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Gay Holocaust survivor shares life lessons
Alfred Munzer laments ongoing religious, racial hatred
Alfred Munzer in his Van Ness apartment. Now retired from his medical career, Munzer devotes much of his time to the Holocaust Museum. (Washington Blade photo by Michael Key)
First Person 2015 Series: Al Munzer
Conversation with a Holocaust Survivor
Wednesday, July 29
11 a.m.
U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum
100 Raoul Wallenberg Place, S.W.
Free
No registration required
Although the odds were not favorable for Alfred Munzer in the circumstances surrounding his birth, in many ways, he ended up being the luckiest member of his family.
He’s the youngest of three children of Simcha and Gisele Munzer, a family of Jewish immigrants from what is now Poland. His parents were childhood sweethearts and were raising two daughters, Eva (born in July 1936) and Leah (born in November 1938) in the Hague, Netherlands. After World War I, anti-Semitism was rampant in their native land and opportunities were limited, so they moved to Holland where there was a substantial population of Jews, some of whom were from families that had been there since the 15th century. Simcha ran a men’s tailoring business.
When Gisele discovered she was expecting a third child — the pregnancy was unplanned — an abortion was advised and, as Munzer tells it today, his mother was told that, “it would be immoral to bring another Jewish life into the world.” Although not especially religious, she was inspired by the Old Testament story of Hannah, the childless woman who vows to God that if she is given a son, she will give him back to God. Her wish is granted with the birth of Samuel.
Munzer, now 73, was born on Nov. 23, 1941. Before he reached his first birthday, in July of 1942, Germans began mass deportations of nearly 100,000 Jews from the occupied Netherlands to the east, primarily Auschwitz, a network of Nazi concentration camps in German-annexed regions that had previously been part of Poland. It marked the beginning of a harrowing season for his family.
Munzer says growing up, he was often reminded of the circumstances around which he was born.
“Any time I was bad growing up, my mother would remind me of this, how she had prayed to God and requested a son,” Munzer says. “She indoctrinated me with this. It was made very clear that she had made the same pledge as Hannah and that I was here in service of God ultimately.”
It’s one of many biographical stories Munzer will share on Wednesday, July 29 when he does another installment of the Holocaust Museum’s First Person program in which survivors are interviewed about their life experiences. Since retiring from his career as an internist and pulmonologist last year, Munzer has become increasingly active as a volunteer at the museum. The program is free.
Having shared his life story many times over the years, first at an artistic event in Woodstock, N.Y., in the early 1980s, Munzer says it’s important that his story and those of other Holocaust survivors continue to be told.
“The angle I usually take is that even in a sea of evil, it is possible for people to do the right thing and stand up for what is right,” he says.
Unlike, for instance, the Anne Frank family, the Munzers thought they’d fare better if they went into hiding separately. Munzer’s two sisters went to live with a Catholic family. Simcha Munzer had received a notice to report for so-called labor duty, essentially a one-way ticket to a concentration camp, but was able to delay it by first having a hernia operation he’d been putting off and later faking a suicide attempt. Joined by Gisele at a Jewish psychiatric hospital where she was pretending to be a nurse’s aide, the two were eventually deported, in early 1943, to Vught Concentration Camp and then a year later to Auschwitz where they were separated.
Gisele had sold the family’s possessions. Neighbors kept some items such as a silver candelabra and fire dragon puppet that are now in Munzer’s Van Ness apartment where he’s lived for about 25 years with his husband, Joel Wind. Though only married for a year and a half, the two have been together since they met at Bet Mishpachah, a local LGBT-affirming synagogue where Munzer sometimes preaches, in 1980.
Things quickly turned dark for the family. The husband of the family raising Munzer’s two older sisters turned out to be a Nazi sympathizer. He denounced his wife and the two girls and all three were arrested and sent to the Westerbork transit camp. On Feb. 8, 1944, Eva, 8, and Leah, 6, were deported to Auschwitz where they were killed three days later.
Alfred was put in the care of a family friend named Annie Madna who placed him with her sister. After about a month, she became too nervous to keep him and placed little Alfred with her ex-husband Tole, a native of Indonesia. Munzer stayed there for the next three years and was looked after by their housekeeper, Mima Saina, who went to great lengths to care for him.
