• 1 For the purposes of this paper, I have chosen to use assumed names for all the individuals describe (...)
• 2 Maria Stiepanowa, Pamięci, pamięci [Memory, memory], trans. Agnieszka Sowińska (Warszawa: Prószyńsk (...)

Life itself, while it continues, can be that same oval, or after death, the thread of life running through the tale of what has been. The meek contents of her apartment, feeling themselves to be redundant, immediately began to lose their human qualities and, in doing so, ceased to remember or tom mean anything.2

• 3 I use the queer category and the terms non-heteronormative/non-normative person also in relation to (...)
• 4 I based this on the collections of the Lambda Warszawa’s Archive, Polish LGBTQIA Museum - Foundatio (...)
• 5 A remarkable collection of photos of queer/non-heteronormative people, including from Central and E (...)
• 6 The photograph is still available on the USHMM website. A query at the Schwules Museum (SMU) in Ber (...)

2Photographs as well as other graphic documents of queer life in Poland, before 1945, are rare. Queer3 archives collected by Polish LGBTQIA+ organizations are dominated by materials going back to the 1960s, but not earlier.4 The same is true regarding private collections,5 or archives outside Poland. In the collection of the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum in Washington, D.C., I found a male couple from Poznan standing beside a bicycle, but during a second query, it turned out that the de facto origin of this photo, where it came from, and when it was actually taken, is unknown.6 Looking at the photograph sent to me via Instagram, I knew I was dealing with a unique graphic document.

• 7 I decided not to give the name of the village from which Adam came, so as not to encroach on the lo (...)

3At the beginning of January 2022, I traveled from Krakow to Radom, and then to a tiny village along the Radom-Dęblin train line.7 There I met with a woman – let’s call her Anna – who claimed that one of the men in the photograph was her neighbor. No one lived in the old, abandoned, wooden house next to her property. Previously, for a while, a man in a homelessness crisis had resided there, to whom Anna sometimes brought hot meals or hot water. In gratitude, he gave her a collection of photographs, and other documents, left behind in the crumbling house. The woman was aware of online forums for people interested in antiques and historical documents, so she decided to try her luck. While posting the photographs, she asked for help and contacts to specialists. One subscriber advised her to try to communicate with the author of the book They. Homosexuals in Second World War. This is how we came into contact.

• 8 I reconstruct the history of the collection of documents, belonging to Li Shiu Tong, on the basis o (...)

7An online forum is where, in 2002, Ralf Dose found archival materials belonging to Li Shiu Tong – the last life partner and associate of Magnus Hirschfeld, a pioneering sexologist and founder of the Institute of Sexology (Institut für Sexualwissenschaft) in Berlin. Eight years earlier, a man named Adam Smith had posted an online inquiry about the families of the two men. It turned out that he lived in the same building where Li Shiu Tong had died. He came across his belongings by accident in the residential dumpster. Someone had simply cleaned out the apartment after the death of the tenant, and Mr. Smith took custody of what he managed to salvage. The purchased materials became part of a collection in the archives of The Magnus Hirschfeld Society.8

• 9 One of the most glaring examples of the family’s influence on queerstory research is the story of A (...)
• 10 I use the term “loved ones” in a very inclusive sense – those who have remembered, but also those, (...)
• 11 Heinz Heger, The Men with the Pink Triangle: The True, Life-and-Death Story of Homosexuals in the N (...)

8However, strangers are less likely to “save” queer heritage. Those “guarding” artifacts, detailing the experiences of our protagonists, are often their loved ones, family members, who either block access to their queer stories or have a dissenting view of how the story should be recounted.9 From my point of view, only home/family archives, the archives of their loved ones10 are today’s last remaining opportunities to contribute to the story of queer life in the twentieth century, apart from those recorded on the pages of criminal and medical records. There is no denying that had it not been for Wilhelm Kröpfl, Klaus Müller would not have found the artifacts to complete the testimony of Heinz Heger, a.k.a. Josef Kohout, whose The Men with the Pink Triangle11 was a milestone work in the study of homosexual, as well as non-heteronormative victims of the Third Reich.

• 12 Footage of the Josef Kohout and Wilhelm Kröpfl collection (USHMM) – Documenting Nazi Persecution of (...)
• 13 For a more extensive history of the biographies of the first witnesses persecuted under Paragraph 1 (...)

