Heroes in the Holocaust

from Embrace Magazine — The Heroes Issue 2023

by embracemedia

Walk Up The Aisle In Style With Jack Victor

Heroes in the Holocaust

Fundraiser kickoﬀ for a documentary that honors LGBT heroes during a dark history.

STORY BY GARDNER PRODUCTIONS

The official fundraising campaign launch for the movie “Let It Be Known” took place in Washington, DC, on September 29th at the home of Hudson Young, a long activist and board member for the Human Rights Campaign.

Let it Be Known chronicles how a gay man, Wilhelm Arondeus and a lesbian, Freida Belinfante, joined forces to help create The Dutch resistance during World War II. The result of this pact saved thousands of Jewish lives who otherwise would have been sent to the concentration camps.

The Dutch Resistance, underfunded by Queen Wilhelmina of the Netherlands – who was living in exile in London at the time, was responsible for blowing up Nazi buildings and forging fake identities for Jewish residents.

The event was spearheaded by Stephen Gardner, with cohosts Neil Meltzer, Steven Toll, and Hudson Young and featured two special guest speakers; Dr. Al Munzer, a Dutch (and gay) child Holocaust survivor who was hidden as an infant to live with an Indonesian family. His father and sisters perished in the camps, and only his mother survived the camps. Eventually mother and son emigrated to the US after the war.

Ted Phillips, a director of Exhibitions at the United States Holocaust Museum, and the curator of the Museum’s traveling exhibition, “The Nazi Persecution of Homosexuals”, was also a keynote speaker.

“The purpose of the evening was to introduce our campaign and reach out to corporate business and philanthropy to help tell this very impactful story that speakers to humanitarianism, feminism, LGBT+ and Jewish causes, and so far, we’ve done very well, but the campaign continues with smaller individual meetings and with donors and investors across the US,” says Gardner.

“It’s a Holocaust Story that has never been told, and so important as an educational piece to share with the generations of the future,” says Gardner.

GARDNER PRODUCTIONS is one of Canada’s premier boutique video production houses, based in Toronto and serving all of North America.