Born Kurt Gerson into a well-off merchant family in Berlin, he initially studied medicine but was called up for military service in World War I. Seriously wounded he qualified as a military doctor of the German Army. After the war Gerron turned to a stage career and became a theatre actor under director Max Reinhardt in 1920.
He appeared in secondary roles in several silent films and from 1926 also directed film shots. He had his breakthrough starring in such films as The Blue Angel (Der Blaue Engel) opposite Marlene Dietrich, while on stage he originated the role of "Tiger" Brown in the premiere production of The Threepenny Opera (Die Dreigroschenoper) at the Berlin Theater am Schiffbauerdamm in 1928, also singing Mack the Knife.
After the Machtergreifung in 1933 Gerron left Nazi Germany with his wife and parents, traveling first to Paris and later to Amsterdam. There, he kept on working as an actor at the Stadsschouwburg and director in several movies. He was offered employments in Hollywood by the agency of Peter Lorre and Josef von Sternberg, but refused several times, one time because his potential employer didn't offer first class tickets, and stayed behind in Europe. After the Wehrmacht had occupied the Netherlands, he was interned in the transit camp at Westerbork before being sent to the Theresienstadt concentration camp. There he ran a cabaret called Karussell to entertain the inmates.
In 1944, Gerron was either persuaded or coerced by the Nazis to make a propaganda film showing how humane the conditions were at Theresienstadt. After shooting finished, Gerron and the members of Jazz pianist Martin Roman's Ghetto Swingers were deported on the camp's final transport to Auschwitz. Gerron was killed immediately upon arrival, Roman and guitarist Coco Schumann survived. Reichsführer SS Heinrich Himmler ordered the gas chambers to be closed forever the next day. Gerron's film, supposed to have been titled either Theresienstadt. Ein Dokumentarfilm aus dem jüdischen Siedlungsgebiet (Terezin: A Documentary Film of the Jewish Resettlement) also known as Der Führer schenkt den Juden eine Stadt (The Führer Gives the Jews a City), was supposedly never completed and exists today only in fragmentary form.
source: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kurt_Gerron
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