“She really became my mother,” Munzer says. “She was a woman who was completely illiterate, who spoke no Dutch, couldn’t read or write, she spoke only Indonesian, but she had a heart of gold. She would walk — I was in the house illegally, so there were no ration coupons for me — she had to scrounge up milk for me however she could, sometimes walking miles just to get it. I’m told I slept in her bed. She kept a knife under the pillow to kill off any Nazis who might try to get me or even kill me rather than having me fall in their hands. She was an amazing woman who raised me from the time I was about 9 months old till I was about 3 and a half.”
Simcha spent several months in Auschwitz and was then sent to three different camps in Austria. Although eventually freed from one in Ebensee in the Austrian Alps by the U.S. Army, he was so weakened by the ordeal that he died under the care of nuns at a convent just two months later, on July 25, 1945, 70 years ago this weekend. Munzer was told his father had contracted tuberculosis.
Gisele fared better and worked on electronics equipment in a series of camps before she was freed at the Danish border through the intervention of the Swedish Red Cross in early 1945. Although fussy from having been awoken from a nap, being reunited with her is one of Munzer’s earliest memories.
“I was cranky and crying so the whole Matna family was passing me around, like you do with a crying baby, and the only lap I wouldn’t sit on was my own mother’s,” Munzer says. “She was a stranger to me by that point.”
It was decided that his de facto surrogate mother Mima would continue to care for him while Gisele looked for work but Mima had a cerebral hemorrhage about two months later and died. Gisele eventually found work in the garment industry. Although deeply traumatized by the Holocaust, Munzer remembers her as a stoic, matter-of-fact woman. He had no sense growing up that his life was any different from anyone else’s.
“I was surrounded by kids who had lost their parents, who had lost siblings, there really was nothing unusual about that,” he says. “I did not understand as a very young kid what had happened to my sisters. All I knew was that there were these beautiful pictures on the wall of these beautiful girls. Everybody would tell me how wonderful they were. One of my mother’s neighbors would tell me that my older sister could write so perfectly when she was just 6. I was a little bit jealous of them in a sense. I had no comprehension of the fact that they had been killed. I just did not understand why they were missing or just didn’t really think about it.”
Neither, too, did the bombed-out landscape of the Hague, strike young Munzer as unusual.
“My mother had a very good friend who was in a concentration camp with her and she and her husband, well, there was very little housing available there. After my mother closed her store, she had acquired a little cosmetics store, we’d go to visit the Van Der Pols in these few little rooms they had in an attic and we’d walk across these huge fields of rubble to get there. I thought walking through rubble was just a normal thing. Or playing hide and seek in bunkers on the beach. It wasn’t until much later that I came to grips with the Holocaust as such.”
In July 1958, Gisele and then-16-year-old Alfred came to the United States where he became a bit of an overachiever. Located in Brooklyn, he finished high school, college, medical school and advance training at Johns Hopkins. He first came to Washington in 1972 during a two-year tour of duty with the Air Force and an assignment at Andrews Air Force Base.
He has many happy memories of his later years with his mother and says the two enjoyed many trips, including a few to visit his father’s grave, in her later years. A pivotal turning point in his understanding of the Holocaust came in 1978 when the miniseries “The Holocaust” aired on CBS.
“Before, I would hear her in conversations with friends and it was always, ‘so-and-so came back’ or ‘so-and-so did not come back.’ They never used the term survived. She had told me little bits and pieces here and there, actually humorous things mostly. She told me once very late in the game, she was actually cast as Adolf Hitler in a play, that type of thing. But she always had an incredibly positive attitude, which I think is really what kept her alive. She even spoke of being in one of those cattle cars and being able to look out and see the beautiful countryside. She said, ‘After the war, we may not have much money, but at least that was not a bad way to travel around and see nature. … After the ‘Holocaust’ miniseries, I took out a map and had her trace the 12 concentration camps she had been through and she told me the approximate dates and things that had happened at each place.”
Munzer says she was “very matter of fact about it.”
She eventually embraced Wind and on later trips introduced he and Alfred as “her two sons.” She settled in Rockville and enjoyed painting and was “not especially anti-German,” Munzer says. “She judged people individually and felt that was important.” Several of her landscapes hang above Munzer’s sofa now. She died at age 95 about 12 years ago.
