Ernst Simons

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Ernst Simons (born August 7, 1919 in Cologne ; died January 29, 2006 there ) was a German educator , religion teacher and survivor of the Bergen-Belsen concentration camp .

Live and act

Simons was the son of Julius Simons (1887–1944), the last rabbi of Deutz , who was murdered with the other family members in Auschwitz . Because Ernst Simons had to leave the Deutz Gymnasium Schaurtestrasse two years before his Abitur in 1936 , he emigrated to Enschede . There he was able to attend a Jewish teachers' college after passing a gifted test. Shortly before the exam in May 1940, the Wehrmacht invaded the Netherlands. During the German occupation Simons was deported to Amsterdam and forced to work in a factory ; there he met his wife Ans , a Dutch Jew, whom he married in August 1942. In 1943 both were deported to Westerbork transit camp and then deported to Bergen-Belsen concentration camp. After the liberation in April 1945 - he only weighed 31.5 kg there - as a German he was not allowed to return to Enschede to finish his studies. The couple went to the United States for a short time , but returned to Cologne in 1952 with their daughters born in 1946 and 1950. The third daughter was born here in 1955. In 1959 Simons passed his secondary school teacher exam in Cologne.

After his return to Cologne, Simons worked as a religion teacher for the few Cologne Jews of the Jewish faith. In 1957 he opened a vacation home for Jewish children in Sobernheim , which he ran with his wife until 1977. In 1958 Simons co-founded the Cologne Society for Christian-Jewish Cooperation in Cologne, of which he became honorary chairman. From 1959 he worked at the secondary school in Cologne-Braunsfeld . After just six years he was appointed director of the school. In the 1960s, he and the school department head of the city of Cologne built up the student exchange with the twin city Tel Aviv . As headmaster in Braunsfeld, he was the first to set up classes for the physically handicapped, which then became a special school for special needs that leads to the Abitur, which after the takeover by LVR bears the name LVR-Anna-Freud-Schule. Even after moving, both schools are still in one building complex. From 1973 to 1980 he worked in the education authority of the Cologne district government , from 1975 as the government school director as the first of his co-religionists in Germany.

In the spirit of his father, Simons was involved all his life in the Cologne synagogue community , of which he was chairman for a long time with only a few interruptions. Most recently he was honorary chairman of the Cologne synagogue community. Since initially no rabbi was ordained, he also took over his functions, as is customary in smaller congregations. During the World Youth Day in Cologne 2005, Pope Benedict XVI visited Ernst Simons in the synagogue in Cologne.

Ernst Simons - grave on the Jewish cemetery Cologne-Bocklemünd

Ernst Simons died on January 29, 2006 in Cologne and was buried in the Bocklemünd Jewish Cemetery (Hall 33 No. 84/85). In the obituary, the community named him with the honorary title Raw and his synagogue name Ascher Zwi ben HaRaw Josef (son of Rabbi Josef = Julius).

Honors

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ^ Ernst Simons died of old age , Cologne TRundschau, January 31, 2006
  2. Dr. Julius Simons at Kölner Stolpersteine ​​of the NS Documentation Center of the City of Cologne
  3. k-poll.de - Dr. Simons Strasse , accessed March 3, 2016
  4. buergervereinigung-deutz.de - Dr. Simons (PDF), accessed March 3, 2016
  5. a b c Wolfgang Blaschke, Karola Fings, Cordula Lissner: Subject to change: return from emigration after 1945 . Ed .: EL-DE-Haus. Emons, Cologne 1997, ISBN 3-924491-24-0 , p. 160 f .
  6. ^ History of the Anna Freud Special School
  7. Picture on folder of the Cologne Society for Christian-Jewish Cooperation ( Memento of the original from March 4, 2016 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link has been inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice.  @1@ 2Template: Webachiv / IABot / www.koelnische-gesellschaft.de
  8. Merit holders since 1986. State Chancellery of the State of North Rhine-Westphalia, accessed on March 11, 2017 .
  9. Mission statement of the school (history is still missing)