His family was murdered by the Nazis, and he himself was able to flee to the USA: the literary scholar Guy Stern. Now the Holocaust survivor has died at the age of 101. Throughout his life he campaigned for democracy and understanding.
The German-American literary scholar and Holocaust survivor Guy Stern is dead. This was announced by the Berlin-based Aufbau Verlag – where the Hildesheim native’s autobiography was published. Stern was 101 years old.
Stern managed to escape to the USA in 1937 – his parents and younger siblings were murdered by the German National Socialists. In the United States, Stern first joined a special unit of the US Army, the “Ritchie Boys”. This was a military intelligence unit made up primarily of emigrants whose task was to obtain information from German prisoners of war.
Tireless commitment to democracy
After the war, Stern studied Romance and German studies and then taught at numerous American and German universities. Since his retirement in 2002, he has been director of the Institute for Altruism Research at the Holocaust Museum in Detroit.
Throughout his life, Stern campaigned for democracy and understanding and received many awards for this – including the Grand Cross of Merit of the Federal Republic. Even in his old age, Stern gave numerous lectures, mostly to young people. In an interview with the dpa news agency, Stern warned in 2022 against carelessly jeopardizing the achievements of democracy: “A democracy is a delicate plant that can die at any time if it is not cared for sufficiently,” said Stern. “We can currently clearly observe what is happening around the world in countries in which – often democratically elected – ‘strong men’ are increasingly expanding their radius of power and increasingly restricting the freedoms of their people.”
“Extremely more amiable Person”
The mayor of the city of Hildesheim, Ingo Meyer, praised the honorary citizen Stern as a “remarkable personality and an extremely kind person.” He captivated his interlocutors “with extensive knowledge and approachability and surprised and touched them with his fine, witty humor.” Lower Saxony’s state parliament president Hanna Naber underlined Stern’s “tireless commitment to education, understanding and against anti-Semitism.” With Stern’s death, an impressive and diverse life came to an end.