Heinz Dörmer

Heinz Dörmer, born January 8, 1912, was arrested multiple times under the Nazis, enduring both prisons and concentration camps for being gay. In his youth, he led an independent youth group that was eventually forced into the Hitler Youth.

His presence in the documentary Paragraph 175 remains unforgettable,his face a mixture of haunting pain and wistful joy, remembering a time before persecution. Yet even after the Third Reich fell, his suffering continued. Instead of liberation, he remained imprisoned for his sexuality, as Paragraph 175 stayed in effect in postwar Germany. Heinz died on September 28, 1998.

For the rare few who spoke out after the war, I have created both a portrait of them in the days of WWII and later as an adult, capturing the weight of survival across decades.