Fritz Niemand talks about his forced sterilization and his battle for official recognition.
Fritz Niemand (1915–2012) was born in Kiel as the son of a naval officer. He himself joined the merchant navy in 1933, but was dismissed two years later as unfit for service due to recurrent bouts of exhaustion. Back home, he was involuntarily committed to a psychiatric institution in Schleswig, where he was forcibly sterilized in 1936. When it became known in 1940 that the Nazis were killing psychiatric patients en masse, his mother brought him back home. In 1943, his was again admitted to a clinic due to exhaustion, and was soon transferred to the Meseritz-Obrawalde Asylum, one of the killing sites of “Operation T4”. He managed to escape in January 1945. After the war, his application for official recognition as a victim of National Socialism was rejected. He nonetheless continued fighting for the rights of the victimized. Fritz Niemand lived in Rendsburg until his death.