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BREAKING
THE SILENCE:
FRIEDRICH-PAUL VON GROSZHEIM
Friedrich-Paul von Groszheim, on of the "forgotten victims" of the Holocaust, recently broke his silence to give testimony.
Friedrich-Paul
von Groszheim was arrested for the first time in 1937 with 230 other men,
in a mass arrest of homosexuals in Lübeck, a German port on the Baltic
Sea. In 1938 von Groszheim was again arrested, tortured, and given the
choice between castra-tion and concentration camp. He submitted to the
operation and survived, but only told his story in 1992.
Von
Groszheim told his story on a new film in German with English subtitles
We Were Marked with a Big A, which was shown at the United States Holocaust
Memorial Museum in 1993. A video of the film is available in the Museum
Shop. Von Groszheim's story is also one of nine stories of homosexual
victims told on Museum Identity Cards; his identity card may be accessed
at the Wexner Learning Center by touching ID. Card Stories on the menu
and then keying in 5364.
Von Groszheim was never acknowledged as a victim of the Nazi regime, and
due to on-going persecution of homosexuals in Germany. it took nearly
half a century before he broke his silence. Recently he explained why
he began to speak out: "I'm living proof that Hitler didn't win. I'm aware
of that every day. If I don't tell my story, who will know the truth?"
