Gert Schramm: Black Survivor of Nazi Germany's Buchenwald Concentration Camp

Gert Schramm was one of the few Black Germans to survive the Nazi concentration camp system and later bear witness to a largely forgotten chapter of Holocaust history. Born in 1928 in Erfurt during the Weimar Republic, Schramm was the son of a white German mother and a Black American engineer. From an early age, he experienced racism that intensified dramatically after Adolf Hitler and the Nazi Party seized power in 1933. Under Nazi racial ideology, Black Germans were labeled “non-Aryan” and excluded from German society. Although the regime did not pursue their total extermination, many were sterilized, imprisoned, or murdered. Gert Schramm was denied education and employment as a so-called Mischling and lived under constant surveillance and discrimination. In May 1944, at just 15 years old, Schramm was arrested by the Gestapo and deported to Buchenwald concentration camp. There, he was stripped of his name and reduced to a prisoner number. He endured brutal forced labor, starvation, beatings, and life-threatening injuries, including a severe head wound suffered during an Allied air raid. Survival depended not only on strength but also on solidarity, as fellow prisoners helped protect him during roll calls and assignments. Buchenwald was liberated by U.S. forces in April 1945, revealing tens of thousands of survivors and overwhelming evidence of Nazi crimes. Schramm lived to tell his story and later dedicated much of his life to Holocaust education, speaking in schools and memorial sites about racism, persecution, and the dangers of extremist ideology. Gert Schramm died in 2016 at the age of 87. His testimony remains a powerful reminder that Nazi racial persecution extended beyond Jews alone and that remembering these stories is essential in confronting racism, antisemitism, and historical denial today.This episode is part of the series Survivors of the Holocaust and Nazi Persecution.Watch the full documentary and explore hundreds of historical films at:WorldHistory.tv