Inge Deutschkron was born to Jewish parents in Finsterwalde (Lower Lusatia) in 1922. Her father Dr. Martin Deutschkron worked there as a secondary- school teacher until 1927, after which the family moved to Berlin-Prenzlauer Berg. As a social democrat and a Jew, Martin Deutschkron was dismissed from teaching in 1933. He fled to the UK in 1939. After the war began, his wife Ella and daughter Inge could no longer follow him there. Inge was able to complete a one-year program at a Jewish training institution for kindergarten teachers.
Following a short period as a forced laborer in a factory owned by I.G. Farbenindustrie AG, Inge Deutschkron was hired by the brush manufacturer Otto Weidt. Since it produced brooms and brushes for the Wehrmacht, Weidt’s company was classed as “important for the war.” He tried to protect his mainly blind Jewish workers.
At the end of 1942, the laundry owner Emma Gumz appealed to Ella Deutschkron not to let herself be deported, but to hide with her daughter in her and her husband’s apartment. Over the following two years, Ella and Inge Deutschkron lived in a series of hiding places with various helpers; the last of them was a goat shed in Potsdam. Their time living illegally ended on April 23, 1945 with the arrival of Soviet troops.
After 1945 Inge Deutschkron spent several years in the UK; from 1955 she worked as a journalist in Bonn. She left Germany in 1972, living in Tel Aviv until 2002. Following the success of the stage play Ab heute heißt Du Sara, based on her autobiography, and many intensive talks as a survivor, she decided to return to Berlin. Inge Deutschkron was politically active in the city against antisemitism and right-wing extremism, and played a key role in founding the Museum Otto Weidt’s Workshop for the Blind and the Silent Heroes Memorial Center. Among many other honors, she was made an Honorary Citizen of Berlin in 2018. Inge Deutschkron died in Berlin on March 9, 2022.
BONN 1962
The later social democratic president of the Bundestag Annemarie Renger with Inge Deutschkron, Bonn, 1962.
FRANKFURT 1963
Axel Eggebrecht and Inge Deutschkron in the press room at Haus Gallus during the Auschwitz trial, Frankfurt am Main, 1963.
BONN 1963
Inge Deutschkron (right) at Federal Chancellor Konrad Adenauer’s farewell reception for foreign press representatives in the West German chancellery, Bonn, September 30, 1963.
JERUSALEM 1974
Writer Heinrich Böll with Inge Deutschkron at the PEN International Congress, Jerusalem, December 16, 1974.
BERLIN 2002
Inge Deutschkron and Federal President Johannes Rau in the Museum Otto Weidt’s Workshop for the Blind, March 7, 2002.
2010
Inge Deutschkron with the director of Berlin’s GRIPS-Theater, Volker Ludwig, and the actors in the play Ab heute heißt Du Sara, April 2010.
2011
Lala Süsskind, Klaus Wowereit, Inge Deutschkron, and André Schmitz at the first memorial ceremony at Grunewald station’s former deportation platform 17, initiated by Inge Deutschkron, October 18, 2011.
2012
Johannes Tuchel and André Schmitz presenting Inge Deutschkron with the commemorative publication "Liebe Inge. Herzlich" in Berlin’s Red Town Hall on the occasion of her 90th birthday, August 27, 2012.
2013
Inge Deutschkron and Federal President Joachim Gauck after her speech during a ceremony in the German Bundestag in commemoration of the victims of National Socialism, Berlin, January 30, 2013.
