Holocaust survivor Inge Deutschkron has died. As a vigilant admonisher against oblivion, she told young people her life story for many decades. Her dramatic autobiography “I wore the yellow star”, published in 1978, made her famous.
Some Berlin food stamps were secretly slipped to her. Or they inconspicuously slipped a piece of bread or an apple into the young woman’s coat pocket. Some brave people blinked at their fellow citizen branded with the Star of David on the street as a sign of solidarity. “But the majority looked at us with expressionless eyes,” Holocaust survivor and author Inge Deutschkron once said. Her life on the run began the day she took off the yellow Star of David. Deutschkron and her mother survived the Nazi reign of terror in hiding.
Deutschkron was born on August 23, 1922 in Finsterwalde, Brandenburg. Deutschkron later worked in Germany and Israel. In 2013 she gave a moving speech in the Bundestag to commemorate the victims of National Socialism. Regardless of her age, Deutschkron visited countless schools as a contemporary witness and facilitated encounters between Holocaust survivors and Berlin schoolchildren. She also founded the association “Blindes Trust” and called for courage as part of her foundation. She was 99 years old.