Victor Grossman dies at age 97

Victor Grossman in 2015 -- image via Junge Welt

Junge Welt, 17 December 2025. Translated by Helmut-Harry Loewen.

Berlin -- Victor Grossman has died. The journalist, author, and translator passed away on Wednesday in Berlin at the age of 97. junge Welt learned this from his family. Grossman was born Stephen Wechsler in New York City in 1928. As a teenager, he joined the youth organization of the Communist Party of the USA (CPUSA) in 1942 and became a party member while studying at Harvard.

As a US soldier stationed in Bavaria, he deserted in 1952 after receiving a summons to appear before the military court in Nuremberg. Because he had not disclosed his membership in the Communist Party, he faced a prison sentence. Near Linz, he swam across the Danube to reach the Soviet occupation zone of Austria. From there, he made his way to the newly founded German Democratic Republic (GDR), where, on the advice of a Soviet officer, he took the name Victor Grossman.

Grossman studied journalism in Leipzig between 1954 and 1958, then worked in Berlin as a lecturer and editor and established the Paul Robeson Archive at the Academy of Arts of the GDR (Akademie der Künste der Deutschen Demokratischen Republik). From 1968 onwards, he worked as a freelance author, translator, and lecturer. He recognized the decline of the GDR early on and, as he said in an interview with jW in 2023, was in “despair” about it. After 1990, he joined the Party of Democratic Socialism (PDS), continued to be active as a journalist, and participated actively in political life until old age.