Instant identification as a Jew

Deutsches Reich Kennkarte (identity card) issued to Simon Jacobs. As of July 1938, every German citizen over the age of 15 was required to carry a Kennkarte at all times. As demonstrated in this document, since January 1939 Jews were forced to adopt middle names of either ‘Sara’ or ‘Israel’ and a Hebraic ‘J’ was printed internally and externally, allowing for instant identification as a Jew.

Simon Jacobs was born in 1874 in Sögel, in northern Germany. He and his wife Berta were successful farmers and horse handlers. They had four children, Jakob, Otto, Rosette and Else. Otto escaped to England before the war, and was eventually interned in Hay, Australia, with the ‘Dunera Boys’. Jakob relocated to an Austrian Hachschara farm set up to train Jewish youngsters for immigration to Palestine. There he fell in love with Polish born Recha Gallewski.

In September 1940, Jakob and Recha boarded a ship with thousands of other Jewish refugees to Palestine. Arriving in Haifa, they were denied entry and put aboard the ‘Patria’, to be deported to Mauritius. Zionist organisations opposed the deportation and, on 25 November 1940, planted a bomb intended to disable the ship to prevent it from leaving Haifa. Miscalculating the effects of the explosion, the ship sank in less than 16 minutes, killing 267 refugees. Recha and Jakob managed to cling to wreckage and survived. They married in Palestine in February 1942.

Simon also made plans to get the rest of his family out, but in March 1942, he died in Sögel, aged 68. Just months later in July, Berta and her daughters Else and Rosette, as well as Rosette’s daughter Karli, were deported to Theresienstadt. They did not survive. Jakob and Otto carried this guilt for the rest of their lives.