Briar Rose Chapter 25 Summary

  • Yes, an odd-numbered chapter that's a story not about Briar Rose. Crazy, we know.
  • Josef was from a fancy family, and as a young man in the 1930s, he was oblivious to the politics of the day.
  • That is, until Hitler came into power and Josef's lover killed himself. After that, Josef wasn't so oblivious.
  • Josef lived in Germany, but he wasn't too worried. For one thing, he wasn't Jewish. But gay people were persecuted under the Nazis, too.
  • Josef tried to pass as a straight man, but he was outed and arrested in 1940 after his landlady found an old textbook in his room and thought that it was pornography.
  • Josef was taken to a labor camp (as opposed to a concentration camp or an extermination camp). Still, thousands and thousands of people died there.