Gert Schramm, arrested and placed in a concentration camp at age 15

Gert Schramm (28 November 1928 in Erfurt, Thüringia – 18 April 2016 in Eberswalde) was a survivor of the German Buchenwald concentration camp, where he was the youngest of six black prisoners. He was the son of a German woman and an African American father and was arrested in violation of Nazi racial purity laws.

In May 1944, at the age of 15, Schramm was arrested by the Gestapo under the Rassenschande laws and held in "protective custody" in several Gestapo prisons. He was interrogated several times, denied food and drink and was hit in the face. On 20 July 1944 he was deported to Buchenwald concentration camp, where the number 49489 was tattooed onto his left arm. His sentence was an unspecified time, to be not less than fifteen years.

Schramm was put in with the political prisoners, a decision he credits with saving his life. Forced to work in a stone quarry where the survival rate of prisoners was very low. Every day, ten to fifteen men were carried out, dead. He was moved to an easier job by the Communist kapo Willi Bleicher and another Communist prisoner, Otto Grosse, organized others to surround him during the daily roll call, when the prisoners were counted. Unhealthy ones and those who stood out risked being sent to an extermination camp or killed on the spot. Schramm once saw a prisoner, a young Jew from Leipzig named Wolfgang Kohn, get stomped to death by an SS guard, simply because he had moved during roll call. As the only Black prisoner, he already stood out and after weeks in the stone quarry, he was in a weakened state. By surrounding him and moving him to an easier job, he was protected.

Full Article at: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gert_Schramm