9In 1994, two months after Josef’s death, Kröpfl met with historian Klaus Müller to tell him his partner’s story. The wartime period in Josef’s biography was encased in two shoeboxes that Kröpfl kept in his apartment. Müller spent more than two hours at Wilhelm’s house, listening to recollections on Josef and looking through the documents that had survived the war. He tried to convince Wilhelm that there were some serious treasures in his closet. Among the boxes lay Kohout’s concentration camp number – 1896, and the only pink triangle found up to that time. In addition to that, there were letters from his parents, Josef’s unique diary with notes from the April 1945 death march to Dachau concentration camp, and many other pieces of evidence of the persecution of this prison group.12 Were it not for this collection, the key biography of the “pink triangle” would have remained grossly incomplete.13

• 14 The chest full of artifacts relating to the biography of her grandmother and her partner is also me (...)
• 15 A good example of an “ostensibly closed biography” is the story of Karl Gorath (a former inmate of (...)
• 16 Lutz van Dijk, Damned Strong Love: The True Story of Willi G. and Stefan K., trans. Elizabeth D. Cr (...)
• 17 »Endlich den Mut …«: Briefe von Stefan T. Kosinski (1925–2003), ed. Lutz van Dijk (Berlin: Querverl (...)
• 18 Such materials are traditionally considered “superfluous,” “unnecessary,” “of no benefit – failing (...)
• 19 Teofil wrote Lutz about this event in one of his letters, available in the book »Endlich den Mut…«, (...)

10In addition to new storylines and biographies, the symbolic closet, which in fact consisted of chests, shoeboxes, gray envelopes and folders containing documents,14 offers a chance to clarify the mysteries regarding those biographies that in queerstory we already consider “told,” that is, ostensibly closed.15 I probably would have reacted differently to Anna’s message had it not been for my experience with the family of Teofil Kosiński. Historian Lutz van Dijk recorded the wartime and postwar biography of Stefan K., a.k.a. Teofil, or Teo, in two books: Damned Strong Love16 and »Endlich den Mut …«17 published between 1991 and 2015. In which case, the cooperation with the witness lasted over a decade. He was informed of Teofil’s death in 2003 by Kosinski’s nephew’s daughter. After receiving this information, the contact broke off. Fourteen years later, just before the publication of the Polish version of Damned Strong Love, I managed to get in touch with Teofil’s relatives, who had cared for him until his death. The family had no idea that Kosinski had co-written a book based on his own biography, which had been translated into several languages, and that his testimony was part of the oral history collection at the USHMM and the USC Shoah Foundation. The witness had also never mentioned to them anything about his psychosexual orientation. And they had no idea that the reason for Teo’s arrest, during the war, was a love affair with an Austrian Wehrmacht soldier. In the course of meetings and conversations I had with Mr. Leszek and Ms. Anna, I was able not only to fill in the gaps in Kosinski’s biography, especially in the period between 1945 and 1990, but most importantly, I received from them all the personal documents – letters, postcards, tickets, brochures, leaflets,18 as well as photographs left behind by Teofil, which relate to the storylines that were not mentioned in the conversations with van Dijk. These materials are all the more valuable, because three years before his death, Kosinski burned all the “evidence of his second/non-normative life,” including letters from readers from all over the world, his correspondence with Lutz, articles about him and his life, foreign language versions of a book based on his biography. The pieces he saved must have been of real value to him. I suppose he did not know how to part with them. In the talks with the historian, he claimed that everything was lost.19 Today, thanks to these materials, the process of rewriting the biography of Teofil Kosinski – Teo – Stefan K. is no longer just about filling in the facts and gaps, rather, it focuses on changing the optics. Kosinski’s biography is still untold, it is not closed, it requires a new version supplemented by new sources. The baseline for a revised version of the biography should be both the archival base left to the family and the relationship he had with Lutz van Dijk, the “chronicler” of this queer story. This biography will thus become a tale of two protagonists.

• 21 I experienced a shift in my understanding of the queer archive during my own research work. Those s (...)
• 22 Cf. Anjali Arondekar, Ann Cvetkovich, Christina B. Hanhardt, Regina Kunzel, Tavia Nyong’o, Juana Ma (...)

