![Friedrich-Paul von Groszheim [LCID: 5364]](https://encyclopedia.ushmm.org/images/large/a4424623-b94c-40e5-b6fb-f4568b6cdd2a.gif "Friedrich-Paul von Groszheim [LCID: 5364]")
Friedrich-Paul was born in the old trading city of Lübeck in northern Germany. He was 11 when his father was killed in World War I. After his mother died, he and his sister Ina were raised by two elderly aunts. After graduating from school, Friedrich-Paul trained to be a merchant.
1933-39: In January 1937 the SS arrested 230 men in Lübeck under the Nazi-revised criminal code's Paragraph 175, which banned sexual relations between men. Friedrich-Paul was imprisoned for 10 months. In 1938 he was re-arrested, humiliated, and tortured. The Nazis finally released him, but only on the condition that he agree to be castrated. Friedrich-Paul submitted to the operation.
1940-44: Because of the nature of his operation, Friedrich-Paul was rejected as “physically unfit” when he came up for military service in 1940. In 1943 he was arrested again, this time for being a monarchist, a supporter of the former Kaiser Wilhelm II. The Nazis imprisoned him as a political prisoner in an annex of the Neuengamme concentration camp at Lübeck.
After the war, Friedrich-Paul settled in Hamburg.
Item View![Robert T. Odeman [LCID: 5856]](https://encyclopedia.ushmm.org/images/large/655a1cc7-27c7-4aba-bb03-f2148249a295.gif "Robert T. Odeman [LCID: 5856]")
Born Martin Hoyer, Robert took Robert T. Odeman as his stage name when he began a professional career as an actor and musician. A classical pianist, Robert gave concerts throughout Europe, but a hand injury tragically ended his concert career.
1933-39: In 1935 Robert opened a cabaret in Hamburg. One year later the Nazis shut it down, charging that it was politically subversive. Robert then moved to Berlin where he developed a close relationship with a male friend who was pressured to denounce Robert to the Gestapo. In November 1937 Robert was arrested under paragraph 175 of the Nazi-revised criminal code, which outlawed homosexuality. He was sentenced to 27 months in prison.
1940-44: Robert was released from prison in 1940 but remained under police surveillance. They monitored his correspondence with a half-Jewish friend in Munich and with friends abroad. In 1942 Robert was arrested again under paragraph 175 and deported to the Sachsenhausen concentration camp. There he was assigned an office job. On a forced march from the camp towards the Baltic in April 1945, 40-year-old Robert escaped with two other "175ers."
After the war, Robert returned to Berlin, where he worked as a writer and composer. He died in 1985.
Item View![Robert Oelbermann [LCID: 5336]](https://encyclopedia.ushmm.org/images/large/699e90e2-fa86-41da-978b-d935d73b6c1a.gif "Robert Oelbermann [LCID: 5336]")
In 1919 Robert and his brother Karl founded the Nerother Bund youth group in the Cologne region. Like other German youth groups, it aimed to bring youth closer to nature through camping and hiking. Homosexual relationships sometimes developed from the intense adolescent male camaraderie, and the Nerother Bund accepted these friendships, as did a number of German youth groups at the time.
1933-39: Soon after the Nazis took power in 1933, they dissolved all independent youth groups and urged the members to join the Hitler Youth movement. Robert refused and secretly continued his connection with the Nerother Bund. In 1936 he was convicted under the Nazi-revised criminal code's paragraph 175 which outlawed homosexuality. Robert was imprisoned with 13 other members of the Nerother Bund.
1940-41: Robert was one of more than 50,000 men sentenced under paragraph 175 during the Nazi regime. By 1941 he had been transferred to the Dachau concentration camp. Like many "175ers" in the camps, Robert was required to wear an identifying pink triangle. The "175ers" were commonly segregated in separate barracks, subjected to particularly harsh treatment, and often ostracized by other prisoner groups.
Forty-four-year-old Robert died at Dachau in 1941. Details of his death are unknown.