Munzer started volunteering at the museum about eight years ago. He conducts tours, helps with Dutch-to-English translation work, gives talks to student groups and more. He says he’s delighted that the museum has remained popular and, although a challenge, is often overwhelmed by the number of people who visit, crowds having far surpassed estimates since its 1993 opening.
Museum staff say the stories from survivors are hugely important and valuable.
“One of the most powerful ways people (understand history) is to engage with someone who witnessed it,” says Diane Saltzman, director of survivor affairs. “Holocaust survivors who volunteer at the museum provide that personal connection for our visitors and bring an incomprehensible past alive and add a unique and powerful dimension to the visitors’ experience.”
Munzer is thrilled the staff — he’s the only LGBT survivor volunteer he knows of — has not raised the slightest issue with him being gay. He also says being out during his medical career was also pleasantly uneventful in that regard.
Last week’s conviction of 94-year-old SS sergeant Oskar Groening, an Auschwitz bookkeeper sentenced to four years imprisonment for his role as an accessory to murder in 300,000 deaths, is “awfully late” in Munzer’s opinion.
“Although I do think it’s important for people to be brought to justice.”
Equally important, Munzer says, is that the Holocaust is not forgotten.
“To me one of the greatest tragedies of the Holocaust is not even what happened but the fact that violence continues and especially genocide continues. The world really did not learn its lesson and the slogan ‘never again’ has really not been upheld. The fact that there is still religious hatred and racial hatred is just really, really sad. The re-emergence of anti-Semitism but even more in general, just not recognizing people as part of the common human race.”
Joel Wind (standing) and Alfred Munzer married in 2013 after more than 30 years together. (Washington Blade photo by Michael Key)
a&e features
The queer Asian comics building collective joy in D.C.
Spotlighting chaotic ways family, romance, identity take shape in their lives
Kevin Chen’s family tombstone has room for four: him, his parents and his boyfriend. The arrangement might prove to be a little awkward.
“My boyfriend is 100% white, and my parents are 100% disappointed,” Chen confessed.
Jokes about family traditions and the untraditional ways they’re practiced earned a burst of laughs at the bar where Chen was opening for the Pride Comedy Special. The D.C. stand-up event, produced by Comedy Bonfyre last month, spotlighted queer Asian comics who shared the chaotic ways family, romance and identity take shape in their lives.
From candid oral sex takes to top surgery hypotheticals like “Where do the boobs go?”, the night highlighted the loud camaraderie of the queer Asian experience — one that sounds like a cacophony of snorts, cackles and belly laughs. While the comics say they are not quite a community, there’s more than enough shared material to bring them together.
“It was such a magical experience. I loved performing in a queer API lineup. It feels so validating,” Chen said after the show. “I’m wondering, ‘Is this how white men feel all the time?’”
Each performance evoked queer Asian joy through a medium that could use more of its presence.
According to Chen, who is based in D.C., it’s hard to say whether there is a true queer Asian comedy presence in his city. There are only a scattered “handful” of Asian comics, and people of color are underrepresented in queer comic circles, he said.
When Tarunika Anand, a nonbinary lesbian comic, first entered the mainstream D.C. comedy scene, they mostly encountered straight white men, describing the experience as “a culture shock.”
“I feel like sometimes a lot of queer spaces are really white, and then a lot of Asian spaces are really straight,” Anand said. “I don’t feel like I fit into either.”
But feeling marginalized didn’t stop these comics from honing their craft and creating spaces for others like them. Alex Kim, who headlined the special and is based in Brooklyn, runs the queer Asian comedy group Boba Gays, which began on WhatsApp and has since made its way to Lincoln Center.
Every Wednesday, Anand co-produces a free comedy show called Funny Side Up. The queer-led group focuses on inclusivity and showcasing new talent.
“It’s really beautiful to speak about your experience and your existence in a way that’s uplifting,” Anand said.
Family is a major throughline of their comedic repertoires.
Chen, for instance, shared that he identifies with jokes about having Asian immigrant parents and the expectations they pass down.
“You see me, you know this part about me, you know this experience intimately, and I can see the truth that you’re trying to wrap a joke around,” he said. “That hits even harder because that’s my truth too. I think that’s what makes good comedy.”
Anand had the audience at the special howling when they explained that their parents’ be-more-like-them comparisons didn’t end when they came out. Instead, the expectations took on a new form.
“Now, my parents want me to be the best gay,” Anand said. “They’re like, ‘Do you know Ellen DeGeneres?’”
