Brutal Nazi Torture of Black German Boy Gert Schramm in Nazi Germany - Buchenwald - World War 2
Brutal Nazi Torture of Black German Boy Gert Schramm in Nazi Germany - Buchenwald - World War 2
Brutal Nazi Torture of Black German Boy Gert Schramm in Nazi Germany - Buchenwald - World War 2. Despite the Nuremberg Laws, some Black people and so called German “Aryans” still became romantically involved with one another. These relationships were dangerous for both partners, especially if they chose to try to legally marry. In Nazi Germany, everyone was required to apply for permission to marry. When interracial couples applied, their applications were consistently denied for racial reasons. These applications brought their interracial relationships to the attention of government authorities. This often had dire consequences for the couple. In multiple cases, marriage applications resulted in harassment, sterilization and the breaking up of partnerships.
Legal couples whose marriages pre-dated the Nuremberg Laws were harassed by the Nazi regime. The regime pressured white German women to divorce their Black husbands. Interracial couples and their children were often humiliated and even assaulted when they appeared together in public.
Like their parents, many Black children in Germany experienced the Nazi era as a time of increased loneliness, isolation, and exclusion. Some Black children felt German and wanted to be a part of the excitement. But Nazi racial ideology had no place for Black-German children. For Black children in Nazi Germany, schools became sites of humiliation. Black children were often degraded in racial science classes and ridiculed by teachers who supported the Nazis.
Just as the Nazification of the education system greatly restricted the rights of Jewish children to attend public schools, it also impacted Black children over the course of the 1930s. Some Black students were expelled and unable to complete their education. Few private schools would accept Black students and finding apprenticeships, which in Germany was crucial to find employment, became increasingly difficult.
Such was a case of Gert Schramm.
After completing elementary school, he worked as a helper in a car repair shop. According to the Nuremberg Laws, he was denied the right to any apprenticeship as a “Mischling of the first grade”. Mischling was a pejorative legal term used in Nazi Germany to denote persons of mixed “Aryan” and non-Aryan ancestry as codified in the Nuremberg racial laws of 1935.
Most of the Black people living under the Nazi Regime were effectively trapped there.
While some tried to leave, for the vast majority this was not possible as they could not receive visas to other countries or legally immigrate elsewhere because of citizenship issues. Eventually, Black people in Germany had little choice but to adapt to life under the Nazis.
The second world war began on the 1st of September, 1939 with the invasion of Poland.
During World War II, Nazi policies against Black people became more extreme. This occurred in the context of the broader radicalization of Nazi policies against supposed racial and political enemies. Because of laws and policies that sharpened discrimination and racism in Germany, many Black people ended up imprisoned in workhouses, prisons, hospitals, psychiatric facilities, and concentration camps. In 1941, Jack Brankson, Gert’s father, was arrested during one of his visits to Germany on the basis of the Nazi racial laws and deported to the Auschwitz concentration camp. There is no trace of him after that.
However, Gert Schramm was no exception either.
He was arrested in May 1944. Officially, he was taken into “protective custody” by the Gestapo under the Law for the Protection of German Blood and Honor as his father was an Afro-American man. For weeks, he was moved from one Gestapo prison to another, denied food and water, beaten up, hit in the face and knocked around until on the 20th of July 1944 when he was finally deported to Buchenwald concentration camp which was one of the largest concentration camps established within German borders. He was 15 years old when the gate with the inscription „Jedem das Seine“ meaning “ to each what he deserves” closed behind him.
From that moment on Gert was not called by his name anymore. He became only a number: 49489 which was tattooed onto his left arm. His sentence was an unspecified time, to be no less than fifteen years…
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Content
0.84 -> The 30th of January 1933, Germany. Adolf
Hitler is appointed chancellor of Germany
8.16 -> and the Nazi regime quickly begins to restrict
the civil and human rights of the Jews and other
13.92 -> individuals deemed to be "enemies of the
state," and opens the first concentration
17.88 -> camp – Dachau – situated near Munich.
The regime targets not only Jews and
23.7 -> political prisoners, but also Afro-Germans, who
are discriminated against and persecuted despite
29.94 -> their relatively small presence in Germany.
Even though the Nazis do not have an organized
34.92 -> program to eliminate them, an unknown number
of Black people in Germany and German-occupied
39.42 -> territories will be sterilized, incarcerated,
or murdered. One such man is Gert Schramm.
47.026 -> Gert Schramm was born on the 28th of
November 1928 in Erfurt, the capital,
53.76 -> and the largest city of Thuringia, then
part of the Weimar Republic which was
58.14 -> the government of Germany from 1918 to
1933. His parents were Marianne Schramm,
64.08 -> a white German woman and Jack Brankson, a
black American engineer with a steel company
69.36 -> from San Francisco who arrived in Thuringia
on a contract in order to build a bridge.
