Family Frederick and Esther Salomoson

Friedrich Salomonson was born in 1897 as the younger brother of the butcher Max Salomonson in Nordhorn. He was married to the two years äolder Niederländerin Esther Phillips. Both had two children: Lion was born in 1930 in Osnabrück, Hanni 1942 in Nordhorn.

Esther Salomonson had inherited a villa at Bahnhofstraße 20 as well as a larger warehouse of the Gebrüder Goldsmit, 1925 and 1929 died. The couple ran a thriving bed and dowry business at Bahnhofstraße 16. Since Friedrich Salomonson worked well with the textile company „Niehues & Dütting“, he bought up remnants there cheaply and resold them at a good profit, the family became rich, which was also reflected in a „generous;bürgerliche lifestyle“.

In the pogrom night November 9/10, 1938, the Nordhorn SA people, who destroyed all Jewish houses, apartments and the synagogue in the city center, had forgotten the Salomonson estate a little outside the city center. They made up for it and on November 10 smashed up everything in the villa; the business premises next to it were cleared out and the goods moved to a school in the city center.

After that, the family prepared to flee. First, the children Lion and Hanni were taken illegally üacross the Dutch border to relatives in Almelo, where they were provided with everything by their „uncle Luis“. The parents fled to the Netherlands to a sister of Frederick, Rosa de Bruin, in Hardenberg – on June 8, 1939, after taking care of all the necessary things, with the intention of continuing to the United States.

In Hardenberg, the family was arrested in 1942 and initially imprisoned in the „Judendurchgangslager“ Westerbork, from where all four were deported to the Sobibor extermination camp and murdered upon arrival on May 21, 1943.