Kim said he’s been trying to unlearn things from his Christian Korean mom. Yet he described a moment when he was getting ready for the club and realized he looked just like his mother getting ready for church.
“I’ve been finding it hard to escape her,” Kim said.
Mutual recognition also radiates through the different ways queer love can take shape. From singlehood to death-do-us-part commitments, the comics cover just about every corner.
Anand is holding out hope for settling down with “a nice, pretty, Indian girl.” They recently went through a breakup and said they felt they dodged a bullet.
“As a person of color, I just don’t think I should be with a Swiftie,” they said.
Chen, touching on what it’s like to be in a queer interracial relationship, said that meeting his white boyfriend’s baby nephew for the first time felt like he was forced to participate in a diversity, equity and inclusion training.
“The dad was like, ‘Please welcome Kevin. Be curious about his culture, his history, his foods,’” Chen joked.
Laughter is not the only reward for the comics.
To Anand, comedy is a space where they can say whatever they want. “It gives me a voice,” they said.
Nik Narain, a North Carolina-based trans and nonbinary South Asian comic who performed at the special, said meeting older trans comedians and taking the stage helped him feel reassured in his identity during his transition.
“Stand-up was a really cool way to process that onstage,” he said. “[It] became a way for me to repackage my thoughts.”
Queer Asians are still figuring out their place in the greater D.C. comedy scene. The group is small in numbers and many are still working toward a full-time comedy career. But Narain feels he’s already made it.
Narain is reluctant to pin it all on one moment. He feels that success is already peeking through in milestones — opening for celebrities, traveling to performances and self-producing shows.
“As long as I can keep doing this, I’m super happy,” he said.
This story was produced as part of the AAJA VOICES fellowship program, a student journalism project of the Asian American Journalists Association (AAJA).
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Mr. Henry’s celebrates 60 years of proud inclusivity
Capitol Hill staple remains ‘a caring community’
America’s 250th isn’t the only milestone birthday D.C. is celebrating this year.
Beloved D.C. restaurant Mr. Henry’s, that Capitol Hill staple, celebrates its Diamond Jubilee all year long. Named for its original owner Henry Yaffe, the restaurant opened on a warm day 60 years ago in the summer of 1966 and has never looked back.
Yaffe took over what was then a country western restaurant, renovated the interior to his liking, and created an institution. Yet Yaffe had another goal. As a gay man, “he created Mr. Henry’s to be a place where everyone felt welcome — not easy in 1966 — and he succeeded,” says current owner Mary Quillian.
“Mr. Henry’s has long been a place the LGBTQ community has supported because they felt and still feel welcomed,” says Quillian. Even in the current administration, “the gay community and the diversity-minded community continue to come.”
Since then, Mr. Henry’s has changed hands, opened and closed its second floor, welcomed famed musical acts, and played host to politicians, date nights, breakups, and birthdays. But it still feels like home (and has a note in the National Trust for Historic Preservation) at 601 Pennsylvania Ave., S.E.
Its wood-paneled, Victorian-inspired art-filled décor in the downstairs dining room and bar serves American pub fare for lunch and dinner daily, with brunch on weekends (and a dog-friendly patio). Upstairs, Mr. Henry’s hosts live jazz performances and special events most nights, continuing a musical tradition that has defined the venue for decades. That upstairs bar has played host to names like Roberta Flack and Woody Allen.
Musician Kevin Cordt said that, “Mr. Henry’s has been a part of my life for more than 30 years. I started as a customer, then became a bartender and server, and now I have the good fortune to play trumpet at one of the best live music venues in Washington, D.C.”
Aaron Myers, executive director of the D.C. Commission on the Arts and Humanities, is also a supporter. “Not many cities can sport venues that have consistently served the community in the space of culture for more than 50 years, let alone can brag as the birthplace of culture defining talent.”
From the start, Yaffe promoted a rare yet celebrated combination of locals’ bar and soulful nightlife venue. Mr. Henry’s has attracted a diverse crowd at a time when such spaces were – and perhaps still are – uncommon, a diversity that is credited with helping protect the pub during the 1968 D.C. riots.
Longtime customer Evelyn Branic said, “Mr. Henry’s has been my ‘Cheers’ hangout since my wife and I moved to the Hill in 1987. I’ve experienced many iconic moments meeting politicians, reporters, civic activists, and neighbors engaging in spirited conversations. Whether political, LGBTQ, historians, neighbors, or out-of-towners, everyone could find a special place to be greeted as a friend.”
