Kurt Gerron

Kurt Gerron (11 May 1897 – 28 October 1944) was a German Jewish actor and film director. He and his wife, Olga, were murdered in the Holocaust. Life Born Kurt Gerson into a well-off merchant family in Berlin, he studied medicine before being called up for military service in World War I. After being seriously wounded, he was qualified as a military doctor in the German Army, despite having been only in his second year at university. After the war Gerron turned to a stage career, becoming a theatre actor under director Max Reinhardt in 1920. He appeared in secondary roles in several silent films and began directing film shorts in 1926. Gerron's popular cinema breakthrough came with The Blue Angel (Der Blaue Engel, 1930) opposite Marlene Dietrich. Two years before, Gerron originated the role of "Tiger" Brown in the 1928 premiere production of The Threepenny Opera (Die Dreigroschenoper) at the Berlin Theater am Schiffbauerdamm, in which he also performed the first public performance of the song, "Mack the Knife". With the show's international success, Gerron's name and recorded voice became well known across Europe. Under the Nazis After the 1933 seizure of power by the Nazis (known today as the Machtergreifung), Gerron left Nazi Germany with his wife and parents, traveling first to Paris and later to Amsterdam. He continued work there as an actor at the Stadsschouwburg and directed several movies. Several times he was offered employment in Hollywood through the agency of Peter Lorre and Josef von Sternberg, but Gerron refused to leave Europe.