12Thus, the archive is both a metaphor and a method, as well as a material space that connects biographies – subjects, to discourses. The “lack of documentation” that we associate with historical accounts regarding queer Central and Eastern Europe from the twentieth century may be misleading.21 Paradoxically, as the aforementioned examples show, the available research material is “extremely abundant,”22 the storylines keep multiplying, building up, although they do not always form a cohesive sum. In the sense of cause and effect, they can seem deficient, fractured, filled with inadequacies, or “outside the norm.” All the better, we just can’t let them slip out of our grasp.

• 23 Among Adam’s post-war photos are also those belonging to his brother Stefan, Stefan’s wife, as well (...)

13Adam’s collection, given to me by Anna, is predominated by photographs. My protagonist collected both professional photos taken in studios, as well amateur developed photos. Some of the latter were most taken and developed by him. The entire collection largely comes from the pre-war and wartime periods. Some shots have more than a dozen prints each, differing only in the exposure of the film. The person developing them tried to make a perfect print.23

• 24 I dated this series of photos by comparing Adam’s appearance and age based on the entire collection (...)

14In the process of arranging the collection, I was able to distinguish four main series. The first consists of photographs of a celebratory family reunion, before the start of Second World War,24 which took place at the back of Mr. and Mrs. Gawron’s farmhouse. It is from this series that the photographs of the men kissing each other comes from, which started my adventure with Adam. This series is incomplete. It most likely contained some thirty photographs numbered on the corners of the light-sensitive film, of which I received only three fragments of film plus one additional print. The two other series were funeral photographs. The first is from July/August 1942, and includes photos of the family in mourning after the death of one of Adam’s sisters, Aniela. The second is a farewell ceremony for Emil, Aniela’s son, who died on February 25, 1943 as a child. The fourth and final series contains photographs scattered in time, but professionally developed. Among them, the predominant images are document photos from different time periods, in which Adam, and members of his family, can be recognized. Some portraits of men remain anonymous, but there is a high probability that they belonged to Adam’s relatives/partners/lovers. This collection also includes photos of Adam in a concentration camp prisoner uniform and hat, from the 1980s, which I have delineated as a link to a separate collection of wartime artifacts.

• 25 The wording of paragraph 175 changed over the period between 1871 and 1994. All changes in German l (...)

15When Anna handed me Adam’s collection, she claimed that he was sent to a concentration camp under paragraph 175 of the German statute criminalizing sexual relations between men.25 She had no proof of this, but repeated the belief that he had been turned in by one of the locals. I verified this part of Adam’s biography first. Strictly speaking, had it not been for the association of my research on those persecuted under paragraphs 175 and 175a, I probably would not have gotten to know the story of this protagonist. I was aided by Adam himself, who collected documents relating to his time in the concentration camp – certificates from the municipality office, confirmation letters from ITS Bad Arolsen, correspondence with newspapers describing partisan activity in the areas, his Auschwitz Cross certificate, and so on. In the course of my research queries, I was able to compare the surviving documentation with archival materials. It became apparent, almost immediately, that the lead on paragraph 175 turned out to be false. Adam was a political prisoner detained for fighting the occupying German forces. His non-normativity was not the reason for his persecution, which made this biography seem all the more significant to me in the context of the narratives dominating my research archive.

• 26 For the purposes of the text, I have omitted footnotes to the documentation from Adam's collection. (...)

16Additionally, Adam’s collection includes surviving pre-war railroad documentation, the family’s court and inheritance records, his parents’ ID cards, and the ID cards of relatives, as well as the rich correspondence of Adam’s niece, Stefan’s daughter – Helena, who was a stenographer by profession.26 From a certain point in time, it was thanks to her that Adam was able to send any letter, private or official. In fact, her correspondence became part of her uncle’s collection. Adam dictated the necessary letters to Helena, which she then typed and stored. I found the handwritten originals in Adam’s collection.

• 27 The exhibition Under Cover: A Secret History of Cross-Dressers was shown at C/O Berlin (September 1 (...)
• 28 Magnus Pölcher, “They Are Heroes from the Past – We Have to Pay Tribute to Them. Interview with Séb (...)

