Gert Schramm was born on 28 November 1928 in Erfurt, Thuringia, into a Germany that would later criminalize his very existence. He was the son of Marianne Schramm, a German woman, and Jack Brankson, an African American engineer working in Thuringia for a United States steel company. Long before he reached adulthood, Nazi racial ideology turned his birth into a legal offense.
The persecution that shaped Schramm’s life was rooted in the Nuremberg Laws of 1935, which sought to preserve what the Nazi regime called the purity of German blood. These laws divided people into racial categories based on ancestry rather than citizenship. Anyone with non European ancestry was excluded from the so called Aryan community, regardless of birthplace or cultural identity.
Within this system was the doctrine of Rassenschande, translated as racial defilement. This law criminalized marriages, relationships, and even intimacy between Germans classified as Aryan and those labeled racially inferior. Interracial families were treated not as families, but as proof of contamination.
Children born from such unions were considered living violations of racial law. Gert Schramm was classified as a Mischling (half breed). This status denied him basic rights, including access to vocational training, and marked him for state surveillance. Under Nazi ideology, his existence challenged the fantasy of a racially pure nation. The goal of these laws was not morality but elimination, to prevent people like Schramm from having a future in Germany at all.
Early Years Under Racial Persecution
Schramm grew up in Witterda and Bad Langensalza. After completing the Volksschule, he found work as a helper in a car repair shop, since further training was legally barred to him. His mixed heritage made him living evidence of what the Nazis defined as illegal interracial relations, offenses that could carry the death penalty.
His father, Jack Brankson, returned to Thuringia several times after his contract ended. In 1941, during one of these visits, Brankson was arrested for violating Nazi racial laws and deported to Auschwitz concentration camp. There is no further record of him, and he is presumed to have died there.
In May 1944, at just 15 years old, Gert Schramm was arrested by the Gestapo under the racial defilement laws. He was placed in so called protective custody and moved through several Gestapo prisons. He was interrogated repeatedly, beaten, and deliberately denied food and water.
On 20 July 1944, he was deported to Buchenwald concentration camp, where the number 49489 was tattooed onto his left arm. His sentence was undefined, except that it would last no less than fifteen years, a term that offered little chance of survival for a teenage boy.
At Buchenwald, Schramm was one of six Black prisoners and the youngest among them. He was placed with political prisoners, a decision he later credited with saving his life. He was assigned to forced labor in a stone quarry, one of the deadliest work details in the camp. Each day, between ten and fifteen prisoners were carried out dead.
As the only Black prisoner in his unit, Schramm stood out immediately. After weeks of exhausting labor, his weakened condition put him at risk of selection for execution or transfer to extermination camps. Two Communist prisoners intervened. Willi Bleicher, a kapo, arranged for Schramm to be moved to lighter work. Another prisoner, Otto Grosse, organized inmates to surround him during daily roll call so he would not draw attention. During these roll calls, even a slight movement could mean death. Schramm once witnessed a young Jewish prisoner from Leipzig, Wolfgang Kohn, beaten and stomped to death by an SS guard simply for moving during counting.
These acts of solidarity allowed Schramm to survive a system designed to kill him.
As the war drew to a close, Schramm was among the prisoners left behind in Buchenwald rather than forced onto death marches, which greatly increased his chances of survival. After liberation, he witnessed local civilians being compelled to confront the reality of the camp. About one thousand residents of Weimar were forced to walk through Buchenwald and see what had been done there.
Following the war, Gert Schramm returned to live with his mother and began rebuilding his life. He worked in mining and later in transportation, eventually becoming a certified mechanic and rising to department head. In 1985, he founded his own taxi company, Schramms Reisen, which is now run by his son.
Schramm remained active in his community and dedicated much of his later life to education and remembrance. He spoke in schools about his experiences in Buchenwald, participated in local organizations, and served on the advisory board of the Buchenwald Memorial Foundation. He passed away on 18 April 2016 at the age of 87, leaving behind a family and a lasting legacy.
Sources:
https://www.ontheshoulders1.com/the-giants/gert-schramm
https://encyclopedia.ushmm.org/content/en/article/afro-germans-during-the-holocaust?utm_medium=socialmedia&utm_source=twitter&utm_campaign=blackhistorymonth&utm_content=gertschramm20230206
