Queer History Club: People Without History Are Dust - Queer Desire and the Holocaust
- Date: Tuesday 6 October 2026, 19:00 – 21:00
- Location: Off-campus
- Cost: £0 - £13.00
People Without History Are Dust: Queer Desire and the Holocaust
Location: The Bookish Type, 77a Great George Street, LS1 3BR.
Where are the stories of great queer love in the Shoah? There are almost none. Anna Hájková explains why the history of same-sex desire in the Shoah, that is, queerness among Jews persecuted by the Nazis for their race, has been excluded and marginalized, and how its return to our understanding of the Holocaust can offer an inclusive and feminist history of this genocide. Based on original and extensive archival research, her book offers a concise insight into the queer history of the Holocaust for beginners and advanced alike. Anna Hájková will introduce her book in conversation with Helen Finch and Kit Heyam.
Follow the link to reserve tickets, which are priced on a sliding scale.
Content: the talk will include discussion of sexualized violence
About the author: Dr Anna Hájková is Reader of modern European continental history at the University of Warwick, UK. She is the author of, among others, The Last Ghetto: An Everyday History of Theresienstadt (2020) and People without History are Dust: Queer Desire in the Holocaust (2025). Hájková is the pioneer of queer Holocaust history.
About the facilitator: Helen Finch is Professor of German Literature at the University of Leeds. She has recently co-edited a special edition of Holocaust Studies, ‘Queer Experiences in the Holocaust’, with Dr. Rosie Ramsden.
Kit Heyam is a Leeds-based heritage practitioner, trans awareness trainer, academic and author of Before We Were Trans.