74.34 -> The two met in the shop of gentleman’s tailor
Kurt Schramm who was Marianne’s father.
79.56 -> Racism was a part of Black people’s everyday lives
in Weimar Germany and this made it difficult for
85.74 -> them to find employment, a situation exacerbated
by the Great Depression which started in 1929,
91.56 -> one year after Gert Schramm was born.
Jack Brankson, after the termination of
96.6 -> his contract, left Germany but kept coming back
to Thuringia where his son Gert was growing up.
101.64 -> When Adolf Hitler and the Nazi Party
came into power in Germany in 1933,
107.22 -> they began to put their discriminatory and
false ideas about race into law and practice.
112.74 -> The Nazis wanted to create a racially pure
Germany and they considered Germans to be
118.14 -> members of the supposedly superior “Aryan”
race. They targeted Jews, Roma, and Black
124.08 -> people including Gert Schramm as “non-Aryans”
and as members of supposedly inferior races.
131.46 -> The Nazis passed laws that limited the
rights of non-Aryan Germans. These laws
136.98 -> were primarily intended to exclude Jews, but
they also applied to Black and Romani peoples.
142.38 -> For Black Germans, the Nazi era was a time
of escalating persecution, marginalization,
148.2 -> and isolation. Though they had faced racism
during the Weimar era, the institutionalized
154.2 -> racism of the Nazi regime made life for them and
their families even more difficult and precarious.
159.96 -> As a result, Black people in Germany saw the Nazi
rise to power as a turning point in their lives.
166.38 -> Nazi racist ideology permeated all aspects of
life in Germany. Many Germans embraced this
172.44 -> ideology and openly discriminated against Black
people on their own initiative. As a result,
178.32 -> for several thousand Black people then living
in Germany it became increasingly difficult to
183 -> find and keep work. Colleagues and
bosses were reluctant to work with
187.14 -> people whose skin color marked them as
outsiders in the Nazi racial community.
191.76 -> Firings, evictions, and poverty were common.
Some Black people remember life in Nazi Germany
198.54 -> as a time in which strangers spat on them
and called them racial slurs with impunity.
203.64 -> In April 1933, the Law for the Restoration
of the Professional Civil Service removed
209.52 -> people of “non-Aryan descent”
from the German civil service.
213.18 -> The decree was vague as to how exactly to define
“non-Aryan descent.” The intention to exclude Jews
219.66 -> was obvious, but subsequent decrees clarified
that this was also applied to Black and Romani
225.18 -> people. In practice, relatively few Black people
were directly affected by this law, because only
230.76 -> citizens could be civil servants. And most of
those Black people who were German citizens
235.62 -> were still too young to be employed in the civil
service. These citizens were multiracial Children
241.2 -> born in the Rhineland, a region in western
Germany. Their mothers were white German women and
247.08 -> their fathers were mostly French colonial soldiers
who had been part of the large Allied military
251.64 -> occupation of the Rhineland between 1918–1930.
During the Weimar era, there were between 600-800
259.74 -> multiracial children born in the Rhineland
and the German press referred to them using
264.9 -> the derogatory label “Rhineland Bastards”. These
children were often discriminated against because
271.5 -> of their fathers and their physical appearance.
They experienced racism from their neighbors,
276.06 -> classmates, and even in their own
families. While some remained with
280.5 -> their birth mothers or their families, others
were placed into children’s homes or adopted.
285.9 -> The previously-mentioned decree and
subsequent race-based restrictions
289.68 -> severely limited future job opportunities
and career paths for these children.
294.6 -> It also made clear that the Nazis did
not consider Black people part of the
298.8 -> German national community and intended to
formally exclude them from Germany society.
303.72 -> In September 1935, the Nazi regime
announced the Nuremberg Race Laws,
308.64 -> which put Nazi ideas about race into law.
Those laws primarily targeted Jews but,
315.48 -> beginning in November 1935, the Nuremberg
Laws also applied to Romani and Black people,
320.88 -> whom the regime referred to derogatorily
as “Gypsies, Negroes and their bastards”.
326.28 -> There were two Nuremberg Race Laws. The first, the
Reich Citizenship Law, defined a German citizen as
333.78 -> a person who is “of German or related blood.” The
point was to exclude people whom the regime saw as
339.96 -> racially inferior, namely Jews, Roma, and Black
people, from having political rights in Germany.
