Born:
Bad Ziegenhals, Germany
December 16, 1905
Died:
February 20, 1995
Simon Margoliner was the youngest of seven children born in the small town of Bad Ziegenhals, Germany (today Głuchołazy, Poland). His father was a junk dealer. Simon remembered, “We got a pair of shoes every year and this was this. … Life was not rosy.” After completing eight years of public school, Margoliner moved to the nearby city of Breslau, about 55 miles north of his hometown. In 1928 he married and earned a living as a peddler to support his wife and three children. Simon survived multiple concentration camps, including Dachau and Buchenwald, before escaping to Shanghai, China in the late summer of 1939. His wife and children joined him there a year later in 1940. Margoliner and his family moved to Houston in 1947.
Parents:
Father, deported to Theresienstadt
Mother, deported to Theresienstadt
Siblings:
Brother, survived
Brother, d. in Shanghai, 1944
Dora, d. Treblinka
Cecilia, d. Auschwitz
Mina, deported to unknown concentration camp
Other family:
Wife, survived
Three children, survived