Item View![Harry Pauly [LCID: 5664]](https://encyclopedia.ushmm.org/images/large/68f7df56-9b5e-4bc7-931f-36fb471caa43.gif "Harry Pauly [LCID: 5664]")
As a young boy growing up in Berlin, Harry developed a love for the theater. At 15 he began acting in minor roles at a theater at the Nollendorfplatz. He was also apprenticed to a hairdresser but disliked the work. He spent most of his time with other actors, both at the theater and in nightclubs where gay men gathered.
1933-39: When the Nazis came to power, they closed the gay bars. Some gay men, especially those who were Jewish, were killed by Nazi sympathizers; Harry's friend "Susi," a drag queen, was stabbed to death. In 1936 Harry was arrested under the Nazi-revised paragraph 175 of the criminal code, which outlawed homosexuality. He was imprisoned in a camp at Neusustrum, where he worked in the marshes 12 hours a day. After 15 months he was released.
1940-44: In 1943 Harry was turned in by two boys pressured by the Gestapo to denounce gay men. Again he was sentenced under paragraph 175. Again Harry was released, this time after only eight months because friends in the theater intervened on his behalf. He was then drafted into the army but wherever he went, people knew of his 175 conviction and called him homophobic slurs. Harry couldn't stand it and deserted twice. Finally, as punishment, he was sent to a special combat unit in which almost everyone was killed. Somehow he managed to survive.
After the war, Harry started his own small theater.
Item View![Karl Lange [LCID: 7264]](https://encyclopedia.ushmm.org/images/large/265c049c-1967-4663-91d8-0d1cf187835b.gif "Karl Lange [LCID: 7264]")
Karl was born in the north German port of Hamburg. His father was American, and his mother was German. Soon after Karl was born, his father returned to the United States and a little later, his parents were divorced. Karl left school when he was 14 and worked as a shop apprentice.
1933-39: In 1935 an informer told the police about Karl's secret meetings with a 15-year-old youth, and he was arrested under the criminal code's paragraph 175, which defined homosexuality as an "unnatural" act. Though this law had been on the books for years, the Nazis broadened its scope and used it as grounds for mass arrests of homosexuals. He was released after 15 months but was arrested again in 1937 and imprisoned.
1940-44: In 1943 Hamburg was the target of heavy Allied bombing but the Fuhlsbuettel prison, where Karl had been held for six years for "security reasons," was not hit. During that period many prisoners were transferred to the Neuengamme concentration camp, but Karl was in the group sent to the Waldheim prison in Sachsen. He had a nervous breakdown there and entered the prison hospital. He was lucky because as the Allies moved closer, many of the other prisoners were released for combat and died on the front lines.
After the war, Karl found a position in a bank in Hamburg, but he was fired after 18 months when his employer learned that he had been imprisoned under paragraph 175.
Item View![Karl Gorath [LCID: 3864]](https://encyclopedia.ushmm.org/images/large/3da9f830-860f-4652-bb5e-9844bec2eb01.gif "Karl Gorath [LCID: 3864]")
Karl was born in the small town of Bad Zwishenahn in northern Germany. When he was 2, his family moved to the port of Bremerhaven. His father was a sailor and his mother became a nurse in a local hospital. After his father died, Karl continued to live with his mother. Karl was 20 when he began training as a deacon at his parish church.
1933-39: Karl was 26 when his jealous lover denounced him and he was arrested at his house under Paragraph 175. Paragraph 175 was a statute of the German criminal code that criminalized sexual relations between men. Though it had been on the books for years, the Nazis broadened its scope. They used it as grounds to arrest gay men, bisexual men, and other men accused of homosexuality. Karl was imprisoned at Neuengamme concentration camp near Hamburg where the "175ers" had to wear a pink triangle.
1940-44: Because Karl had some training as a nurse, he was transferred to work at the prisoner hospital at the Wittenberg subcamp. One day, a guard ordered him to decrease the bread ration for the patients who were Polish war prisoners, but Karl refused, telling him that it was inhuman to treat the Poles in this way. As punishment, he was sent to Auschwitz, and this time, rather than being marked as a "175er," he wore the red triangle of a political prisoner. At Auschwitz Karl had a lover who was Polish; his name was Zbigniew.
Karl was liberated in Auschwitz in 1945. After the war he had difficulty because of his record of having been convicted under paragraph 175.
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