Jew and “pederast” in interwar Poland. The curious case of Josef Chaim Lindenfeld Seminar

Josef Chaim Lindenfeld was classified in the Warsaw police’s files as a “pederast” – a male prostitute. He was arrested in 1938 for blackmailing an important Catholic, right-wing journalist and politician. The paper will follow his life in Warsaw and beyond until his trail vanishes in the Warsaw ghetto. It will present his story against a broader background of the fast growing metropolis. At the time, Warsaw had the largest Jewish population in Europe, as well as a bustling homosexual underground. Until very recently, little had been known about the latter. The paper aims to shed some light on relations between the two worlds and answer questions about the geography of homosexual sex in the capital of Poland. How far was it from the Nożyk Synagogue to the main homosexual cruising points? Who were the Jewish homosexual male prostitutes in the capital of Poland? And more generally: what is knowable about homosexual desire in the Jewish community of interwar Warsaw?