Netflix: We saw and loved this powerful documentary about Nazi crimes against queer Germany

“It’s yesterday!“-“This is where it happens!” in French – read in large, well-lit letters on the facade of the Eldorado in Berlin in the 1920s. While Germany was rebuilding after the First World War, this cabaret became a refuge, a space of freedom. This is the same freedom that will be violated by the Third Reich a few years later.

Entitled Eldorado: The Nazis’ Hated Cabaret, the documentary takes a place unknown to the general public as a starting point to better understand the horrors committed against the LGBT+ community by the Nazi regime.

Since the fall of the Austro-Hungarian Empire in 1918, Berlin has been a vibrant, electric and, believe it or not, avant-garde city. Real sexual liberation is taking over the capital. When night falls, everything shuts down in El Dorado. Men meet there, but also women, who are enthralled by the furious performances of drag queens on stage.

Benjamin Cantu’s documentary brings this euphoria to life with movie-worthy reconstructions. The story is told from the perspective of several people with tragic fates: tennis champion Gottfried von Cram; Magnus Hirschfeld, a pioneer in sexuality studies; Actress Charlotte Sherlock or Ernst Rohm, Adolf Hitler’s right-hand man. They are homosexuals, transgenders, and each in turn will become a target of Nazi power.

Fluid, exciting and perfectly delivered by her speakers, Eldorado: the cabaret hated by the Nazis Recalls how homosexuality was initially in the ranks of Adolf Hitler’s regime. We also find that transgender people were legally recognized to walk freely on the streets.

The plot of the film continues until 1945. At the end of World War II, 100,000 men were charged under Section 175 of the German Penal Code, which criminalizes homosexuality. 50,000 were convicted and 5-10,000 were killed in concentration camps, showing the pink triangle.

Eldorado: the cabaret hated by the Nazis A must-see documentary to help you forget about the past.

Eldorado: The Nazis’ Hated Cabaret is available on Netflix.

For further: Rob Epstein and Jeffrey Friedman’s documentary Paragraph 175 is available on the MUBI platform.