346.5 -> The second was the Law for the Protection
of German Blood and German Honor. This law
352.08 -> banned race-mixing or what was called “race
defilement”. It forbade future intermarriages
357.42 -> and sexual relations between Jews and people “of
German or related blood.” A subsequent supplement
363.24 -> to the law forbade Black people in Germany
to marry “people of German or related blood.”
368.58 -> The goal was to prevent Black people from
marrying and having children with Germans.
372.96 -> The Nuremberg Race Laws made it very difficult for
Black people in Germany to marry, start families,
379.02 -> or build a future. They particularly affected
those of reproductive and marrying age.
384.78 -> While it was legal for Black
people to marry each other,
387.18 -> those couples were rare because of
the small size of the Black community.
391.74 -> Despite the Nuremberg Laws, some Black people
and so called German “Aryans” still became
397.44 -> romantically involved with one another. These
relationships were dangerous for both partners,
402.72 -> especially if they chose to try
to legally marry. In Nazi Germany,
407.1 -> everyone was required to apply for permission
to marry. When interracial couples applied,
412.14 -> their applications were consistently denied
for racial reasons. These applications brought
417.66 -> their interracial relationships to the
attention of government authorities.
420.96 -> This often had dire consequences
for the couple. In multiple cases,
425.7 -> marriage applications resulted in harassment,
sterilization and the breaking up of partnerships.
431.1 -> Legal couples whose marriages pre-dated the
Nuremberg Laws were harassed by the Nazi
436.68 -> regime. The regime pressured white German women to
divorce their Black husbands. Interracial couples
442.86 -> and their children were often humiliated and even
assaulted when they appeared together in public.
447.78 -> Like their parents, many Black children in
Germany experienced the Nazi era as a time of
453.78 -> increased loneliness, isolation, and exclusion.
Some Black children felt German and wanted to
459.9 -> be a part of the excitement. But Nazi racial
ideology had no place for Black-German children.
465.78 -> For Black children in Nazi Germany, schools
became sites of humiliation. Black children
471.06 -> were often degraded in racial science classes and
ridiculed by teachers who supported the Nazis.
476.52 -> Just as the Nazification of the education system
greatly restricted the rights of Jewish children
481.74 -> to attend public schools, it also impacted
Black children over the course of the 1930s.
487.68 -> Some Black students were expelled and
unable to complete their education.
491.7 -> Few private schools would accept Black
students and finding apprenticeships,
496.14 -> which in Germany was crucial to find
employment, became increasingly difficult.
500.16 -> Such was a case of Gert Schramm.
After completing elementary school,
505.26 -> he worked as a helper in a car repair
shop. According to the Nuremberg Laws,
510.42 -> he was denied the right to any apprenticeship
as a “Mischling of the first grade”. Mischling
515.88 -> was a pejorative legal term used in Nazi
Germany to denote persons of mixed "Aryan"
520.44 -> and non-Aryan ancestry as codified
in the Nuremberg racial laws of 1935.
525.84 -> Most of the Black people living under the
Nazi Regime were effectively trapped there.
530.28 -> While some tried to leave, for the vast majority
this was not possible as they could not receive
535.92 -> visas to other countries or legally immigrate
elsewhere because of citizenship issues.
541.14 -> Eventually, Black people in Germany had little
choice but to adapt to life under the Nazis.
546.36 -> The second world war began on the 1st of
September, 1939 with the invasion of Poland.
552.54 -> During World War II, Nazi policies against Black
people became more extreme. This occurred in the
559.32 -> context of the broader radicalization of Nazi
policies against supposed racial and political
564.54 -> enemies. Because of laws and policies that
sharpened discrimination and racism in Germany,
569.64 -> many Black people ended up imprisoned
in workhouses, prisons, hospitals,
574.14 -> psychiatric facilities, and concentration
camps. In 1941, Jack Brankson, Gert’s father,
581.04 -> was arrested during one of his visits to
Germany on the basis of the Nazi racial laws
585.72 -> and deported to the Auschwitz concentration
camp. There is no trace of him after that.
591.6 -> However, Gert Schramm was no exception either.
He was arrested in May 1944. Officially, he was
599.46 -> taken into "protective custody" by the Gestapo
under the Law for the Protection of German Blood
603.36 -> and Honor as his father was an Afro-American
man. For weeks, he was moved from one Gestapo
609.18 -> prison to another, denied food and water, beaten
up, hit in the face and knocked around until on
615.6 -> the 20th of July 1944 when he was finally deported
to Buchenwald concentration camp which was one of
621.72 -> the largest concentration camps established within
German borders. He was 15 years old when the gate
628.14 -> with the inscription „Jedem das Seine“ meaning
“ to each what he deserves” closed behind him.
