Kurt Gerron: personal papers re Theresienstadt film

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Kurt Gerron was born of Jewish parentage in Berlin in 1897. Seriously wounded during the First World War he later began training as a doctor. He changed career during the 1920s when he became a successful actor and director in Germany, acting in and directing many films including his most famous role as the conjurer in Josef von Sternberg's Der Blaue Engel. He fled to Paris in 1933, later settled in Amsterdam but was deported to the transit camp Westerbork in 1943. In February 1944 he was sent to Theresienstadt. He was deported to Auschwitz in October 1944 where he was killed.

In Theresienstadt the SS forced Gerron to direct a documentary film about the Theresienstadt Ghetto. An earlier film, made in Autumn 1942, designed to encourage Jews to 're-settle' in Theresienstadt, was scrapped because it inadvertently portrayed conditions in a negative light.

The new film of 1944 was meant to conceal the Nazi's policy of extermination by presenting good living conditions in Theresienstadt. An additional motivation, it is thought, was to demonstrate to Jewish relief organisations that the Nazis still had many thousands of Jews who could act as bargaining chips in future negotiations. It was first shown in Prague in March 1945.

Initially produced by cameramen from the Prague based Czech newsreel company, 'Aktualita', Kurt Gerron soon took over direction and was accompanied by the Dutch illustrator Joe Spier, and the Prague theatre designer František Zelenka. The extras who didn't participate voluntarily were compelled to take part through bribery.

All of the material is in German.

Sources:

Adler, H.G.: Theresienstadt 1941-1945. Das Antlitz einer Zwangsgemeinschaft, 2nd edition, p. 182-184.
Adler, H.G. Die Verheimlichte Wahrheit: Theresienstädter Dokumente, Tübingen, 1958
http://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kurt_Gerron
http://www.dhm.de/lemo/html/wk2/holocaust/theresienstadt/index.html
http://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Theresienstadt_(Film)

https://web.archive.org/web/20130427022754/http://www.cine-holocaust.de/mat/fbw000812dmat.html

According to H. G. Adler in Die Verheimlichte Wahrheit: Theresienstädter Dokumente, Tübingen, 1958, Kurt Gerron entrusted his papers to an acquaintance shortly prior to his deportation to Auschwitz in October 1944. Staff at NIOD, The Netherlands, state that Gerron gave his film papers to Dr Fritz Silten, a fellow prisoner at Theresienstadt, for safe-keeping when he was sent on to Auschwitz at the end of October 1944. Silten (1904-1980) was a German who, like Gerron, had fled to Holland before the war and, like Gerron, had been deported from there through Westerbork camp to Theresienstadt. Gerron of course perished at Auschwitz but the Siltens survived the war and returned to Amsterdam. Silten gave the papers to H.G. Adler when the latter was collecting information and sources for his magnum opus on the ghetto. It should also be noted that a selection of these papers was published in the above book, pp 324-350.