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Kurt Gerron

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Kurt Gerron
Comedy duo Sig Arno and Kurt Gerron, Berlin 1931
Born
Kurt Gerson

(1897-05-11)11 May 1897
Died30 October 1944(1944-10-30) (aged 47)
Occupation(s)Actor, film director
Years active1920–1944

Kurt Gerron (born Kurt Gerson; 11 May 1897 – 30 October 1944) was a German Jewish actor and film director. He and his wife, Olga, were murdered in the Holocaust.

Early life and education

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Born Kurt Gerson on 11 May 1897 into a well-off merchant family in Berlin, he studied medicine before being called up for military service in World War I.[citation needed]

After being seriously wounded, he was qualified as a military doctor in the German Army, despite having been only in his second year at university.[citation needed]

Acting and filmmaking career

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After the war Gerron turned to a stage career, becoming a theatre actor under director Max Reinhardt in 1920. He appeared in secondary roles in several silent films and began directing film shorts in 1926.[citation needed]

Gerron's popular cinema breakthrough came with The Blue Angel (Der Blaue Engel, 1930) opposite Marlene Dietrich. Two years before, Gerron originated the role of "Tiger" Brown in the 1928 premiere production of The Threepenny Opera (Die Dreigroschenoper) at the Berlin Theater am Schiffbauerdamm, in which he also performed the first public performance of the song, "Mack the Knife". With the show's international success, Gerron's name and recorded voice became well known across Europe.[citation needed]

Under the Nazis

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After the 1933 seizure of power by the Nazis (known today as the Machtergreifung), Gerron left Nazi Germany with his wife and parents, traveling first to Paris and later to Amsterdam. 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.

After the Wehrmacht occupied the Netherlands, Gerron and his parents were first interned in the transit camp at Westerbork. His parents were deported on 5 May 1943, and murdered in Sobibor. Gerron and his wife were later sent to the Theresienstadt concentration camp. There he was forced by the SS to stage the cabaret review, Karussell,[1] in which he reprised Mack the Knife, as well as compositions by Martin Roman[2] 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.[3] 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. Gerron and his wife were murdered in the gas chamber immediately upon arrival on 30 October 1944,[4] [5] 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.

All known complete prints of Gerron's final 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 in 1945. Twenty minutes of footage were discovered in Czechoslovakia in the mid-1960s, and today the film exists only in fragmentary form.

Recognition

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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.[citation needed]

In film and literature

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

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.[13]

The historical novel Gerron, written in German by Swiss author Charles Lewinsky and published in six languages,[14] was shortlisted for the Swiss Book Prize in 2011.[15]

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.[16][17][18]

Selected filmography

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References

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  1. ^ Schoeps, Karl-Heinz (2004). "Introduction". Literature and Film in the Third Reich. Camden House. p. 3. [Kurt Gerron] arrived in the concentration camp of Theresienstadt in 1944 and was forced by the SS to stage the review Karussell (Carousel)...
  2. ^ Gardner, Lyn (1 June 2001). "Laugh or We Shoot". The Guardian. Retrieved 25 March 2013.
  3. ^ Brown, Kellie D. (2020). The sound of hope : music as solace, resistance and salvation during the Holocaust and World War II. ISBN 978-1-4766-7056-0. OCLC 1134074119.
  4. ^ On the deportation and murder of Kurt Gerron, on Yad Vashem website
  5. ^ Last, Dick van Galen; Wolfswinkel, Rolf (2014). Anne Frank and After. Amsterdam University Press. p. 108. ISBN 978-9053561829.
  6. ^ "Transport from Paradise". Second Run DVD. Retrieved 4 December 2024.
  7. ^ Kift, Roy (11 September 2009). "Transport for Paradise". Second Run DVD. Retrieved 4 December 2024. A short excerpt from the booklet essay by Roy Kift.
  8. ^ "Kurt Gerron's Karussell". Jewish Film Institute. Retrieved 4 December 2024.
  9. ^ "Kurt Gerron's Karussell". Ute Lemper. 16 July 2017. Retrieved 4 December 2024.
  10. ^ "Watch Kurt Gerrons Karussell Full movie Online In HD". Find where to watch it online on Justdial. Retrieved 4 December 2024.
  11. ^ Eisner, Ken (22 October 2003). "Prisoner of Paradise". Variety (magazine). Archived from the original on 6 January 2010.
  12. ^ Herbert Thomas Mandl "Spuren nach Theresienstadt / Tracks to Terezín" - Interview and director: Herbert Gantschacher; camera: Robert Schabus; editor: Erich Heyduck. ARBOS Vienna-Salzburg 2007
  13. ^ ": The Theatre of the Holocaust, Volume 2: Six Plays, Edited and with an Introduction by Robert Skloot". UW Press. 19 March 2010. Retrieved 4 December 2024.
  14. ^ "Gerron". New Books in German. Retrieved 5 December 2024.
  15. ^ "Gerron". Diogenes Verlag (in German). Retrieved 5 December 2024.
  16. ^ McCann, C. (2020). Apeirogon: A Novel (in Galician). Random House Publishing Group. ISBN 978-0-679-60460-0. Retrieved 5 December 2024.
  17. ^ "Apeirogon Characters Listed With Descriptions". BookCompanion. Retrieved 5 December 2024.
  18. ^ "Deutscher Buchpreis 2020: Die Longlist – Eine Rezensionsübersicht". Die Buchbloggerin (in German). 30 August 2020. Retrieved 5 December 2024.
  • "Prisoner of Paradise" by PBS, 2003, 100 mins, not rated.
  • Gerron, 2011, French translation Retour indésirable, Grasset, 2013.[1]
  • Fictional biography by Charles Lewinsky (Swiss, in German)
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  1. ^ Johanna Lier (22 September 2011). "Himmlisches Schmierentheater" (in German). WOZ Die Wochenzeitung Nr. 38/2011 vom 22.09.2011. Retrieved 26 September 2015.