Trude Simonsohn

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Trude Simonsohn (born March 25, 1921 in Olmütz , Moravia ) is a surviving Jewish Auschwitz prisoner and social worker .

Life

Trude Simonsohn was born as the daughter of the grain commissioner Maximilian Gutmann and his wife Theodora Appel. She grew up bilingual and as an only child in a liberal family . She attended a Czech primary school and a German high school in her hometown . After the invasion of the Wehrmacht in the course of the German annexation of Czechoslovakia and the later conversion into the Protectorate of Bohemia and Moravia , she was refused professional training as a Jew . Her father was arrested on September 1, 1939 and taken to the Buchenwald concentration camp and then murdered in the Dachau concentration camp . Her mother was later murdered in Auschwitz concentration camp . In June 1942, after the assassination attempt on Reinhard Heydrich , she herself was arrested for alleged high treason and illegal communist activity. She had done Zionist youth work and prepared Jewish youth for emigration to Palestine . After several months of solitary confinement, she was taken to the Theresienstadt ghetto , where she met the Jewish social worker and lawyer Berthold Simonsohn , whom she ritually married shortly before the imminent deportation to Auschwitz (the civil marriage followed in April 1949 in Zurich). In October 1944 both came to Auschwitz. On May 9, 1945 she was liberated by the Red Army in the Merzdorf concentration camp , a satellite camp of the Groß-Rosen concentration camp . Her husband survived in the Kaufering subcamp , a branch of the Dachau concentration camp.

After the war, the Simonsohn couple worked for Jewish refugee aid in Switzerland . After training as a nurse , she treated members of the Zionist youth movement who had contracted tuberculosis in the camps in a sanatorium in Davos . From 1948 she devoted herself to caring for traumatized children and adolescents in Zurich who had become orphans as a result of the Holocaust . In 1950 the couple first moved to Hamburg and in 1955 to Frankfurt am Main , where Trude Simonsohn took on responsibility for social work and educational counseling on the board of the Jewish Community . From 1989 to 2001 she was the local council chairwoman.

Since around 1975 she has been reporting regularly as a contemporary witness (together with Irmgard Heydorn ) about her experiences in the “ Third Reich ” at schools and in associations and institutions. The filmmaker Carmen-Renate Köper shot the film portrait Trude Simonsohn - Why did I survive? For the Hessischer Rundfunk in 1995 , the filmmaker Peter de Leuw shot the film Trude Simonsohn with cameraman Martin Böttner . A life with deep abysses .

Honors

In 1993 she received the plaque of honor from the city of Frankfurt am Main . In 1996 Simonsohn was awarded the Wilhelm Leuschner Medal of the State of Hesse . In 2010 she received the Ignatz Bubis Prize for Understanding, and in 2013 the Erasmus Kittler Prize . On March 25, 2016, on the occasion of her 95th birthday, a lecture hall of the Johann Wolfgang Goethe University on the Westend campus in the casino building of the IG Farbenhaus was named after Trude Simonsohn in recognition of her services to the work of memory at Frankfurt University . On October 16, 2016, Trude Simonsohn was made the first honorary citizen of Frankfurt am Main .

literature

  • Trude Simonsohn: Trude Simonsohn tells about her life. “Trude don't give up! Hitler will die and you will live on. ” Concept, editing, interview, sound, editing: Gabriele Diedrich. Active Museum Spiegelgasse for German-Jewish History, Wiesbaden 2008, ISBN 978-3-9412-8900-0 (audio CD).
  • Susann Heenen-Wolff : In the hangman's house. Talks in Germany. Dvorah, Frankfurt am Main 1992, ISBN 3-927926-15-9 .
  • Ingrid Wiltmann (ed.): Jewish life in Germany. Seventeen conversations. Suhrkamp, ​​Frankfurt am Main 1999, ISBN 3-518-39509-2 .
  • Wilma Aden-Grossmann: Berthold Simonsohn. Biography of the Jewish social pedagogue and lawyer (1912–1978) (= Campus Judaica. Volume 23). Campus, Frankfurt am Main / New York 2007, ISBN 978-3-593-38340-8 , urn : nbn: de: 0111-opus-51823 .
  • Trude Simonsohn with Elisabeth Abendroth: Another luck. Memories. Wallstein, Göttingen 2013, ISBN 978-3-8353-1187-9 , urn : nbn: de: 101: 1-2013050966 .

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Another luck. Memories. Pp. 7, 9 f.
  2. ↑ Another luck. Memories. P. 26.
  3. ↑ Another luck. Memories. P. 13.
  4. ↑ Another luck. Memories. P. 14.
  5. ↑ Another luck. Memories. P. 36.
  6. ↑ Another luck. Memories. P. 37.
  7. ↑ Another luck. Memories. P. 40.
  8. ↑ Another luck. Memories. P. 123.
  9. ↑ Another luck. Memories. P. 85.
  10. ↑ Another luck. Memories. P. 97.
  11. ↑ Another luck. Memories. P. 140.
  12. ↑ "Live on: Berthold and Trude Simonsohn". In: bildungsklick.de. January 17, 2008, accessed October 16, 2016.
  13. ^ Trude Simonsohn - A life with deep abysses Germany 2006/2007, documentary film. In: filmportal.de, accessed on October 16, 2016.
  14. ^ Hessian State Chancellery: Prime Minister announces winners of the Wilhelm Leuschner Medal 2007 ( memento from September 15, 2012 in the web archive archive.today ). In: stk.hessen.de, November 7, 2007 (press release).
  15. ↑ Honor for Trude Simonsohn. Goethe University names seminar room after the Holocaust survivor. In: juedische-allgemeine.de. Jüdische Allgemeine , March 29, 2016, accessed October 16, 2016.
  16. ^ Auschwitz survivors - Trude Simonsohn is the first honorary citizen of Frankfurt . hessenschau.de , October 15, 2016, accessed on October 16, 2016 ("Source: Benedikt Fischer [horizonte], epd "; with video: Auschwitz survivors with the urge for reconciliation, 1:29 min).
personal data
SURNAME Simonsohn, Trude
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German resistance fighter against National Socialism and social worker
DATE OF BIRTH March 25, 1921
PLACE OF BIRTH Olomouc