Horst Symanowski and his wife Isolde lived in Königsberg in East Prussia (now Kaliningrad in Russia) with their two daughters. He joined the Confessional Church while studying Protestant theology. In 1937 he was imprisoned by the Gestapo for eight weeks for distributing lists of arrested Confessional Church members. After two more arrests, he volunteered for military service in 1939 to evade further imprisonment. He was severely wounded in 1941.
In January 1943 he took part in a meeting of the “Church Working Community,” a grouping within the Confessional Church. The 15 to 20 participants agreed to help Jews living underground in Berlin and find places for them to hide in the provinces. Isolde and Horst Symanowski took over the provision of accommodation in East Prussia.
In 1944 Isolde and Horst Symanowski took in the Jewish couple Rosa and Rudolf Karmeinsky and their six-year-old daughter Christel for several months.
The Symanowskis fled west at the start of 1945. Horst Symanowski was honored as Righteous Among the Nations in 2002.
Isolde and Horst Symanowski with their daughters, Königsberg, 1940. Source: Privatbesitz/Private
Isolde and Horst Symanowski, 1945. Source: Privatbesitz/Private
Horst Symanowski (seated) and the Israeli ambassador Shimon Stein at the ceremony honoring Symanowski as Righteous Among the Nations, Mainz, July 3, 2003. Source: Privatbesitz/Private