22In both cases we are faced with certain manipulation. It is worth addressing using the example of the exhibition composed of Sébastien Lifshitz’s collection of photographs Under Cover. A Secret History of Cross-Dressers, shown in Berlin.27 Lifshitz, a film director and screenwriter, has been collecting photographs of cross-dressers and non-heteronormative people since he was a teenager. Purchased at flea markets and antique stores, he assembled the images into a private collection of thousands of photos of anonymous people. All of Lifshitz’s subjects remain anonymous. For the collector, the impetus for his work was not to look for traces of their biographies, but to try to arrange the collection into a certain narrative sequence. His approach is to tell the story of a queer community without deciphering the biographies. Here, the viewer has full freedom of interpretation: “[…] many of these pictures will remain forever a mystery, an enigma – and it doesn’t bother me. On the contrary, I like that there is a part of resistance. I would like the audience to be in the same position as I was when I first discovered them. Everybody is free to project whatever they want. There are different levels of interpretation [emphasis – J. O.].”28

• 31 During my two visits to the village where Adam lived, I conducted several interviews with his relat (...)
• 32 Kamil Karczewski writes about transgressing the phantasm of the “urban queer Mecca” in Poland of th (...)

25From this standpoint, the two questions posed at the beginning of this section come from a different operational order, based on the belief that the protagonist “didn’t want to.” In the “plausible” (dominant), version of the queer biography, the non-normative person wished, at all costs, and even after death, to remain in the shadows. If there is no testimony confirming his readiness to speak/witness/show, then Adam certainly did not want to speak. To challenge this status quo, erroneously referred to as the “neutral point of view,” it is not enough just to listen to the witnesses, but also to look at the artifacts.31 What is emblematic in Adam’s microhistory is not just that he recorded a non-heteronormative episode in the form of photographs. His biography does not include either an episode of fleeing his home village or a story of a local homophobic community or persecution, based on criminal documents, such as pre-war and wartime police, court, and prison records. It forces a paradigm shift – thinking in contrast to the historical praxis, concerning not only the survival and hiding strategies of queer people, but also the concept of forced migration from small towns to the city as anonymous space – enabling survival.32

• 33 Queer moments in biography are points of disorientation, forcing a change of perspective, in counte (...)
• 34 Subjugated knowledge, that is, forms of knowledge that were not simply forgotten, but were disquali (...)
• 35 Aleksandra Szczepan, “Przeczulone słowa i drgające obrazy. O potencjalnych metodach badań nad Zagła (...)

26However, I would not want an “outsider” paradigm to dominate my attempt to record Adam’s story. After all, I am the person recording and preserving the protagonist’s archive, a non-Western researcher, a Pole, a woman, researching the queer history of Second World War in Central and Eastern Europe, a person who can back herself up using the categories that have been put forward by her co-researchers. For in Adam’s story, I see not only Sarah Ahmed’s33 queer moments and Jack Halberstam’s34 subjugated knowledge, but above all the glitches that Aleksandra Szczepan discusses when examining the visual evidence of the Holocaust. This category seems pertinent, in that it applies to the image – video testimonies – just as it does to my protagonist’s photographs. And at the same time, it situates itself in Holocaust/Second World War II , which was part of Adam’s biographical experience: “glitch in testimony [...] denotes various affective disruptions: shifts, incongruities, or infelicitous encounters that challenge us to confront our cultural expectations about the testimony, the memory and representation of the Holocaust, trauma and identity [emphasis – J. O.].”35

• 36 In January and July 2022, I was able to talk to six people from Adam's village. Three of them were (...)

27In Adam’s story, the primary “incongruity” is, of course, the series of photographs with which I began my analysis of his biography, but “queer faults” also appear in the statements of the village’s residents.36 This includes both family members I managed to talk to as well as neighbors. I therefore treat this first attempt of writing down his biography as a preliminary “outlining” of the story created from a compilation consisting of Adam’s collection, and other collected materials. This “outlining” will henceforth be used by me as an inventory note for further research, becoming part of this peculiar collection.

• 37 Cf. Wojciech Borzobohaty, »Jodła«. Okręg Radomsko-Kielecki ZWZ-AK 1939-1945 [“Fir.” Radomsko-Kielec (...)

31In the surviving photo collection, the mentioned funeral series stands out. During the war, Adam lost his sister, Aniela and nephew, Emil. Józef Łata was Aniela’s husband and Emil’s father, who had been raising their second, surviving son Tycjan, by himself since February 1943. Presumably, Adam had already been friends with Józef before the war. Locals say that Adam had returned to his parents house after September 17, 1939, confirming the story that he had previously lived in Bereźne. During the occupation, the two men were active in the partisan forces together. Most likely, it was Łata, along with another member of Adam’s mother’s family, who drew him into the resistance. They were all members of the SOB (Socialist Combat Organization), which cooperated with the ZWZ (Union of Armed Struggle) and later with the Home Army.37 Adam’s house served as a secret dispatch, information and organizational point for the resistance. Most likely, he did not fight armed, unlike Łata who organized combat training, but he covertly stored weapons.

