Hans-Peter Gurau (Shimon Giora)

Not much is known about Hans-Peter Gurau’s upbringing. He was born on 3 July 1922, the son of Gustav Gurau and Erna Schmitz, a married couple who were shopkeepers. He had a younger brother. In 1913, his father opened a men’s clothing shop at 7 Poststraße. The family lived at 3 Heinrich-Beck-Straße in the Kaßberg district.

Hans-Peter attended the Heinrich-Beck School and the Jewish religious school in Chemnitz, after which he began an apprenticeship as a textile knitter. On 24 August 1935, he celebrated his Bar Mitzvah in the former synagogue on Stefansplatz.

When a call was made in Chemnitz on 1 April 1933 for a “boycott of Jewish shops, lawyers and doctors”, his father’s business also suffered. The loss of almost all its customers led to its removal from the commercial register in April 1938. Three months later, his father’s application for a trade licence as a representative for textiles, promotional items, typewriters and cigars was rejected.

On 10 May 1942, his parents were deported to the Bełżyce ghetto near Lublin and murdered there.

His brother, Klaus, was first sent to the Jewish Children’s Home in Leipzig, then emigrated to the Netherlands on 22 December 1938. There he lived in hiding with the Pollatz family, a Quaker family originally from Dresden, in Harlem. In 1942, Klaus was arrested and deported to Auschwitz, where he died on 5 September 1942.

Hans-Peter was sent to Paderborn by the Reich Association of Jews in Germany for retraining (in agriculture). In 1940, he entered a Hachshara camp (Hebrew for ‘preparation’) at the Skaby estate in Friedersdorf to prepare for emigration to Palestine. Later, he moves to the Schocken training farm in Winkel, Spreenhagen. There, his right arm is amputated following an accident at work. In 1941, he is transferred to the Landwerk Neuendorf.

In April 1943, he married Frieda Horwitz from Bad Dürkheim. A few days later, the couple were arrested along with 153 other residents of the Landwerk and taken to Berlin, where they were deported to the Auschwitz extermination camp on the 37th Eastern Transport. They were sent to the camp to work on the construction of the IG Farben Buna Monowitz factory – Frieda died there.

From January 1945, Hans-Peter was forced to undertake death marches and was held in the Groß-Rosen and Buchenwald concentration camps.

In April 1945, he witnessed the liberation of Buchenwald and was released from the camp on 6 May 1945. The questionnaire completed for the American military administration states the following regarding his family: "all relatives killed by the Nazis"

He remained in the Allied prisoner-of-war camp at Immendorf, near Koblenz, until 13 July. After his release, he moved to Leipzig.

After a brief stay in Leipzig, Hans-Peter Gurau returned to Chemnitz. On 7 September 1945, he became a founding member of the Jewish Community of Chemnitz, but did not remain in the city for long. He was registered as living in Berlin for a short time.

In September 1945, he works on the Gehringsdorf estate near Fulda, which is soon renamed Kibbutz Buchenwald. He changes his name to Shimon Giora and, via Antwerp, emigrates to the British Mandate of Palestine aboard the illegal refugee ship “Tel Hai”.

There he lives as a farmer in Kibbutz Netzer. He marries Shoshana (Rosa) Magier and has two children with her. In 1960, he is questioned as a witness during the investigations for the Frankfurt Auschwitz trial.

In 1962, he settles in Kiryat Tivon, where he dies on 13 September 1989.