Rolf Kralovitz believed that his task was to remember – to record for all time his first experience of exclusion, when daily deliveries of bread to the Jews were stopped; the violence he suffered at the hands of fellow pupils; the harrowing experience of having to wear the yellow badge; life in Jewish ghetto houses; forced labour as a gravedigger; the deportation and murder of his parents and sister; his deportation to Buchenwald and the terrible ordeal he endured there. “The story has to be told,” he said, imagining his mother’s thoughts when she was sent to the gas chamber: “Who will ever know, who will ever tell our story, no-one will ever know what they did to us.” His mother and sister died at Ravensbrück concentration camp, his father was murdered in Auschwitz.

After returning from Buchenwald, Rolf Kralovitz was completely alone; almost all his relations had been murdered during the Holocaust. Kralovitz lived in the USA until 1953, when he and his wife Brigitte Kralowitz-Meckauer returned to Germany. After going blind in the mid-1970s, the actor and WDR production manager had to give up his profession. From then on, remembering the Holocaust and the history of his family became his life's work.

Rolf Kralovitz, who was born near Leipzig, described his experiences in publications such as Der gelbe Stern in Leipzig (The Yellow Star in Leipzig) and ZehnNullNeunzig in Buchenwald (TenZeroNinety in Buchenwald), in audio and video interviews and in talks with schoolchildren. He and his wife dedicated their lives to this task, without hate but working indefatigably and constantly endeavouring to bring the truth to light. He generously made countless copies of his memoirs available to educational and memorial institutions. His writings are also used for educational purposes in the German National Library’s exile collections and the Anne Frank Shoah Library. We were closely associated with Rolf Kralovitz and his wife for many years. During our regular telephone conversations, Rolf Kralovitz answered questions about his story in his humorous yet invariably non-committal way; he always expressed an interest in our work, events, exhibitions and plans for the future.

Rolf Kralovitz died in Cologne on 21 June 2015, a few days after his 90th birthday.

At the end of last year, he donated further documents to the German Exile Archive at the German National Library to add to the existing collections focusing on Walter Meckauer, Brigitte Kralovitz-Meckauer and himself. His letters from his sister and mother were left to the Buchenwald Memorial Foundation together with other documents.

We will gladly remember Rolf Kralovitz and will greatly miss our conversations.