• 38 Archives of the Gross-Rosen Museum (AMGR), 21/87/MF (materials of the GKBZpNP concerning the execut (...)
• 39 A query at the Arolsen Archives concerning Józef Łata only identified documentation concerning a pe (...)
• 40 This version of events is confirmed through numerous documents preserved in Adam’s collection (incl (...)
• 41 Cf. Danuta Sawicka, “Niesky,” in Der Ort des Terrors. Geschichte der nationalsozialistischen Konzen (...)

32Józef Łata was arrested by the Germans in late 1943.38 He was taken to a prison in Radom, and in the second half of January 1944, he was incarcerated in AL Dyhernfurth, a subcamp of Gross-Rosen Concentration Camp. On July 26, Józef was executed in Gross-Rosen by a sentence from the Summary Court in Radom.39 Thus, orphaning his son. A month earlier, the Germans had arrested Adam. Little is known about the circumstances of his arrest. He was first sent to a prison in Radom, later, in July, to Gross-Rosen.40 After the war, Adam claimed that, while in the camp, he learned of his friend’s execution. After a few weeks, Gawron was sent to the Niesky satellite concentration camp, in Saxony.41 Władysław Zyśk was brought there at the same time:

• 43 AA, 6.3.3.2 / 110693489 (Korrespondenz T/D 1042786).

33Whether Adam had the same occupation is not yet known, but his job assignment may have been influenced by his profession. In a 1977 letter to ITS Bad Arolsen, he stated very clearly: “I was liberated from this camp [Aussenlager Niesky – J. O.] by the Polish Second Army, on April 18, 1945.”43 Another former prisoner, Edward Tomala, recalls the liberation:

• 45 Edward Stec and Julian Szczuka, “Z dziejów jednej placówki” [From the history of one institution], (...)

35But war had resurfaced in February, 1977. That was when an article appeared in a Catholic weekly on the history of the resistance and combat of one of the local Home Army outposts, in the Radom district of the General Government (GG).45 The writers mentioned local heroes by name. Among them were Adam and Józef. Gawron responded immediately by sending a letter to the editor thanking them: “I am already 78 years old. For a long time I thought that all trace of me and my friends who died would be lost, yet it turns out that not everything we did was in vain.” Along with Adam’s, a separate letter was sent by Tycjan Łata: “I don’t remember my father, because I am 38 years old, and my father was arrested by the Germans when I was 4 years old. There were people who remembered my father and his work. I, personally, owe a lot of gratitude to the editorial staff [...].” Both letters were typed and sent by Adam’s niece, Helena. It is only because she kept the handwritten copies that I know of their existence.

• 46 Other terms for Adam’s non-heternormativity appearing in interviews include: “he didn't love women. (...)

38The post-war period in Gawron’s life included more than his return to the family village, and a speedy pension from the State Railroad, due to his poor health. Adam decided to take custody of his nephew, whom he raised, most likely alone, possibly with the help of relatives and neighbors. The Gawron family home was divided in half, Stefan with his wife and adopted daughter Helena lived in one part, Adam and his nephew lived in the other. The former home of Józef Łata stood empty. Tycjan took over his father’s farm only after he came of age. During my interviews with the villagers, I asked about the matter of Adam’s guardianship of a minor boy, after his return from the camp. It came as no surprise to anyone, and did not cause a scandal, although, according to my interviewees, everyone knew that Adam “didn’t like women.”46 This phrase was repeated like a mantra during all the conversations I had in that village outside of Radom. No one mentioned a word about pedophilia. So a non-heteronormative man, a former prisoner of concentration camps, after returning home began a new life, taking care of his six-year-old nephew. Their relationship must have been very strong for they were buried in the same grave, at the local cemetery. Tycjan died ten years after Adam.

• 47 My interviewee used this term, but before that he clearly had trouble finding the right words. This (...)
• 48 The described phenomenon is part of the post-war homophobia experienced by survivors. Cf. Insa Esch (...)
• 49 In Poland, the best example of this type of thinking is Bogdan Piętka’s text on the paragraph-175-p (...)

