Victor Grossman

Grossman at the memorial ceremony for the liberation of Buchenwald concentration camp in 2013

Victor Grossman (actually: Stephen Wechsler ; born March 11, 1928 in New York City ) is an American publicist who lives in Germany.

Life

Stephen Wechsler was born the son of an art dealer and librarian. His Jewish grandparents came from Odessa and the Baltic States . They fled Russia to the USA at the end of the 19th century for fear of the anti-Jewish pogroms . In 1942 Wechsler became a member of the Young Communist League and in 1945 a member of the Communist Party of the USA . From 1945 to 1949 he studied economics and trade union history at Harvard University and graduated in 1949 with a diploma. Then he worked as an industrial worker at the request of the Communist Party because there were too few communists among the workers. In 1950 he was drafted into the US Army, his unit was stationed in Bavaria. When it became known that he was a member of communist organizations, which he had not indicated , as required in the McCarthy era , he was ordered to appear before an American military tribunal. It officially said up to five years imprisonment.

He then deserted, swam across the Danube near Linz on August 12, 1952 into the Soviet-occupied zone of Austria and joined the Soviet Army . After two weeks of interrogation, he came to Potsdam, East Germany, via Czechoslovakia. There he was in Soviet custody for another two months. To protect his family, who still lived in the United States, he assumed a new identity as Victor Grossman . He then lived until 1954 in an open camp for western deserters in Bautzen , where most of the western deserters lived at that time. First he worked as a transport worker at VEB Waggonbau Bautzen , later as the cultural director of a club for the deserters, where he learned a trade like the others - lathe operator in his case. From 1954 to 1958 he studied journalism at the Faculty of Journalism at the Karl Marx University in Leipzig . According to his own statement, he is "the only one who has earned a diploma from both Harvard and Karl Marx University ". After graduating, he became a lecturer at Seven Seas Publishers in Berlin in 1958 . From 1959 to 1963 he worked for the English-language German Democratic Report , a newspaper for East German foreign propaganda, which was published by the British journalist John Peet . From 1963 to 1965 he was on the editorial staff for North America at Radio Berlin International . From 1965 to 1968 he headed the Paul Robeson archive at the Academy of the Arts in the GDR . From 1968 he is a freelance journalist, interpreter, translator and English teacher. He is involved in the German solidarity movement for the Afro-American journalist Mumia Abu-Jamal .

In 1994 he traveled to the USA for the first time. He was officially released from the US Army after a hearing. Grossman lives in Berlin. He still gives lectures, writes for various publications and is involved in the party Die Linke , the VVN-BdA and the Association of Fighters and Friends of the Spanish Republic. Among other things, he writes a commentary blog in English for American readers who are interested in German developments.

Grossman was married to the librarian Renate Kschiner (1932–2009) from 1955 until her death. The marriage resulted in two sons; the younger son has been running the Babylon cinema in Berlin since 2005 .

Fonts (selection)

• with Heinz Rodewald: Hippopotamus and stork . Children's book publisher , Berlin 1965, DNB 451684036 .
• From Manhattan to California. From US history. Children's book publisher, Berlin 1974, 1978 DNB 201971127 .
• Hitchhiking across the US. New life, Berlin 1976, DNB 760327254 .
• The way across the border . Translated by Günter Löffler. New Life , Berlin 1985, 1986, ISBN 3-355-00214-3 .
• If I Had a Song - songs and singers from the USA. Lied der Zeit , Berlin 1988, 1990, ISBN 3-7332-0023-3 .
• Crossing the river. Autobiography , University of Massachusetts Press, Amherst, MA / Boston, MA 2003, ISBN 1-55849-385-9 .
  • Crossing the river. From Broadway to Karl-Marx-Allee: An Autobiography , Wiljo Heinen, Berlin / Böklund 2014, ISBN 978-3-95514-015-1 .
• Madrid, you wonderful. An American is leafing through the history of the war in Spain. GNN, Schkeuditz, 2006, ISBN 978-3-89819-235-4 .
• An American looks back on the GDR , Spotless, Berlin 2011, ISBN 978-3-360-02039-0 .
• Rebel Girls: Portraits of 34 American Women (= New Small Library , Volume 185), Papyrossa, Cologne 2012, ISBN 978-3-89438-501-9 .

literature

• Rainer Bratfisch:  Victor Grossman . In: Who was who in the GDR? 5th edition. Volume 2. Ch. Links, Berlin 2010, ISBN 978-3-86153-561-4 .
• Peter Köpf : Where is Lieutenant Adkins? The fate of deserted NATO soldiers in the GDR . Ch. Links Verlag, Berlin 2013, ISBN 978-3-86153-709-0 .

Web links

• Literature by and about Victor Grossman in the catalog of the German National Library
• Daniel Sturm: In the care of the Warsaw Pact. A conversation with Victor Grossman
• An American in the GDR Victor Grossman in an interview in Superillu on February 6, 2014
• 20 years ago: Former US soldiers in the GDR , SpiegelTV report on YouTube.
• Victor Grossman's Berlin Bulletin

Individual evidence

1. ↑ Chopped off - The unknown deserter ( Memento of May 10, 2012 in the Internet Archive )
2. ↑ Review of my own book