Ich trug den gelben Stern

A document about disenfranchisement, persecution, deportation, and death, about illegality and loss of identity, and at the same time, quiet human willingness to help.

Many members of the older generation still remember how the Nazis abused their childhood, without being able to grasp it at the time. How did the sons and daughters of Jewish parents experience this period? Inge Deutschkron, who grew up in Berlin, had to learn what it meant to be a Jewish child. At first, this only meant not being able to play with peers, being excluded from swimming and sports classes, changing schools multiple times, and having to move to different neighborhoods. Gradually, the fear of arrests set in, and soon the family realized that this was systematic discrimination, culminating in total dehumanization and murder.

The outbreak of war prevented emigration. Starting in 1941, Jews were required to wear the yellow star, and the first deportations among the 66,000 Jews in Berlin began. The desperate fear of the seemingly inevitable fate became overwhelming. For Inge Deutschkron and her mother, a life in illegality began, under false identities, life-threatening for them as well as for their friends who offered them support in human solidarity.

After years of agonizing fear of discovery, they ultimately survived the bureaucratized sadism of the Nazi system: two out of 1,423 Jews in Berlin who escaped the deadly automatism.