39This abridged camp biography is worth piecing together with other personal accounts of his relatives and neighbors. Just like Adam was considered a hero, at the same time he played the role of the local weirdo, also in the light of his non-heteronormativity. Locals called him “Benek.” He would wear drill pants and jacket, and in his later years he never parted with his rubber boots. He always rode a bicycle. He would make his own wine at home, although he never drank alcohol or smoked. Sometimes he would sell the wine to locals. He collected radios, sewing machines and other equipment, such as an enlarger for developing photos. He practiced palmistry, and read books on magic. He would buy fabric and experiment with sewing. Since the 1960s, local kids would come to his house to listen to all sorts of stories and try alcohol. He had several lovers, some of whom were married, which did not stop these relationships from lasting up to a dozen or so years. When I asked about the camp period in Adam’s biography, one of the interviewees told me straightforwardly, “He survived the camps because he was a prison bitch. After all, it is known what the Germans did to those kinds of people.”47 Thanks to this sentiment, I came to understand how Anna had associated me, Adam’s story, and paragraph 175, altogether. However, it could have been that Adam mentioned the experiences of sexual violence in a concentration camps, or talked about consensual relations that later became encoded in local memory in this particular way. It could also have been the other way around, a combination of the figure of a non-heteronormative person and the camp experience in postwar Poland reality, would have been seen exclusively through the prism of sexual violence experiences. After all, for years, Polish post-war discourse was dominated by a phantasm linking non-heteronormative persons’ persecutions, due to their gender identity and psychosexual orientation, with a leading narrative of sexual predators, exploiting their power and position within the camp’s community.48 To this day, for many people, these experiences are synonymous, also within historical and research terms.49

• 50 Other paragraphs under which non-heteronormative persons were persecuted on the territory of today' (...)
• 51 So far in Poland, research based on criminal records related to paragraphs 175 and 175a has been co (...)
• 52 The queer biographies I came across, after finding Adam’s collection, are based primarily on the te (...)

42Thus, my queer archive is dominated by stories brought to light through the persecutors’ documentation, to which I made and continue to make efforts finding a counterpoint in the form of personal/family/neighborhood sources. This course of research, at some point, became something of a curse for me, even though Polish state archives are full of files on those persecuted under paragraph 175, as well as others.50 I remain convinced that they must be researched. I strongly believe that in Poland, not enough such narratives have seen the light of day, and for that reason they should further be researched.51 There is no doubt that Adam’s collection became an inspiration for me. It forced me to revise my long-held patterns and seemingly „neutral” research habits. It unsealed the script, forcing me to repeatedly collate available sources. Over time it sparked the discovery of other microhistories full of queer episodes, in which the non-heteronormativity of the protagonists in question is attested to by others – strangers recalling the episodes, individuals rescued during the war,52 or an unaware family who even today does not remember the protagonist in question. Criminal and medical evidence still exists in the background, but the vector of investigation has been reversed.

• 53 Halberstam, The Queer Art of Failure, 33.
• 54 Ibid.

43Queer archives are full, they are often a fragment of other surviving ones. Narratives multiply and overlap. Queer survival strategies in Central and Eastern Europe, together with the war experience in the background, have been testified to by the “relatives” of queer people, whom we have not taken into account so far. They were often their “loved ones,” but not in the heteronormative/familial sense. Their accounts often lack details. It was not possible for them to memorize everything. Often only a rumor, a guess or a hunch was recorded. At first glance, such stories may seem incongruous, devoid of personal, geographical data, tainted by post-war experience. But that is okay. As Jack Halberstam wrote: “memory is itself a disciplinary mechanism that Foucault calls ‘a ritual of power’; it selects for what is important (the histories of triumph), it reads a continuous narrative into one full of ruptures and contradictions, and it sets precedents for other ‘memorializations’.”53 For Halberstam, “forgetting becomes a way of resisting the heroic and grand logics of recall and unleashes new forms of memory that relate more to spectrality than to hard evidence, to lost genealogies than to inheritance, to erasure than to inscription.”54 Recordings can be made repeatedly, erasing previous versions or piecing together seemingly irrelevant queer microhistories. In my queer archive, the impulse to erase past experiences came from Adam, de facto Jan, although, in this perspective, his real name longer matters.