-perfect Bavarian.
Eyes blue as violets,

hair black as coal, and an athletes figure.

When Sepp saw me...

He was as straight as can be,
but he brought me wild strawberries

he found growing in the quarry.

Sepp made me a bracelet
with my inmate ID number, 669.

For me, that was having feelings again,
living again.

After four years, to feel...
My God, Sepp was the man.

There was a boxing ring Where the inmates
had to beat each other up. lt amused the SS.

The winner got a piece of bread.

Sepp was the boxer.
Suddenly, affection for him awoke in me.

One day he said, “Walter,
I don't know, but... May I kiss you?”

I thought: Dear God, I've choked all that off!
What does he vvant from me'?

When someone touched me, I always said no.
But of course, Sepp was the man.

He took me by the arm and said,
“You're one of a kind!

“If my wife only knew that I like a man!”

It was a purely platonic friendship,
but the SS noticed our mutual sympathy.

They forbade Sepp to go out and transferred
him to the smithy. I didn't see him again.

For me, the worst punishment came
when they brought the Jews.

To Gross-Rosen'?
-Yes.

They brought a huge number of Jews.

The men had very hairy chests and groins.

I was the block barber.

Every week I had to shave heads
with a razor so dull that the blood spur-ted.

I had to shave the Jews' chests and so on.

And the genital area?
-Yes.

Because of the pink triangle,
they thought that would drive me crazy.

I had to lift the penis and shave everything.

When I wasn't thorough enough,
the SS singed the hair off with a lighter.

Maybe you can understand Why today
a man sometimes disgusts me.

I've seen men who...
They were called “Musselmen”,

Men with the last bit of flesh
on their bodies, just skin and bones.

An Internal Security man, the camp
commandant, and a doctor saw me at HQ.

They asked, “What would you do
if you were released?”

I said, “I have only one desire,
to see my mother again.”

He said, “Take this document. You've been
drafted into an artillery unit at Weimar.

“There you will show the document.
You will be shadowed.

“Don't even think of running away!”

My buddies: “Walter, stay here! They'll shoot
you dead! 'Return to society undesirable!'

“You've survived so far,
but they'll remedy that!”

I went to the guardhouse.
The foreman of the guards was there.

I said, “When I walk through here,
l'll go with new courage.

“But if you shoot, shoot fast. Shoot true.”

As I went through the cordon...
l'll say it again:

I didn't know that a person can freeze
in warm May sunshine, be freezing with fear.

I walked along the free street to the depot.

I went home.
Leipzig was a pile of rubble.

When I rang the bell,
no one could believe it was me.

It was midnight. A white-haired head
popped out: my father. My sister...

Gerhard, my brother: “ls it you?”

Suddenly I couldn't speak.
My mother started to scream:

“For heaven's sake,
what are you doing here? Did you escape?”

“No. I have to join
an artillery unit in Weimar.”

So I got to Weimar.

They put me in the communications division.
I learned quickly how to radio.

Dive-bombers came across the Elbe River.
We were shelled from boats.

The last boat made it to the west bank.

A buddy was lying in the water.
I went to pull him out, and that was it for me!

Russians came with pistols.

“Hurry up!” I thought: Here we go again
with the hunger, the bedbugs, the rats.

How long were you a prisoner of war'?
-Four years. -In Russia.

Again! More than four years.
-When did you get out'?

End of '49.
I was one of the last POWs to come back.

It was my bad luck that every time a camp
was closed, most would be sent home;

but I'd be sent to another camp
despite my physical condition.

I thought: This has to stop some day!

I've always suffered from the Way I am.

If I'm born again like this, I hope I drown
in my first bath. I won't live this way again.

I've suffered terribly because I loved.

It wasn't sex that I wanted.
I always loved and longed for the man

as my ideal. His body...

I was married twice and experienced
vulgarities in the marriage bed

beyond anything I experienced with a man.

I experienced the nastiest things in bed
with my first wife, and with my second.

She had her period, but I had to go to her.

It was fouled with blood,
but she made me mount her anyway.

I told myself, “This can't go on.”
Disgust overwhelmed me.

I knew that no matter
how hard you try to repress yourself,

your nature is still there.
Just behave decently;

stay away from places where danger
lurks for you. I always accepted that

until the day that Ali appeared.

How old were you when Ali came'?
-Well over fifty.

But I looked like 35.

You've been together for 17 years?

'17, and for 'l0 of them... I have to say
that for the last 7, nothing's happened.

I didn't find fulfillment with Ali.
He's bisexual.

But he enjoyed it
when I massaged him and satisfied him.

I feel that I've been left alone,
but I live from and for Ali.

His telephone calls are enough for me.

Even so, life has so much to offer. Music
is more than all wisdom and philosophy.

Beethoven said, “Whoever understands
my music can also live.” And Goethe Wrote...

“Then, when I saw you for the first time,

“joy coursed through my blood.
Every breath whispered: He is the one.

“And it resounded
through the beautiful rejoicing world.

“And that is when the first morning dawned
in my soul, and a thousand young flowers

“bloomed in my heart
like flowers of the earth in spring.”

Nature has always given me strength.

A daisy makes me glad, or a violet.

Greenhouse flowers annoy me because
they're artificial, as changeable as people.

A simple buttercup in a meadow;
the beautiful green grass, or the sky...

Over and over, what I've experienced
lives within me.

The fact that I survived.

L'm more free. inwardly freer.
-So you're not afraid of going public?

Not at all!
The story should be told for posterity.

Somebody told me, “When you're dead,
that could be a lovely thing.”

But when I reflect clearly,

I tell myself:
“You've lived in vain.”

I have lived in vain.
I wasn't as lucky as you or you

so I can be tolerant enough
to shrug everything off. Not yet!

Subtitles: Mike Shephard