About this Event
Join Samuel Clowes Huneke for a conversation about his new book I Will Not Abandon You: Queer Women in Nazi Germany.
I Will Not Abandon You brings to life the experiences of queer women in fascist Germany, showing how love, resistance, and collective action survived under Nazi rule. Drawing on a decade of archival research, Huneke takes readers into a hidden world, from the wartime balls that lesbian activists continued to organize to the concentration camps where women accused of loving women were imprisoned. Following a diverse cast of characters, the book reveals both the oppression that queer women faced and how they resisted fascism in solidarity with one another. Arguing that this solidarity – which transcended race, class, and gender – offers a compelling alternative to today’s fractured identity politics, I Will Not Abandon You is a new history of queer life under fascism and a call to rethink the foundations of progressive politics today.
Samuel will be joined in conversation by Rosie Ramsden and William Jones.
About the Speakers
Dr Samuel Clowes Huneke is a historian of modern Europe and associate professor of history at George Mason University. He is the author of numerous books and articles, including States of Liberation: Gay Men between Dictatorship and Democracy in Cold War Germany, A Queer Theory of the State, and, most recently, I Will Not Abandon You: Queer Women in Nazi Germany. He is currently at work on a new book titled Queer: A History of the World.
Dr Rosie Ramsden is a lecturer in modern German history at Manchester Metropolitan University and a Visiting Research Fellow at the University of Leeds. She is a historian of the Holocaust, specialising in the history of gender and sexuality, queer history, and the history of emotions, with broader interests in modern European and Jewish history. Rosie’s research has been published widely, and her forthcoming monograph focuses on gender and narrativity in women’s Holocaust writing.
Dr William Ross Jones is the Wiener Holocaust Library’s Research and Engagement Officer. They are a historian of modern Europe specialising in the history of the Holocaust, gender and sexuality, and queerness. William has published widely and in 2025 received the Royal Historical Society’s Early Career Article Prize. Their forthcoming monograph surveys men’s experiences of sexual(ized) violence during the Holocaust and is under contract with Oxford University Press.
Event Venue & Nearby Stays
The Wiener Holocaust Library, 29 Russell Square, London, United Kingdom
GBP 0.00
