8. Dora Richter: The World’s First Male to Female Sex Change who was killed by the Nazis.
Rudolph Richter displayed a tendency from early childhood, to: “act and carry on in a feminine way.” ‘He’ expressed distaste for male clothing and at the age of six, tried to tourniquet his penis. After this, Rudolph’s family allowed him to live as a girl as much as possible. However, adult life was cruel. During the summer, Richter worked as a male waiter in various Berlin hotels. But when autumn came, he lived as a woman. This habit led to the authorities arresting and imprisoning Richter several times for cross-dressing. However, eventually, Richter encountered a liberal judge, who referred him to Magnus Hirschfeld, a Jewish-German doctor at the Institute for Sexual Research in Dresden.
Hirschfeld had already helped Kurt Baer make the transition from female to male. At the institute, he helped Richter obtain a permit to wear women’s clothes and employed him as domestic help. Richter became one of five such employees at the Institute who were treated entirely as women. In 1922, Dr. Erwin Gohrbandt medically castrated him. The castration made Richter’s body ” fuller, restricting her beard growth, making visible the first signs of breast development, and giving the pelvic fat pad… a more feminine shape.” After nine years, more surgery gifted Richter with a vagina – a world first-and finally removed her penis. However, Dora Richter’s new life was short-lived. In 1933, the Nazis attacked the Institute and killed many of the patients. Dora Richter was one of them.