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Kurt Gerron

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Kurt Gerron (born Kurt Gerson; 11 May 1897 – 30 October 1944) was a German Jewish actor and film director. He had a very successful career in cabaret and film before World War II, but was then forbidden to work and was sent to Theresienstadt Ghetto after the Nazis had occupied the Netherlands, where he and his family had fled to. He was forced by the Nazis to make a propaganda film about Theresienstadt, officially named Theresienstadt. Ein Dokumentarfilm aus dem jüdischen Siedlungsgebiet, before he and his wife, Olga Gerson-Meyer, were sent to Auschwitz concentration camp and murdered. The film was completed not long before the end of the war, but was never shown to the public, and only fragments remain.

Early life and educationEdit

Kurt Gerron was born as Kurt Gerson in Berlin, Germany, on 11 May 1897, the only child of Max and Toni (née Riese) Gerson. His father ran a clothing business.<ref name=yv>{{#invoke:citation/CS1|citation |CitationClass=web }}</ref>

He was badly injured twice during combat after enlisting in the German Army during World War I, so was discharged. He started studying medicine, and re-enlisted in the army as a doctor after two years. He completed his studies after the war ended, but decided to embark on a career in acting a year later,<ref name=yv/> having started to perform on stage around 1920.<ref name=hhs>{{#invoke:citation/CS1|citation |CitationClass=web }}</ref>

Acting and filmmaking careerEdit

Gerron first appeared on stage in a cabaret performance called Kuka in Berlin. He joined the Wilden Buhne ("Wild Stage") cabaret troupe in 1921, subsequently working with several other troupes as well as working under theatre director Max Reinhardt.<ref name=yv/> Around the same time, he started taking parts in silent films, later also finding success in talkies.<ref name=yv/>

In 1928, Gerron appeared as "Tiger" Brown in the Berlin premiere of The Threepenny Opera (Die Dreigroschenoper), by Bertolt Brecht and Kurt Weill, at the Theater am Schiffbauerdamm. This was highly successful, and the song "Mack the Knife", sung by Gerron, was recorded and became a hit across Europe. In 1930, he played Kiepert the magician in the film, The Blue Angel (Der Blaue Engel), with Marlene Dietrich. During the following three years, he appeared in many films and also directed many more, attaining a high degree of success.<ref name=yv/> He was offered a trip to Hollywood, but chose to stay in Germany.<ref name=hhs/>

Under the NazisEdit

After the 1933 seizure of power by the Nazis (known today as the Machtergreifung), Gerron, along with other Jewish actors, musicians, film and theatre people, were forced out of their jobs. Gerron was in the middle of directing Kind Ich Freu Mich Auf Dein Kommen at UFA Studios when he was marched off the set by Nazi soldiers on 1 April 1933, the day of the "national boycott on German Jewry".<ref name=yv/>

Gerron left Nazi Germany with his wife and parents, travelling first to Paris, then to Vienna, and later to Amsterdam,<ref name=yv/> where they occupied a house at Frans van Mierisstrat 78, bovenhuis.<ref name=hhs/> He continued work there as an actor at the Stadsschouwburg and directed several movies. Several times he was offered employment in Hollywood through the agency of Peter Lorre and Josef von Sternberg, but Gerron refused to leave Europe.

In 1937, Gestapo headquarters in Lüneburg issued an order which forbade truck drivers from displaying pictures on their vehicles of the Nazi officer Ernst Röhm, as well as Gerron and Fritz Grünbaum, a Jewish Austrian cabaret artist.<ref name=yv/>

After the Wehrmacht occupied the Netherlands in May 1940, Gerron continued to work as a performer and director for three years. His parents were deported on 5 May 1943, and murdered in Sobibor after being interned in the transit camp at Westerbork.<ref name=yv/><ref name=schoeps/> In September 1943, Gerron and his wife Olga were arrest and sent to Westerbork, where he continued to perform cabaret.<ref name=yv/>

TheresienstadtEdit

On 25 February 1944 Gerron and his wife were sent to the Theresienstadt Ghetto.<ref name=yv/> There he was forced by the SS to stage the cabaret review, Karussell,<ref name=schoeps>Template:Cite book</ref> in which he reprised Mack the Knife, as well as compositions by Martin Roman<ref>Template:Cite news</ref> and other imprisoned musicians and artists.

