Manfred Simon
Holocaust Survivor
(In the picture Manfred is holding, you can see him when he was five years old.)
“I was born in 1928 in the city of Cologne, Germany, a few years before Hitler rose to power.
I remember that when I was only five years old, I sat by the window watching a parade of the Hitler Youth – the ‘Hitlerjugend’. I didn’t really understand what this movement stood for, and I told my parents that when I grew up, I wanted to join them. My parents were shocked and told me that I couldn’t – because I was Jewish.
I was upset and asked, ‘Why does it matter? I’m German, just like them! Why can’t I join?’ They explained that we were Jews and that the German government didn’t like us. That was the first time I realized there was something negative attached to being Jewish, and the realization that I could never truly be part of ‘the German people’ struck me deeply.
As I grew up in Germany during the 1930s, I constantly heard terrible things said about Jews – that we were thieves, misers, corrupt, and that Jewish men were rapists who assaulted German women. This hateful propaganda was everywhere: in newspapers, on the radio, and on posters in the streets. There was no way to escape it.
At times, I almost began to believe there might be something wrong with us. But when I looked at myself in the mirror, I would think, I’m Jewish, and my family is Jewish – we can’t possibly be the kind of people they claim we are.
Fortunately, my parents spoke openly with me. Thanks to them, I came to understand that all this was false propaganda. I realized that Jews were being attacked for no reason, and that being Jewish in Germany was becoming increasingly dangerous.
The Nazis turned Jews into outcasts, and through a slow but deliberate process, they stripped us of our humanity. We became the ‘others,’ the unwanted – until eventually it became clear that we could no longer stay in Germany.
My parents understood this early on. Already in 1936, they began exploring ways to leave the country, in case things got worse. My father went to the American consulate to ask how he could obtain a visa to the United States. They explained that to qualify, he needed to prove he had relatives or acquaintances in America who could support us financially, or that he had sufficient funds of his own to do so. My father submitted a visa application that very day and began planning how he could meet the financial requirements.
At that time, Jews were forbidden to take money out of Germany. So my father came up with a creative plan: he took gold coins, my mother’s jewelry, and his expensive watch, and traveled to the Netherlands. There he sold them, exchanged them for U.S. dollars, and deposited the money in an American bank account under his name. Thanks to this, he met the conditions for obtaining a visa. He hoped we would never need to use it – but then came ‘Kristallnacht’, the “Night of Broken Glass.”
I remember traveling on a tram during Kristallnacht when suddenly it stopped in a Jewish neighborhood. The tracks were blocked by furniture that had been thrown out of Jewish homes, and shattered glass covered the streets. I saw with my own eyes as the synagogue in the neighborhood went up in flames. Somehow, I managed to make my way home, and my father, deeply worried, thanked God that I had returned home safely.
After Kristallnacht, my parents realized once and for all that we had no future in Germany. It had become far too dangerous. Three months later, in February 1940, we boarded a train to the Netherlands, and from there we managed to reach the United States with the visa my father had secured for us.
You could say our family survived thanks to fifty percent planning and fifty percent luck.
Only 27,000 visas were allocated to citizens of Germany and Austria, while about 60,000 applications were submitted. Because my father had filed our application back in 1936, it was among the first to be processed, allowing us to be included among the 27,000 fortunate ones who received visas.
We were very lucky that my father acted when he did. Had he hesitated, we likely would not have received a visa, even if he had managed to transfer money to America. On the other hand, without his careful planning and the transfer of those funds, our application would have been rejected on the spot.
In the end, it was a rare combination of resourcefulness, preparation, and a great deal of luck.”