Berthold Simonsohn

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Berthold Simonsohn (born April 24, 1912 in Bernburg (Saale) ; † January 8, 1978 in Frankfurt am Main ) was a German lawyer, university professor and head of the Central Welfare Office for Jews in Germany .

Life

Simonsohn was the son of the Bernburg factory owner Alfred Simonsohn and his wife Sidonie nee. Fried. He had a brother and a sister. His father died in Bernburg in 1936, his mother in the Theresienstadt ghetto in 1944 .

After graduating from high school in Bernburg, Simonsohn studied law and political science at the University of Halle and the University of Leipzig from 1929 to 1934 . In 1933, he was not admitted to the state examination as a Jew, but he was in February 1934 in Hall at Erich Schwinge Dr. jur. PhD. He then worked in his father's paper goods factory until 1936, which had to close due to the boycott of Jewish businesses.

Simonsohn was a member of the SAPD before 1933 and was involved in the resistance against National Socialism . After the transfer of power to the National Socialists , he was arrested for the first time in late 1933 on suspicion of high treason . For lack of evidence, he was released after three days.

From 1938 he was district welfare officer of the Central Welfare Office for German Jews in Stettin . After the November pogroms in 1938 he was sent to the Sachsenhausen concentration camp. After his release, he moved to Hamburg , where he was employed as the district welfare officer for northwest Germany of the Reich Association of German Jews at the Jewish Religious Association . His activities included "general welfare, economic aid, professional redeployment for young people and Jewish winter aid as well as the deputy management of the Northwest Germany district office of the Reich Association".

Registration card from Berthold Simonsohn as a prisoner in the National Socialist concentration camp Dachau

On July 19, 1942, he was deported to the Theresienstadt ghetto , where he met Trude Gutmann (* 1921), whom he ritually married shortly before the imminent deportation to Auschwitz (the civil ceremony followed in 1949). On October 19, 1944, he was deported to Auschwitz and on October 25, 1944, he was deported to the Kaufering III camp near Augsburg, a satellite camp of the Dachau concentration camp . From there he had to start a three-day march to Dachau-Allach on April 26, 1945 . The US Army liberated the camp on April 30, 1945 . His wife Trude Simonsohn survived in the Groß-Rosen concentration camp .

After the liberation he worked from September 1945 to March 1946 in the “Evidenz-Archiv des Repatriierungsamt”, a department of the Ministry of Social Affairs in Prague . The couple spent the years 1946 to 1950 in Switzerland . There he initially headed the “Höhwald” sanatorium, an institution of the Davos Jewish refugee aid organization . From the winter semester 1947/48 to 1950 he studied economics , sociology and history in Zurich .

In August 1950, Simonsohn returned to Hamburg and took over the position of legal department of the Hamburg Jewish community .

On August 20, 1951, the general assembly of the Central Council of Jews in Germany resolved to re-establish the Central Welfare Office for Jews in Germany, which was banned by the National Socialists. Simonsohn was entrusted with the establishment and, as the first managing director, with the development of the Jewish welfare organization, which he headed until December 31, 1961. In 1962 he was appointed to a professorship for social education and youth law at the Johann Wolfgang Goethe University . He dealt in particular with the reform of youth rights and was co-author of the memorandum of the Arbeiterwohlfahrt “Proposals for an expanded youth welfare law”, Bonn 1970.

In 1977 he retired . With his wife, who worked in the Jewish community, he lived in Frankfurt am Main until the end of his life .

The State of Israel

On the occasion of the impending Six Day War , Simonsohn had a brief exchange of letters with the political scientist Wolfgang Abendroth , asking Abendroth for solidarity for the country. Abendroth refused (the war was already on):

Even in the current preventive war, Israel must therefore appear not only to the feudal lords of the monarchical Arab states, but above all to the population of the essentially progressive republican military dictatorships as a vanguard of American imperialist interests. That is why an identification of socialist internationalism in the capitalist states of Europe with the current politics of Israel is completely impossible, despite all the sympathy for the Israeli population.

Simonsohn replied disappointed:

Nobody demands a one-sided identification of international socialism with Israeli politics, but I thought that a clear statement against chauvinism and warmongering of the Arabs, against their unconditional armament by the Soviet Union and for a program of understanding with its (sc. Socialism) principles is quite compatible. I am of the opinion that for socialists, even in politics, there is a basic set of moral principles that cannot be violated with impunity.

literature

  • Wilma Aden-Grossmann: Berthold Simonsohn. Biography of a Jewish social educator and lawyer (1912–1978) . Campus, Frankfurt am Main et al. 2007, ISBN 978-3-593-38340-8 ( Campus-Judaica 23).
  • Wilma Aden-Grossmann:  Simonsohn, Berthold Alfons. In: New German Biography (NDB). Volume 24, Duncker & Humblot, Berlin 2010, ISBN 978-3-428-11205-0 , pp. 443-445 ( digitized version ).
  • Wilma Aden-Grossmann (Ed.): Berthold Simonsohn - Selected Writings 1934 - 1977. Kassel University Press, Kassel 2012, ISBN 978-3-86219-254-0 , p. 280.
  • Beate Meyer: Simonsohn, Berthold . In: Institute for the history of the German Jews (ed.): The Jewish Hamburg: a historical reference work . Wallstein, Göttingen 2006, ISBN 3-8353-0004-0 , p. 230. (with folding map of Jewish sites in Hamburg )
  • 100 years of Berthold Simonsohn. Documentation of the ceremony at Goethe University on April 24th. Edited by Micha Brumlik and Benjamin Ortmeyer. Protagoras Academicus, Frankfurt 2012 ISBN 978-3-943059-04-5
  • Simonsohn, Berthold , in: Joseph Walk (ed.): Short biographies on the history of the Jews 1918–1945 . Munich: Saur, 1988, ISBN 3-598-10477-4 , p. 345
  • Wilma Grossmann: Simonsohn, Berthold , in: Hugo Maier (Ed.): Who is who of social work . Freiburg: Lambertus, 1998 ISBN 3-7841-1036-3 , pp. 553f.

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ A STOLPERSTEIN for Sidonie Simonsohn - Friedensallee 27. Accessed March 2, 2019.
  2. ↑ Beate Meyer: Simonsohn, Berthold. In: The Jewish Hamburg. A historical reference work.
  3. ↑ Correspondence with Grossmann, 2007
personal data
SURNAME Simonsohn, Berthold
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Simonsohn, Bertold
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German lawyer and university professor in Frankfurt am Main
DATE OF BIRTH April 24, 1912
PLACE OF BIRTH Bernburg (Saale)
DATE OF DEATH January 8, 1978
Place of death Frankfurt