634.38 -> From that moment on Gert was not called by
his name anymore. He became only a number:
640.2 -> 49489 which was tattooed onto his left arm. His
645 -> sentence was an unspecified time,
to be no less than fifteen years.
648.84 -> Prisoners lived in the Buchenwald main
camp which was surrounded by an electrified
653.34 -> barbed-wire fence, watchtowers, and a chain of
sentries outfitted with automatic machine guns.
659.22 -> At the entrance to the main camp, there was a
notorious punishment block, known as the Bunker,
664.62 -> where prisoners who violated the camp regulations
were punished and often tortured to death.
669.6 -> In addition to the punishment block, the main
camp included 33 wooden barracks, disinfection
675.48 -> buildings, a brothel, and a crematorium.
Most of the early inmates at Buchenwald were
680.82 -> political prisoners, people who had been arrested
for some form of political opposition to the Nazi
685.56 -> regime. In addition to the political prisoners
and Jews, Buchenwald prisoners also included
690.72 -> repeat offenders, Jehovah's Witnesses, Sinti
and Roma people and German military deserters.
696.3 -> In Buchenwald, Gert had to do heavy
forced labor. During this time,
701.16 -> he was buried in a satellite commando
during an air raid by an Allied bomber.
705.6 -> He later recalled: I suffered a severe head wound
in the attack. Despite this, the parlor service
712.02 -> didn't want to send me to the infirmary at first
because they were afraid I might not come back.
717.06 -> An injured prisoner could be quickly
classified as a 'useless eater' in the
720.9 -> SS manner and simply hosed down. But the
wound became infected and I developed a
726.24 -> fever. With a heavy heart, my blockmates
finally sent me to the outpatient clinic.
730.92 -> Hours later, it was finally my turn and the
frightening pleasure of being treated personally
736.2 -> by the head of the infirmary. He pushed me
into the operating room, where a man was
741.12 -> having his leg amputated without anesthesia.
Then he took one quick look at my head and,
747.36 -> without warning, just ripped open the wound with
a hook. I almost fainted from the intense pain.
753.24 -> He grabbed some kind of pliers and tried
to pull out a splinter of metal stuck in
757.68 -> my skull. When that didn't work, he used a hammer
and chisel to help. With every hit I thought my
764.52 -> head would fly apart. After that, for three
long weeks I was cared for by my comrades.”
770.88 -> 15-year-old Gert was then taken
to barrack 42 with the so called
775.26 -> "political" prisoners where he met
people who were friendly to him.
778.44 -> Most were communists who had been in Buchenwald
for a long time and therefore knew the camp well.
783.78 -> They told Gert which work details were a
little less bad, and how best to protect
788.88 -> himself from beatings at roll call.
The block senior, Otto Grosse, a Lower
793.8 -> Saxony communist, sat down with Gert and gave him
vital tips: don't look SS men in the face, hide in
800.76 -> the middle during roll call, just don't attract
attention. Those tips would later save his life.
806.52 -> In the camp, Gert was also forced to work
in a limestone quarry which supplied the
811.74 -> material for the construction of buildings,
roads and paths. Labour in the quarry was one
817.26 -> of the hardest occupations and the survival
rate of prisoners was very low. Every day,
822.06 -> up to ten men were carried out dead from
the quarry back to the camp by Schramm and
827.28 -> political prisoners he was put in with. Many died
of exhaustion or were shot „on the run“ by the SS.
833.82 -> After 3 weeks in a quarry, a Communist kapo
Willi Bleicher moved Gert to an easier job
840.06 -> in construction team and finally he
ended up in the carpentry workshop,
843.3 -> where the working conditions were more bearable.
845.28 -> Before the Buchenwald prisoners went to
work, they were counted during roll call.
850.26 -> If the numbers did not add up, roll call
was prolonged and often took long hours
854.88 -> which could be especially tormenting for the
prisoners, particularly in severe weather.
859.02 -> Schramm later recalled how in the snow during cold
winter days they were ordered to stand outside,
864.48 -> with no food and water, from 5 to 11 AM.
Schramm once saw a prisoner, a young Jew
871.32 -> from Leipzig named Wolfgang Kohn,
get stomped to death by an SS guard,
875.88 -> simply because he had moved during roll call.
During roll calls, the unhealthy or those
882.12 -> who stood out, risked being sent to an
extermination camp or killed on the spot.
886.62 -> As the only Black prisoner, he already
stood out and after weeks in the stone
891.6 -> quarry, he was in a weakened state. The
previously-mentioned block senior, Otto Grosse,
897.12 -> organized other inmates to surround him during
the daily roll call, thus protecting him.
