Gert Schramm

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

Life

Schramm was born as the son of Marianne Schramm and Jack Bransken, an African-American engineer of a U.S. steel construction company. He grew up in Witterda and Bad Langensalza. After completing elementary school, he worked as a laborer in an auto repair shop; an apprenticeship was denied as "half-breed the first degree " due to the Nuremberg race laws. Fifteen- year-old he was taken in May 1944 by the Gestapo after the Blood Protection Law in "protective custody" and imprisoned in various Gestapo prisons. On July 20, he was deported to the Buchenwald concentration camp. His father was deported in 1941 to Auschwitz concentration camp and died there.

After the liberation of the Buchenwald concentration camp and the end of World War II in May 1945, he returned to his mother to Bad Langensalza. He first worked in the uranium mines of the Soviet- German joint stock company bismuth. 1956 to 1964 he worked in the colliery in Essen United Hagenbeck, but returned in 1964, three years after the construction of the wall, voluntarily returned to the GDR. There he worked at VEB haulage Eberswalde and got a degree as a motor mechanic and master car after. He was workshop manager, department manager, switched to civil engineering Combine and worked his way up to the department heads of the fleet in civil engineering combine in Eberswalde high. In 1985 he founded in Eberswalde a taxi and freight forwarding company called " taxi - Schramm " and introduced it as a private operation.

Gert Schramm now lives with his family in Eberswalde (Brandenburg). He is protecting brother, is engaged in the volunteer fire department and is an honorary judge. As second vice president of the Buchenwald-Komitees/Lagerarbeitsgemeinschaft Buchenwald -Dora, he is actively engaged in education and against right. For the German black / Afro- German society, he is an important witness.

Writings (selection )

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