Kurt Gerron (May 11, 1897 - November 15, 1944) was a German Jewish actor and film director.
Born Kurt Gerson to Jewish parents in Berlin, Germany, Gerron initially studied medicine but became a stage actor in 1920. He appeared in such films as The Blue Angel opposite Marlene Dietrich, and on stage originated the role of Brown (the chief of police in London) in the premiere production of Die Dreigroschenoper in Berlin in 1928.
Gerron was offered a trip to Hollywood but refused and stayed behind in Europe. He later left Germany, traveling first to France and later to the Netherlands. After the German army occupied the Netherlands, he was interned in the transit camp at Westerbork before being sent to Theresienstadt concentration camp. There he ran a cabaret called The Karussell to entertain the inmates.
In 1944, Gerron was either persuaded or coerced blank">Film review of "The Führer Gives a City to the Jews at The Bootleg Files by the _National Socialists to make a propaganda film showing how humane the conditions were at Theresienstadt. After shooting finished, Gerron was deported on the camp's final transport to Auschwitz. He was liquidated immediately upon arrival. Reichsfuhrer SS Heinrich Himmler did not order the gas chambers shut down until the next day. Gerron's film, supposed to have been titled either Theresienstadt. Ein Dokumentarfilm aus dem jüdischen Siedlungsgebiet (Terezin: A Documentary Film of the Jewish Resettlement) or Der Führer schenkt den Juden eine Stadt (The Fuhrer Gives the Jews a City), was supposedly never completed and exists today only in fragmentary form.
Gerron is the subject of two documentary films, Prisoner in Paradise and Kurt Gerrons Karussell. The narrator in Kurt Gerrons Karussell, which stars Ute Lemper, is Roy Kift who has also written a play on Gerron's time in Theresienstadt entitled Camp Comedy (for more http://www.roy-kift.com). The play is published in The Theatre of the Holocaust edited by Professor Robert Skloot and published by the University of Wisconsin Press.
Gerron fled to France (because he was jewish), then settled in Amsterdam in 1933. He was arrested by the SS in 1943 and was sent to Theresienstadt in 1944 to direct a staged documentary intended to persuade world public opinion that Jews were well treated in concentration camps. He made a film called "The Fuhrer Donates a City to the Jews" or in German "Der Fuhrer schenkt den Juden eine Stadt". After he completed the film he was sent to Auschwitz where he was murdered.
Kurt Gerron born in 1897 to Jewish parents in germany, studied at first medicine, before he decided to become a stage actor in 1920, he came to the movies in 1926. On stage he starred in the original version of Bert Brecht's and Kurt Weill's "Dreigroschen Oper" as Tiger Brown, introducing the "Haifisch" song. In 1930 he became director at a Berlin theater, where he directed "Der Rote Faden" with Gustav Gruendgens, Grete Weiser and Marlene Dietrich, he also was in the very successful movies "Die Drei von der Tankstelle" and "Der Blaue Engel". The UFA also, wanted him as director, and gave him the opportunity direct a few shorts, before directing his first of five features for this company. In 1933 he was forced by the Nazis to leave the UFA while working on the movie "Kind, ich freu mich auf dein Kommen (1933)" He left Germany, and after a few stops in in diffrent European countries, he got a job in Holland as director, where he also had success. But after the German invasion and occupation of the Neatherlands in 1940, he appeared in the infamous propaganda movie "Der Ewige Jude" (1940). In 1943 he was sent to a concentration camp in Holland, where he organized and operated a small stage, but in February 1944 he was sent to the concentration camp Theresienstadt, where he was forced to direct the propaganda-pseudo-documentary feature "Der Fueher schenkt den Juden eine Stadt (1944)" with the hope, he could help some of the prisoners there to stay in Theresienstadt, to avoid beeing deportaed further East. In his case it was no good, he and his wife were deported to Auschwitz, where they were murdered in the gas chambers on 28 October 1944.
