Werner Simon (union leader)

Werner Simon († 2016 in Valparaíso ) was a German union leader. He was one of hundreds of people who were tortured on ships under Augusto Pinochet in Valparaíso from 1973 onwards.

Life

Simon's paternal great-grandfather had arrived in Valparaiso in 1852. Simon was born in Hamburg and had Hans Albers as his godfather. He grew up in Chile , got married and had six sons. His son Ulli was born there in Casablanca (Chile) and was later a teacher in Bremen. On the mother's side there was a connection to the Lütjens in Hamburg.

Simon was an officer in the Society for the Rescue of Shipwrecked People in Chile , a reserve officer in the Navy and head of a Masonic lodge. He was involved in the MAPU , the left wing of the Christian Democratic Party, and was appointed union leader as a MAPU representative.

As an employee of a gas factory, a few weeks before Pinochet's coup against Salvador Allende, during the strike of right-wing truck drivers , he drove propane cylinders into the poor areas of the city.

Arrests and torture

As a leftist democrat and strike breaker, he was arrested by the military shortly after the coup. Released again, he was arrested a little later at night in his apartment and taken to a torture ship, the freighter Lebu, in the port of Valparaiso. His whereabouts remained unknown to his relatives for a few weeks. Then they learned from released comrades-in-arms that he was severely tortured there. His son Ulli turned to the German consulate in town for help, from which the Simons had often been invited to cultural events. However, he was told that his father was not registered.

rescue

Ulli then turned to Martin Posselt , the German seaman's pastor in the city. The informed Helmut Frenz , the bishop of the Evangelical Church in Santiago. When Frenz did not achieve anything during a visit to Pinochet the next day, he phoned Federal Chancellor Willy Brandt . The embassy was then instructed to take care of Werner Simon. The consul of Valparaiso now had to get Simon from Lebu, as his death would have been diplomatically delicate. Simon was badly injured from the torture at the time, with three broken ribs and broken left collarbone. His buttocks were badly burned because he - like other prisoners - had to sit on the hot metal deck for days. He suffered mock shootings and electric shocks, and was not allowed to go to the bathroom for a month. After 39 days on the Lebu, the consul only took him to the next bus stop in this condition. Later, with the help of Helmut Frenz, he and two of his sons were able to flee to the German embassy, ​​narrowly escaping being arrested again.

Escape to the embassy became possible after the Federal Foreign Office's regulation of October 4, 1973, "not to grant asylum and temporary refuge only in cases in which there is immediate danger to life" gave way towards the end of October. Take in 100 persecuted people.

At the embassy, ​​they met many other broken people from all over Chile. They were flown out and landed in Düsseldorf in mid-December 1973 . Mrs. Simon soon followed with the other sons.

After Pinochet

Werner Simon was one of the two victims of the Pinochet terror who testified against Pinochet before the Spanish examining magistrate Baltarsar Gazon . Simon went back to Valparaiso, met old friends, including those from the Masonic Lodge, and had contact with other victims of torture, the machucados - those who were beaten - from the ships and from prisons.

Torture ships

An entrepreneur had given the freighter Lebu to the military as a prison. Many who were considered communists, socialists and terrorists were abducted there. When the Red Cross visited the Lebu on October 1, 1973, there were 324 political prisoners on board. The Lebu was later scrapped. Other torture ships in the port of Valparaiso were the freighters Maipo and Andulien and the four-masted barque Esmeralda . As a sailing training ship, the Esmeralda is now the “pearl” of the Chilean Navy. It is used to train cadets, who are kept secret that this ship was a torture prison.

At least 27,000 people were arrested under Pinochet and 2,095 were killed. 1102 of them disappeared without a trace.

literature

• Ulli Simon: September days / Días de Septiembre: memories of Chile. Verlag Atlantik, 1998, German-Spanish, ISBN 978-3926529909

Individual evidence

1. ↑ Interview with Ulli Simon, mareNo. 139, April / May 2020, p. 36 ff
2. ↑ Interview with Ulli Simon, mareNo. 139, April / May 2020, p. 38
3. ↑ "Ship with a Torture Story"
4. ↑ DER SPIEGEL on torture under Pinochet
5. ↑ Interview with Ulli Simon, mare No. 139, April / May 2020, p. 38