Friedrich-Paul von Groszheim
Friedrich-Paul von Groszheim (27 April 1906 – c. 2003) was a German man who was imprisoned by the Nazis for the crime of homosexuality under Germany's now-repealed Paragraph 175. He was born in Lübeck, Germany.
Three imprisonments
Von Groszheim was one of 230 men arrested in Lübeck on suspicion of being gay by the SS in January 1937. He was imprisoned for ten months, during which he had to wear a badge emblazoned with a capital A, for Arschficker ("arse-fucker"):
They beat us to a pulp. I couldn't lie down...my whole back (was) bloody. You were beaten until you finally named names [1]
Von Groszheim was held in a cell with no heating, very little food, and no toilet facilities. He was rearrested in 1938, tortured and forcibly castrated[2] before being re-released.
Because of the castration, von Groszheim was rejected as physically unfit for military service in 1940. In 1943 he was arrested a third time, this time as a supporter of the former Kaiser Wilhelm II, and imprisoned as a political prisoner at Neuengamme concentration camp.
After the war
Von Groszheim settled in Hamburg, Germany. In 1995, he was one of eight signers to a declaration given to the US Holocaust Memorial Museum in Washington, D.C. that called for the "memorializing and documenting of Nazi atrocities against homosexuals and others."[2]
See also
References
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