Useless Mouths: Gwen Strauss on Untold Stories of Forbidden Love in the Holocaust

Useless Mouths: Gwen Strauss on Untold Stories of Forbidden Love in the Holocaust

Author: trappedhistory July 29, 2025 Duration: 43:30

It’s October 1940 and you are walking down a dusty lane when someone slips a scrap of paper into your hand. You hold it tightly in your palm, waiting until you’re round a corner and away from prying eyes.  When you manage to find that moment and open the folded paper square, you read: “Milena from Prague requests a meeting.”

You are Margarete Buber-Neumann and you are a prisoner in Ravensbruck concentration camp. The note in your hand is from Milena Jesenska, a Czech legend who has just arrived in the camp after being swept up in the Holocaust. It is a note which heralds the beginnings of hope, of friendship – of love – in the midst of death.

Join Oswin and Carla as the Holocaust historian Gwen Strauss tells the life-affirming and heart-breaking tale of Grete and Milena as they try to find a reason to live among the ruins of the Holocaust. Theirs is a forgotten history, a hidden history of queer life and death and it should act as an inspiration to us all.



This podcast uses the following third-party services for analysis:

Podcorn - https://podcorn.com/privacy

Head over to www.trappedhistory.com to sign up to the award-winning podcast, get our newsletter, bonus episodes and much, much more.


Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.


Trapped History digs into the corners of the past that standard narratives often overlook, guided by James Baldwin's idea that people and history are mutually confined. This podcast is a deliberate effort to loosen that grip, one story at a time. You'll hear detailed accounts of individuals and events sidelined by traditional textbooks, from strategic minds in forgotten battles to cultural pioneers whose influence was deliberately minimized. Each episode reconstructs a specific moment or life, focusing on the nuanced realities of women's history, Black history, military history, and cultural history. The aim is to provide a more complete and human picture, moving beyond dates and dominant names to the textures of lived experience. By engaging with these overlooked chapters, the podcast invites a deeper understanding of how our present is shaped. It’s for anyone who suspects there's more to the story, offering a thoughtful and researched alternative to the history many of us were first taught. Listening feels like a conversation with a knowledgeable friend, one committed to unearthing truths that resonate with our contemporary world. The result is an educational and compelling narrative that challenges simple takeaways, encouraging listeners to question what they think they know about the forces that have built and bound our societies.
Author: Language: English Episodes: 76

Trapped History
Podcast Episodes
Remembering the Ordinary: The Memorial to Heroic Self-Sacrifice [not-audio_url] [/not-audio_url]

Duration: 42:19
Trapped History reveals the hidden stories of unsung heroes. But as we hit mid-season, we thought we'd do something slightly different: look at a whole bunch of unsung heroes. The Memorial to Heroic Self-Sacrifice in fac…
The Four Heroic Lives of Johnny Smythe [not-audio_url] [/not-audio_url]

Duration: 43:10
Trapped History reveals the hidden stories of unsung heroes. In this episode, we explore the world of Johnny Smythe – four heroes in one, across three continents.Sierra Leonean Johnny was an RAF bomber navigator, a Priso…
Adelaide Hall: The Greatest Singer you've Never Heard Of [not-audio_url] [/not-audio_url]

Duration: 31:11
Trapped History reveals the hidden stories of unsung heroes. In this episode, we explore the world of Adelaide Hall, the greatest singer we’d never heard of.Ella Fitzgerald called her the first lady of jazz. She was the…
The Many Tangled Lives of Peter Stevens [not-audio_url] [/not-audio_url]

Duration: 36:19
Trapped History shares the hidden stories of unsung heroes. In this episode, we explore the world of Peter Stevens, a complex courageous man who speaks to our age more than anyone we've come across before.Peter is a chan…
Nellie Bly: The Greatest Person Ever! [not-audio_url] [/not-audio_url]

Duration: 38:27
Trapped History shares the hidden stories of unsung heroes. In this episode, we explore the world of Nellie Bly, one of the greatest people we've never heard of . . .Nellie was born in the 19th century but she is a 21st…