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Prof and WWII survivor entangled over diary

Oberlin resident files suit over concentration camp memoir

by Douglas Gillison

Former Oberlin resident Michael Simon, who was born in a Nazi concentration camp, and Oberlin Professor of German Heidi Thomann Tewarson have begun complex legal proceedings against each other.

At issue is a diary kept mostly by Simon's mother, detailing life in the Czechoslovakian concentration camp Terezin and the circumstances surrounding Simon's birth. Apparently, Simon entrusted the roughly 1,200 page collection of documents to Tewarson in early 1996 for translation and transcription. Simon claims he entrusted the documents to Tewarson on the condition that he be kept abreast of her progress and allowed to approve any work completed.

He alleges that, after nearly two years, he saw little sign, if any, that the work was being carried out and that Tewarson has attempted to write a book about his family based on these documents, without giving him consideration.

Simon demanded the immediate return of all documents this November. Tewarson then filed a Complaint for Declaratory Judgment at the Lorain County Court of Common Pleas, asking that she be allowed to continue her work.

According to an article in the Oberlin News-Tribune, Tewarson's suit alleges she and Simon had a verbal agreement which gave her exclusive rights to translate and transcribe the documents and that she has completed close to 75 percent of the work and spent close to $6,000 dollars in the process.

At the end of November, Simon filed a Counterclaim for Replevin, which is a legal proceeding for the recovery of goods, upon promise to go to court and give the goods up again if defeated. Simon has asked for an injunction to prevent Tewarson from publishing any research or annotation of documents as a result of her use of the diaries as well as remuneration of legal fees and expenses.

According to Simon's lawyer, Jori Bloom Naegele, the litigants reached a temporary agreement Thursday at a court hearing. John Keyes-Walker, Tewarson's lawyer, is to arrange today the transfer of the documents to the College Archives for safe-keeping pending litigation. A pretrial is scheduled for March 23.

According to Simon's legal pleading, the documents contain pocket diaries written by Simon's mother, in a form of German short-hand no longer used, detailing her life in Germany and in Theresienstadt (Terezin) from 1933-42. The documents are also purported to contain the memoirs of Simon's father, Fritz Simon, who was blinded in World War I and twice awarded the German Iron Cross.

Also included are Simon's infant medical records, letters written by Simon's mother to her sister, Else, in New York prior to 1941, scraps and notes by which Simon's parents communicated inside the camp, correspondence between Simon's aunt Else in New York and Heinrich Bruning, former chancellor of Germany (1930-32) and Litauer Professor of Government at Harvard University (1939-52), regarding the provision of visas for Simon's family, along with medals, identity cards, badges, special monies issued only within the camp, photographs, naturalization papers, Fritz Simon's military decorations, the death certificate of Simon's grandmother and the family's yellow stars of David, dictated by the Nuremberg Laws.

As the matter is now in litigation, Professor Tewarson has refused comment and neither Walker nor Simon wasavailable for comment. However, according to Naegele, of the 207 children born in the war camps, Simon is the only survivor living in North America. "I'd like to make clear that these documents are still his," she said.

A letter from Marcia Reines Josephy, Curator/Director of the Los Angeles Museum for the Holocaust, accompanies Simon's pleading and attests to the value of Simon's documents, saying, "the collection is priceless and of major historical significance." Her letter details four points of the diary's historical value. According to Reines, they provide an important record from male and female perspectives "of a difficult and significant period of history." They also constitute personal testimony about the Holocaust. According to Naegele, they are likely the only extant documents of their kind.

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Copyright © 1998, The Oberlin Review.
Volume 127, Number 12, December 11, 1998

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