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Rating: Wandering through the streets of a big city like, for example, Berlin, it can happen (and it happened to me a few years ago) to see something anonymous not mentioned in any travel guide. Specifically, at the corner of two streets located in the central area known as Mitte, there's the Eldorado sign at the entrance of an organic supermarket that didn't attract me much at the time. I leave it to your imagination my surprise, a few years later, after watching this documentary titled "Eldorado - the nightclub hated by the Nazis" available on the Netflix platform. That sign takes us back to a particular past in German history from the end of the First World War to 1933, the year of Hitler's rise to power and the Nazi movement, which coincides with the fall of the Weimar Republic.
The documentary, utilizing archival images, interviews with historians, and fictional scenes, effectively illustrates that historical junction where, at least in a large city like Berlin already was, attitudes towards sexuality were very liberal. Just for example, at newsstands, not only modest publications were on sale, but also risqué magazines targeted at a specific audience of homosexuals, lesbians, and transsexuals. Even more significant was the fact that about a hundred venues were in full operation in Berlin for a queer audience, and in this field, the Eldorado nightclub was the most renowned, with a sign proclaiming "Hier ist richtig" (translated as "here is right").
In short, an atmosphere that was nothing short of effervescent in those distant 1920s, with a broad public attendance, including possible members of the National Socialist movement, in uniform with swastikas on their arms. Among these was Ernst Rohm, general of the SA, well regarded by Hitler himself, with pronounced homophile and misogynistic tendencies.
All these singular circumstances would come to an end in 1933, with Hitler's rise to power and the murder of Rohm himself in 1934, to pave the way for Himmler's SS, even darker and more ruthless than the SA. And from that moment, if the path of the Eldorado nightclub and some vicious Nazi clients had somehow been correlated, it would no longer be so, with inevitable repressive outcomes. One would witness not only the closure of all those licentious venues active in the roaring twenties but also the classification of all queer subjects as deviant and expendable in the Nazi's deranged perspective of eliminating members of inferior races interned in concentration camps. A sadly known history that continued until the collapse of Nazism in 1945.
The even more remarkable fact, as the documentary effectively recalls, is that after the end of the Second World War, the legal framework that penalized sexual relations between people of the same sex remained in force in West Germany until 1969, to be partially reformed, while in East Germany, one would have to wait for reunification with the western part, following the fall of the Berlin Wall, for the repeal of the aforementioned oppressive laws. It is evident, therefore, that the topic of free sexual choices is always uncomfortable, and certain current freedoms in particular nations could suddenly vanish due to social and political setbacks. Lest it be forgotten, just to give an example, that there is always someone who claims that "homosexuals are not normal." And by saying so, they give voice to many others who think the same way about a very delicate subject.
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