Hans Jensen (Hans Guenter Jeruchem), b. 1920, Unruhstadt, Germany. Immigrated to Australia 1947.

“In 1934 in the class when I was 15 years old, we were all introduced to a new subject which was “Racial Knowledge”, knowledge of the various races in the world. And as people know, Hitler was the one that wanted to promote the Germanic races; to tell everone that they were the superior race and nobody could match them and soforth. And this is what the teacher tried to introduce in that first lesson.

l) A 'scientific' head measurement, Germany, 1937
c) Hans Jensen in 1938
r)Hans Jensen today

A new teacher, he had no idea who the pupils were in my class and so he came to our class with an exercise where we all had to measure our heads. And he gave us an instrument to measure the distance between the front and the back and the left side and the right side, and he gave us a calculation how to work out the certain figure. We all did this and at the end of that he said, “Who has got a certain number?” and I put my hand up and he said, “Come forward” and asked me to show my head to my fellow pupils. They started already then to giggle and then he said, “Well, that is the most Nordic and Germanic head in the class.”

And of course they just couldn’t believe it and there was a lot of giggling going on and he wanted to know what all this was about. Until he was informed that I was the Jewish boy in the class!”