Gert Schramm

Gert Schramm (born November 28, 1928 in Erfurt ; † April 18, 2016 ) was a contemporary witness of National Socialism ; he was the youngest dark-skinned prisoner in Buchenwald concentration camp .

Life

Gert Schramm was born the son of Marianne Schramm and Jack Bransken, an African-American engineer for a US steel construction company. He grew up in Witterda and Bad Langensalza . After finishing elementary school, he worked as an unskilled worker in a car repair shop; He was denied an apprenticeship as a "first degree half-breed" due to the Nuremberg race laws . At the age of fifteen he was taken into “ protective custody ” by the Gestapo in accordance with the Blood Protection Act in May 1944 and imprisoned in various Gestapo prisons. On July 20, he was deported to the Buchenwald concentration camp . His father was deported to the Auschwitz concentration camp in 1941 and died there.

After the Buchenwald concentration camp was liberated and the Second World War ended in May 1945, he returned to his mother in Bad Langensalza. He initially worked in the uranium mining of the Soviet-German joint stock company Wismut . From 1956 to 1964 he worked in the United Hagenbeck colliery in Essen , but returned to the GDR in 1964, three years after the Wall was built . There he worked at VEB Kraftverkehr Eberswalde and graduated as a motor mechanic and motor vehicle master. He became workshop manager, department head, switched to civil engineering kombinat and worked his way up to the department head of the fleet in civil engineering combine in Eberswalde high. In 1985 he founded a taxi and forwarding company called "Taxi-Schramm" in Eberswalde and ran it as a private company.

Gert Schramm lived with his family in Eberswalde (Brandenburg). He was a rifle brother, was involved in the voluntary fire brigade and was an honorary judge . As the second vice-president of the Buchenwald Committee / Buchenwald-Dora camp working group, he was actively involved in raising awareness and against right-wing extremism . He was an important contemporary witness for black German / Afro-German society .

Honors

On April 25, 2014 Schramm was honored with the Federal Cross of Merit on ribbon for his initiative against right-wing extremism in the town hall of Eberswalde . The incumbent District Administrator Bodo Ihr presented him with the honor on behalf of the Brandenburg Prime Minister with the words:

“It is people like you who keep us from forgetting. They remind and admonish us. They make it clear to us that peaceful and democratic coexistence is by no means a matter of course "

- Your Bodo : ISD-online

Since March 16, 2020, two initiatives have been trying to rename a street in Erfurt in his honor.

Fonts (selection)

• Who is afraid of the black man. My life in Germany. Aufbau-Verlag, Berlin 2011

Movie

• 2001: The Nazis survived, threatened by skinheads - a black German in Eberswalde
• 2002: Buchenwald - A concentration camp

literature

• Peter Hochmuth, Gerhard Hoffmann (ed.): Buchenwald, I can't forget you. Life pictures . Dietz Verlag, Berlin 2007, ISBN 978-3-320-02100-9 ( [1] ).
• Number 49489 . In: Berliner Zeitung , March 17, 2011

Individual evidence

1. ↑ Katrin Bischoff: Gert Schramm survived as the youngest dark-skinned prisoner in Buchenwald - today he lives in Eberswalde: number 49489. Berliner Zeitung, March 17, 2011, accessed on March 26, 2020 . 
2. ↑ ^{a b} Federal Cross of Merit for Gert Schramm on: isdonline.de. Retrieved April 25, 2016.
3. ↑ Federal Cross of Merit on ribbon for Gert Schramm on: odftv.de. Retrieved April 25, 2016.
4. ↑ Initiatives call for a new name for Nettelbeckufer in Erfurt. MDR Thuringia, March 16, 2020, accessed on March 17, 2020 . 
5. ↑ Ursula Junk, Albrecht Reinhardt: The Nazis survived, threatened by skinheads - A black German in Eberswalde. In: wdr.de. Monitor , January 18, 2001, accessed May 3, 2007 . 
6. ↑ Buchenwald - A concentration camp. In: lagergemeinschaft-buchenwald.de. Buchenwald-Dora camp community / Freundeskreis e. V., accessed on April 21, 2016 .