Simone Arnold Dearest

from Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Simone Arnold Liebster (born August 17, 1930 in Husseren-Wesserling , Alsace ) was exposed to repression under National Socialism because of her religious convictions and has published a book about these experiences and has lectured internationally in schools and universities about her experiences as a contemporary witness since the 1990s .

Life

Liebster was born in a small Alsatian village to Emma and Adolphe Arnold. At the age of three she moved to Mulhouse with her parents . Like her parents, she was a member of Jehovah's Witnesses . After the occupation of Alsace by the Wehrmacht , she was expelled from grammar school in 1941 for refusing to give the Hitler salute. In September 1942 she was sent to the “Wessenberg'sche Erziehungsanstalt Konstanz ” because of further resistance . In 1945 she found her parents again, who had been in concentration camps . In 1952 Simone Arnold went to the USA to train as a missionary, returned to France after a stay as a missionary in North Africa, and in 1956 married Max Liebster , who was also persecuted by the National Socialists, in Paris , with whom she settled again in France. She wrote the book Alone Before the Lion about her experiences as a young girl in Nazi-occupied Europe and, with her husband, founded the Arnold Liebster Foundation, the aim of which is to achieve peace, tolerance and the preservation of peace through peaceful and non-political means To promote human rights, especially religious freedom.

reception

The philosopher and religious scholar Volker Zotz wrote about Alone Before the Lion by Simone Arnold Liebster: “As a historical document, the book is significant in at least two ways. For one thing, it provides an insight into the way in which the Nazi system attempted to re-educate children. It then provides a new source on a group of previously less noticed Nazi victims, the Jehovah's Witnesses. Regardless of the gaps this book may fill in historical research, it is of the greatest interest as a personal testimony.
How a child preserves his inner dignity and his belief in God and people under the most cruel conditions, although he knows the father and mother persecuted in the concentration camp, although he is aware that close friends must die as conscientious objectors, is one in many ways challenging reading. The child can resist the lion, as it feels the cruel Nazi machinery, because religious and ethical values ​​give it an unconditional support. "

Publications

  • Facing the lion: memoirs of a young girl in Nazi Europe , New Orleans: Grammaton Press, 2000, ISBN 0967936675
  • Alone before the Lion , Esch-sur-Alzette, Editions Schortgen, 2002, translations into other languages, including French, Spanish, Portuguese, Polish, Italian, Russian, Korean.
  • Seule face au lion [paperback], ISBN 978-2-87953-455-8
  • Alone before the Lion [short version as accompanying material for school lessons], Esch-sur-Alzette, Editions Schortgen, 2013, ISBN 978-2-87953-166-3

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ^ Arnold Liebster Foundation, Childhood Memories in a Nazi Reformatory , accessed April 8, 2013.
  2. ↑ Volker Zotz: Review of Simone Arnold Liebster: Alone before the lion. In: Forum for Politics, Society and Culture No. 230 (October 2003), pp. 45–46 ( ISSN  1680-2322 ).
personal data
SURNAME Dearest, Simone Arnold
BRIEF DESCRIPTION French writer
DATE OF BIRTH 17th August 1930
PLACE OF BIRTH Husseren-Wesserling , Alsace