Ernst Grube (* 1932) was born in Munich, the child of a Jewish mother and a non-Jewish father. At the age of five, he, his sister and his brother were separated from their parents and placed in a Jewish children’s home. From October 1941, like all children over the age of 6, Grube, his siblings and the other children at the home were obligated by law to wear the yellow star and were prohibited from participating in aspects of public life including attending school or the use of public transportation. Although the Gestapo pressured Grube’s father to divorce his wife, he refused. Unlike most other children in the Jewish children’s home, Ernst and his siblings escaped the fate of deportation and extermination due to their status as “Jewish half-breeds.” After the school closed due to these deportations, the Grube children were reunited with their mother and transported to the Theresienstadt ghetto, from which they were liberated by the Red Army on May 8 1945. After finishing his education, Grube made his living working as a vocational school teacher in Germany. In 1959, long after the war’s end, he was sentenced to a year in prison, which he served for having been a member of the German Communist Party in the 1950’s. Ironically, the presiding judge at Grube’s trial had served as a public prosecutor under the Nazis. Ernst Grube has headed several organizations, including the Association of Persecutees of the Nazi Regime. He received several awards for his commitment, including the Georg Elser Prize and the Order of Merit of the Federal Republic of Germany.