902.16 -> The Buchenwald camp was liberated in
April 1945. On the 8th of April 1945
908.52 -> Buchenwald camp prisoners, using a secret
short-wave transmitter and small generator,
913.68 -> send the Morse code message: “ To the Allies. To
the army of General Patton. This is the Buchenwald
920.46 -> concentration camp. SOS. We request help. They
want to evacuate us. The SS want to destroy us.”
929.4 -> 3 minutes after the transmission, the desperate
prisoners receive the message “Hold out. Rushing
935.88 -> to your aid. Staff of Third Army.”
3 days later, on the 11th of April,
940.98 -> the US 6th Armored Division liberated
Buchenwald and found more than
945.96 -> 21,000 survivors who were weak and emaciated.
They survived because when Gestapo headquarters
951.96 -> at Weimar telephoned the camp administration to
announce that it was sending explosives to blow
957.06 -> up any evidence of the camp, including its
inmates, the Gestapo did not know that the
961.02 -> administrators had already fled and a prisoner
answered the phone informing headquarters that
966.24 -> explosives would not be needed, as the camp
had already been blown up, which was not true.
970.92 -> After General Patton toured the camp, he ordered
the mayor of the nearby city of Weimar to bring
977.04 -> 1,000 citizens to Buchenwald to be shown the
crematorium and other evidence of Nazi atrocities.
982.56 -> The Americans wanted to ensure that the German
people would take responsibility for Nazi crimes,
988.38 -> instead of dismissing them as atrocity propaganda.
991.98 -> Many of them were crying and some of them
even fainted after seeing the dead bodies,
996.72 -> starved survivors behind barbed wire
fences as well as a table display of
1001.28 -> paintings on human skins, lampshades made
of human skin, various parts of the human
1006.02 -> body preserved in alcohol and two heads which
were shrunk to one-fifth of their normal size.
1011 -> When thousand citizens from Weimar visited
the Buchenwald, Gert Schramm was there.
1017 -> They claimed: „We did not know what was
going on!“ However, Gert never believed them.
1022.34 -> Years after the end of the
war he remembered thinking,
1025.94 -> "Now have a look what happened
here with your acquiescence."
1029.84 -> Between July 1937 and April 1945, the SS
imprisoned some 250,000 persons from all countries
1038.48 -> of Europe in Buchenwald. Exact mortality figures
for the Buchenwald site can only be estimated,
1044.06 -> as camp authorities never registered a significant
number of the prisoners. The SS murdered at least
1051.44 -> 56,000 male prisoners in the Buchenwald
camp system. Some 11,000 of them were Jews.
1056.6 -> In June 1945 Gert Schramm returned
home, on foot, into a new life.
1062.84 -> He then worked at the Wismut uranium
mine in the Soviet occupation zone.
1067.46 -> From 1956 to 1964, he worked in Essen in a coal
mine, but then chose to move to East Germany.
1073.94 -> With the help of another former Buchenwald
prisoner, Hermann Axen, who had been one of a
1078.86 -> group of Communist prisoners who protected
him during his imprisonment, he started
1082.94 -> his own business in 1985,
"Schramms Reisen," a taxi company.
1087.02 -> As a member of the prisoners advisory board
of the Buchenwald Memorial Foundation,
1091.58 -> Schramm for years visited schools to speak of
the horrors of the Buchenwald camp. During one
1097.4 -> such visit in 2012 he said “I wish our youth
will never give in to these racist Nazi thugs
1104.24 -> and they won’t heed their views filled
with hatred and racial discrimination”.
1108.44 -> Gert Schramm was 87 years old when he died
after a long illness on the 18 of April 2016.
1116.6 -> Pierrette Herzberger-Fofana, his friend
and a Member of the European Parliament,
1120.98 -> believes he never fully recovered
from his country’s rejection of him
1124.22 -> because of the color of his skin.
“He was an unhappy man,” she said.
1129.89 -> Gert‘s revenge was not only that he survived and
lectured for years about the hardship he endured
1134.72 -> during the Nazi regime, but that his legacy
and bravery will go on through his family as
1140.18 -> after the war he got married and had four grown
children, was a grandfather and great-grandfather.
1145.46 -> He left to the generations to come a
message of peace and reconciliation.
1151.94 -> There were many tears shed for Gert Schramm.
1160.82 -> thanks for watching the World History
Channel be sure to like And subscribe
1164.6 -> and click the Bell notification
icon so you don't miss our next
1167.84 -> episodes we thank you and we'll
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1176.18 -> foreign
Source: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZuOtYYQsWFY