Sergio de Simone
Sergio de Simone was born on November 29, 1937, and lived with his parents in Naples.
Sergio was only seven years old when he was murdered.
His father, Edoardo de Simone, a naval officer, was Catholic. His mother Gisella, née Perlow, was Jewish.
His father was sent to Dortmund to work as a forced labourer. His mother felt that the situation in Naples was unsafe because of the air raids, so she moved to stay with relatives in Fiume in Northern Italy with Sergio in the summer of 1943.
There, on March 21, 1944, Sergio, who was then 6, his mother, and seven other members of the family, including his cousins Alessandra (Andra) and Tatiana, were arrested, and on April 4, 1944, they were deported to Auschwitz.
Sergio’s mother was sent to Ravensbrück concentration camp in the spring of 1945.
She was liberated there but was very ill and only returned to Italy in November 1945.
There she met her husband again and gave birth to another son, Mario.
They searched for their son Sergio, but all they learnt was that he had been sent from Auschwitz to a concentration camp in the West.
Tatiana and Andra at the commemoration ceremony held for year 4 schoolchildren on April 20, 2017, on Roman-Zeller- Platz in Hamburg:
“We were four and six years old when we were sent to Auschwitz. One day the lady who looked after us in the children’s barracks warned us that a man was going to come and ask who would like to go to their mother. On no account were we to say yes. We told Sergio but, sadly, he disregarded the warning. He went off with a group of 20 children and we never saw him again.”
The street Sergio-de-Simone-Stieg in Hamburg-Burgwedel is named after Sergio.