At a time when Hitler aimed to harm us, here was a German who came to bless us!
Holocaust survivor Werner Simonson escaped from Germany just before the outbreak of World War II, only to become a Church of England vicar.
Of Jewish heritage, he was sacked as a judge by the Nazis and had to endure long years of separation from his non-Jewish wife and son before being reunited after the war.
Like John Wesley who was rescued as a child from a rectory fire, Werner was also ‘a brand plucked from the burning’. He was about to be executed in a World War I battle with France when he and his colleagues were wrongly accused of shooting French prisoners. But just in time, one of the latter told the firing squad how Werner had treated him with kindness, even sharing his rations with him.
The German soldier was thus spared but spent the next five years as a prisoner of the French, his POW status only ending in 1920 after being put to work restoring war damage in northern France.
When finally released, it was a case of ‘from the frying pan into the fire’ as Germany was plunged into despair and division following their ignominious defeat.
Despite this, however, Werner quickly rose to the status of high court judge before being dismissed from his post by the Nazis when they discovered his Jewish heritage. The fact that he had fought for Germany and had won the coveted Iron Cross for gallantry counted for nothing.
And the increasing pressure of anticipating arrest led to a breakdown of his health. But while attending his niece’s confirmation at a Lutheran church, feeling at the end of his rope, it was as if the preacher was speaking directly into his desperate situation. He opened his heart to Christ and found new life and hope. “In the utter darkness which had engulfed my life I saw a new light,” he recalled.
He became associated with the Confessing Church opposing the Nazis’ antisemitic policies and was advised to escape which he managed to do with the help of the Bishop of Chichester Dr George Bell. Werner’s wife Leonie and son Juergen stayed behind but were able to join him after the war.
Being German, he was initially interned with others on the Isle of Man where he led fellow Jews to faith in Christ. But tragic news followed, hearing of his father’s death, his mother being murdered in a concentration camp and his sister Ilse gassed in Auschwitz.
Werner knew little English when he arrived on these shores but attracted much interest by being ordained at St Paul’s Cathedral when Britain was in the middle of a war with his fatherland.
He was subsequently offered back the post of judge in the new West Germany along with a pension for the job from which he had been previously dismissed by the Nazis. But he turned down the generous offer.
“I could not exchange service in the ministry of God for service in administering man-made law; accepting this offer would have meant abandoning God’s call to me, and this I could not do.”
But this humble and self-effacing man was to make a significant impact in succeeding years as he proclaimed the gospel in three separate London parishes, ending up at St Luke’s, Hampstead, where (from 1956-1965) he helped yet more Jewish people to a knowledge of their Messiah.
He continued passionately preaching Christ almost till his final breath in 1991, aged 101.
Charles Gardner is author of Israel the Chosen, available from Amazon; Peace in Jerusalem, available from olivepresspublisher.com; To the Jew First, A Nation Reborn, and King of the Jews, all available from Christian Publications International.
