Article snapshot taken from Wikipedia with creative commons attribution-sharealike license.
Give it a read and then ask your questions in the chat.
We can research this topic together.
You can help expand this article with text translated from the corresponding article in German. (June 2008) Click for important translation instructions.
View a machine-translated version of the German article.
Machine translation, like DeepL or Google Translate, is a useful starting point for translations, but translators must revise errors as necessary and confirm that the translation is accurate, rather than simply copy-pasting machine-translated text into the English Misplaced Pages.
Do not translate text that appears unreliable or low-quality. If possible, verify the text with references provided in the foreign-language article.
You must provide copyright attribution in the edit summary accompanying your translation by providing an interlanguage link to the source of your translation. A model attribution edit summary is Content in this edit is translated from the existing German Misplaced Pages article at ]; see its history for attribution.
You may also add the template {{Translated|de|Cioma Schönhaus}} to the talk page.
Objects used during Cioma Schönhaus’ escape: road map, document case, and the chest pouch in which they were kept, now in the collection of the Jewish Museum of Switzerland.
Samson "Cioma" Schönhaus (28 September 1922 in Berlin – 22 September 2015 in Biel-Benken) was a graphic artist and writer who lived illegally as a Jew in hiding in Berlin during World War II. He forged hundreds of identity documents to help other Jews survive during this time. He worked closely with members of the Confessing Church, including Franz Kaufmann and Helene Jacobs. He ultimately escaped from Berlin to Switzerland by bicycle in 1943, where he remained until his death. For the escape, he used a military identity card that he had forged himself.
His memoir, "The Forger," was published by Granta Books in 2007, translated from the German original (Der Passfälscher, published 2004). The feature film Der Passfälscher (The Passport Forger) from 2022 is also dedicated to his life; Schönhaus is portrayed here by Louis Hofmann.
Schönhaus was interviewed for the docudrama The Invisibles that was released after his death in 2017.
References
Azuelos, Daniel (2011). Alltag im Exil. Königshausen & Neumann. p. 197. ISBN978-3826043550.