Its welcoming tables come dabbed with a bit of tea: In 1971, in a moment that has since become part of Capitol Hill lore, Yaffe lost the pub in a poker game to Larry Quillian. The Quillian family, recognizing the special role Mr. Henry’s played in the neighborhood, took over ownership, and committed to preserving its spirit. Today, Larry’s daughter Mary owns the bar, having given it a bit of a facelift for the bar’s 50th birthday, bringing in new tables and some fresh menu items.
For example, the menu has some of those dishes that regulars would riot if they disappeared. The Reuben and the hamburgers, the chili and in-house roasted turkey have never departed the menu. Dishes do evolve, says Quillen: they added wings about two decades ago.
In 2026, the restaurant is hosting monthly ticketed “decades” parties, celebrating each of the 10-year periods the restaurant’s been open, plus there were specials in June for Pride. The official 60th anniversary gala takes place Aug. 29, featuring performers, beverages, timeless favorite foods, swag – and the unveiling of a new cocktail.
Inclusive, eccentric, eclectic, Mr. Henry’s is looking forward to maintaining its centrality to diverse crowds in Capitol Hill. Battling inflation, rising menu prices, changing tastes, and thin margins, Quillian says that Mr. Henry’s has — and will always be — “a caring community for so many different folks. And THAT is why I am committed to keeping us going. Society needs places like Mr. Henry’s, now more than ever.”
a&e features
Television loses a legend, longtime ‘Will & Grace’ director James Burrows
Iconic hitmaker leaves behind a legacy of telling LGBTQ stories
You don’t have to be a pretentious film major to name 10 movie directors. But naming television directors is not that simple. They’re the unsung heroes of your favorite shows, and the late James Burrows was the television director. He passed on June 19, but his DNA runs through television history.
He directed over 1200 episodes of television and over 50 pilots. He co-created “Cheers” and directed many episodes of long-running series like “Friends,” “Taxi,” “Frasier,” “The Big Bang Theory,” and “Two and a Half Men.” You also may remember him from playing a heightened version of himself on the Lisa Kudrow comedy “The Comeback.”
He has left an indelible mark on the LGBTQ community. As recently as last year, he directed the series run of “Mid-Century Modern” starring Nathan Lane, Matt Bomer, and Linda Lavin. He was also a longtime director of “Will & Grace” and directed every episode of the series revival. He even directed the unaired “Absolutely Fabulous” pilot with Kathryn Hahn, Kristen Johnston, and Zosia Mamet.
Not to mention he’s worked with queer icons throughout history, including Betty White and Stockard Channing on their single-season series, and Jennifer Coolidge in “2 Broke Girls.”
He started his career on shows like “The Mary Tyler Moore Show,” “Rhoda,” “Laverne & Shirley,” and the first four seasons of “Taxi.”
He continued to work steadily and directed successful pilots that went to series for “Roc,” “3rd Rock From the Sun,” “Dharma & Greg,” and “Wings.” He directed multiple episodes of “Friends,” “Caroline in the City,” and “Frasier.”
This magic continued into the 2000s with him directing the pilots for “Two and a Half Men,” “The Big Bang Theory,” and multiple episodes of “Mike & Molly,” and the entire return series of “Will & Grace.”
What was the secret to his success? He’d enact the “fun clause” in his contract. In his words, “Life is too short to deal with obnoxious leads,” he shared. “So as long as the writing is good and the cast is fun, I’m going to enjoy the experience.”
He had the magic touch, having multiple pilots turned into long-running series. He was nominated for an Emmy 24 times in 26 years and worked consistently until a year before his death.
The secret was the way he brought the cast together. He describes, “it was my job to mold them into an ensemble, and they did round into a group of people who loved each other.”
This earned him 11 Emmy Awards and five Directors Guild of America Awards, including being awarded the inaugural DGA’s Lifetime Achievement Award for Television Direction.
In a 2003 interview by the Television Academy, he was asked how he wants to be remembered, and he said, “That every night forever you can tune in somewhere, and there’ll be a show I did.”
He’s survived by his wife, Debbie, four daughters, seven grandchildren, and the countless people whose careers he launched and the countless viewers he inspired with his television legacy.
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