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Escaping National Socialism
Hansjörg A. Salmony was barely 18 years old, when he first tried to escape Germany with the aid of his father. His second attempt succeeded at the end of 1938, when his journey took him to Belgium, from which, following the German occupation in May 1940, he continued to southern France on a refugee train. Once in France, he landed in Camp de Saint-Cyprien situated about 15 km away from the Spanish border. Eventually, Salmony broke out from there and, on the run for the fourth time, made headway until he reached the Swiss border, which he crossed illegally near Geneva. Tragically, his parents were deported to the Łódź Ghetto (German: Litzmannstadt), Poland’s second-largest ghetto, in October of 1941. They did not survive the Shoa. Their fate was to cast a long shadow over the life of Salmony and also impact his later philosophical work. Two “Stolpersteine“ (lit.‘stumbling stones‘) placed in front of Salmony’s family home on Wichterichstrasse 59 in the Cologne district of Klettenberg commemorate his parents as victims of the Holocaust. Salmony‘s maternal family home still stands on Dasselstrasse near the (rebuilt) synagogue. Last updated: February 1, 2018
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