Ernst Grube

Ernst Grube (born 13 December 1932) is a German teacher and Holocaust survivor. He never tires of presenting - "up to a hundred times a year" - the story of his childhood in Nazi Germany. In contrast, he speaks very little of what happened after his release from the Theresienstadt concentration camp and his return to Munich in May 1945: his involvement with the FDJ (loosely "Young Communists") and the Communist Party itself during the period when it had been banned in West Germany. His trades union activism, his campaigning against re-armament during the 1950s and in favour of reunification receive little coverage. Several times, his activism led him to violent police encounters and arrest. A leafleting campaign he undertook for the (illegal) Communist Party led to several months of solitary confinement and a conviction from a federal court.

Life Childhood as a "Half-Jew" under the Nazis Ernst Grube was born in Munich. His mother Clementine was Jewish. The three children were separated from their parents. Their father had been classified as a Communist and their mother as Jewish. Ernst, Werner and Ruth were taken to a former orphanage, now being used as a Jewish children's home, in the Schwabing quarter. Identified by the "Jew star", Grube was open to taunts in the street of "Hau ab, Saujud'!" (loosely "Get away, pig Jew"). It was, as he later recalled, a brutally sudden end to his boyhood. During the first part of 1942, the home was closed and those who had been left behind were taken to a "cramped damp barrack-camp" in Munich's Milbertshofen quarter. A memory from this time that endures particularly powerfully involved an allied air-raid over Munich. Grube joined the rush to the large air-raid shelter opposite the secondary school and the main railway station, but someone spotted his "Jew star" and he was prevented from entering. His schooling had been interrupted during Nazi rule, but now he was able to complete the school curricula and pass his Abitur (school final exams) which opened the way to university-level education. He went on to train as a school teacher, the profession by which he subsequently supported himself. There are reports that he was "repeatedly beaten up by the police". It was during a trades union street protest held in one of Munich's main shopping streets, the Kaufingerstraße, against extending shop opening hours, that in 1953 Ernst Grube was arrested by the police. For anyone familiar with the twelve Nazi years Grube's situation immediately called to mind the infamous Law for the Restoration of the Professional Civil Service ("Gesetz zur Wiederherstellung des Berufsbeamtentums"), passed by the government in April 1933, which had removed Jews and Communists from their jobs across a wide range of public sector departments (including education). It was only when Ernst Grube turned up at the city hall and placed the yellow "Jew star" with which he had been issued in 1941 on the desk of the responsible official that he authorities changed their collective mind. The decision to dismiss him was revoked without a court hearing, which one commentator described later as "a nationwide one-timer" ("ein bundesweit einmaliger Fall").

Public witness in a reunified Germany At some point around 1990 Ernst Grube began to make testifying to his experiences as a survivor of National Socialist racism the focus of his life's work. Since then he has conducted countless school classes on visits round the Dachau concentration camp and engaged in structured discussions at schools and colleges designed to raise awareness of the dangers around a resurgence of Fascism. Now in his 80s, he remains politically engaged, primarily in opposition to Neonazis and those he identifies as re-writers of history.

Memoires "Den Stern, den tragt Ihr nicht". Kindheitserinnerungen an die Judenverfolgung in München, in: Dachauer Hefte, 9 (1993), S. 3-13.

Literature Angelika Baumann, Jüdisches Leben in München. Geschichtswettbewerb 1993/94, München 1995. Andreas Heusler/Andrea Sinn (Hrsg.), Die Erfahrung des Exils: Vertreibung, Emigration und Neuanfang. Ein Münchner Lesebuch, Berlin/Boston 2015. Klaus Holz, Die Verneinung des Judentums: Antisemitismus als religiöse und säkulare Waffe, Münster 2009. Christian Kuchler (Hrsg.), NS-Propaganda im 21. Jahrhundert: zwischen Verbot und öffentlicher Auseinandersetzung, Köln/Weimar/Wien 2014. Konrad Löw, Deutsche Schuld 1933-1945? Die ignorierten Antworten der Zeitzeugen, München 2011. Julius Hans Schoeps, Leben im Land der Täter, Berlin 2001. Studienkreis zur Erforschung und Vermittlung der Geschichte des Widerstandes 1933-1945 (Hrsg.), Widerstand gegen den Nationalsozialismus. Perspektiven der Vermittlung. Tagung vom 17.-18.03.2007 in Frankfurt am Main, Wiesbaden 2007.