In 1944, Gerron was coerced into directing a Nazi propaganda film intended to be viewed in "neutral" nations such as Switzerland, Sweden, and Ireland, for example, showing how "humane" conditions were at Theresienstadt.<ref>Template:Cite book</ref> The film had originally been planned in December 1943, but had been interrupted by a visit to Theresienstadt by a Red Cross delegation in June 1944. Ahead of the planned visit, the Nazis cleaned up the camp and deported large numbers of Jews to Auschwitz concentration camp to avoid the appearance of overcrowding in the ghetto. The delegates were only allowed to speak to selected residents, under SS supervision, and the deception worked; the report stated that the city was "like any other", and the delegates did not investigate the thousands of Jews who passed through on their way to concentration camps.<ref name=yv/>

Gerron's script, submitted to Commandant Karl Rahm, was based around the theme of water, including rivers, bathtubs, showers, and irrigation ditches, and was approved by the authorities.<ref name=hhs/> Once filming was finished, Gerron and members of the jazz pianist Martin Roman's Ghetto Swingers were deported on the camp's final train transport to Auschwitz on 28 October 1944. Gerron and his wife were murdered in the gas chamber immediately upon arrival on 30 October 1944,<ref>On the deportation and murder of Kurt Gerron, on Yad Vashem website</ref><ref>Template:Cite book</ref> along with the film's entire performing entourage (except for Roman and guitarist Coco Schumann). The next day, Reichsführer SS Heinrich Himmler ordered the closure of the gas chambers.

The film was completed in March 1945, and was never shown to the public.<ref name=yv/> All known complete prints of the film, which was to have been called Theresienstadt. Ein Dokumentarfilm aus dem jüdischen Siedlungsgebiet (Terezin: A Documentary Film of the Jewish Resettlement), and which is also referred to as Der Führer schenkt den Juden eine Stadt (The Führer Gives the Jews a City), were destroyed. Gerron's notes that he wrote during the filming survived.<ref name=yv/> Today the film exists only in fragmentary form. A 23-minute film, without subtitles, is available for educational use.<ref>{{#invoke:citation/CS1|citation |CitationClass=web }}</ref> The lists that Gerron wrote and edited during the filming survived

RecognitionEdit

File:Gerron Kurt Mainz.jpg
Gerron's star on the Walk of Fame of Cabaret in Mainz, Germany

There is a star for Gerron on the Walk of Fame of Cabaret in Mainz, Germany.

On 17 June 2022 a Stolperstein (memorial for victims of the Nazi regime) for Kurt Gerron and one for his wife, Olga Gerson, were installed at Paulsborner Strasse 77, Berlin, their last residence in Germany.Template:Citation needed

Personal lifeEdit

In 1924 he married Olga-Olly Meyer,<ref name=yv/> later known as Olga Gerson-Meyer.<ref name=hhs/>

In film and literatureEdit

Gerron is the subject of or features in several documentary films:

  • Transport from Paradise (1962), an award-winning Czechoslovakian film directed by Zbyněk Brynych and written by survivor Arnošt Lustig; later released on DVD<ref>{{#invoke:citation/CS1|citation

|CitationClass=web }}</ref> accompanied by a booklet containing an essay by British writer Roy Kift<ref name=kifttransport>{{#invoke:citation/CS1|citation |CitationClass=web }}</ref>

  • Kurt Gerrons Karussell (1999), directed by Austrian Jewish documentary filmmaker Ilona Ziok<ref name="u917">{{#invoke:citation/CS1|citation

|CitationClass=web }}</ref> starring Ute Lemper<ref>{{#invoke:citation/CS1|citation |CitationClass=web }}</ref> and Roy Kift<ref>{{#invoke:citation/CS1|citation |CitationClass=web }}</ref>

|CitationClass=web }}</ref>

Roy Kift wrote a play about Gerron's time in Theresienstadt entitled Camp Comedy. The play is published in The Theatre of the Holocaust, Volume 2, edited by Robert Skloot and published by the University of Wisconsin Press in 1999.<ref>{{#invoke:citation/CS1|citation |CitationClass=web }}</ref>

The historical novel Gerron, written in German by Swiss author Charles Lewinsky and published in six languages,<ref>{{#invoke:citation/CS1|citation |CitationClass=web }}</ref> was shortlisted for the Swiss Book Prize in 2011.<ref>{{#invoke:citation/CS1|citation |CitationClass=web }}</ref>

The story of Gerron and the propaganda film is mentioned in Colum McCann's 2020 novel Apeirogon, about two men, one Palestinian, the other Israeli, who each lost a daughter in the ongoing Israeli–Palestinian conflict.<ref>Template:Cite book</ref><ref>{{#invoke:citation/CS1|citation |CitationClass=web }}</ref><ref>{{#invoke:citation/CS1|citation |CitationClass=web }}</ref>

See alsoEdit

Selected filmographyEdit

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ReferencesEdit

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Further readingEdit

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External linksEdit

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