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Jerry Springer parents: Meet Margot Kallmann, Richard Springer

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Gerald Norman Springer was an American businessman, broadcaster, journalist, actor, producer, lawyer, and politician of British origin.  Springer was Cincinnati’s 56th mayor from 1977 until 1978.

Between September 30, 1991, to July 26, 2018, he hosted the tabloid talk show Jerry Springer, and in 2015, he debuted the Jerry Springer Podcast.

Springer presented America’s Got Talent from 2007 to 2008, and the courtroom show Judge Jerry from September 2019 to 2022.

Jerry Springer parents: Meet Margot Kallmann, Richard Springer

His parents are Margot (Kallmann, a bank clerk) and Richard Springer, a shoe store owner. They were German-Jewish refugees from Prussia’s Landsberg a der Warthe (now Gorzów Wielkopolski, Poland).

Marie Kallmann, his maternal grandmother, who was left behind, died in the petrol vans of the Chemno extermination camp (German-occupied Poland).

Selma Springer (Elkeles), his paternal grandmother, died in the hospital at the Theresienstadt concentration camp (German-occupied Czechoslovakia).

Hermann Elkeles, Selma Springer’s brother, was a well-known Berlin doctor who died in the Theresienstadt concentration camp.

Springer moved to the United States with his parents when he was four years old, residing in the Kew Gardens neighborhood of Queens, a borough of New York City. He went to Forest Hills High School, which was close by.

One of his earliest memories of current events was watching the 1956 Democratic National Convention on television when he was 12 years old and was impressed by John F. Kennedy.