Saturday, February 20, 2010

Pappas cykel av bröderna Löb and Moses Simson








Det var nog år 1954-55 som min pappa köpte en hel ny cykel av märke Simson Shul. Cykeln köptes i en affär som låg på andra sidan av gatan där vi bodde, dvs Królewska 1 med ingång från Krakowskie Przedmiescie. Cykeln doftade ny lack och råggummi. Den var stor, ungefär som svenska militära cyklar. Främre delen av ramen var blåmålad. Efter flera års användande där jag som barn lärde mig att cykla under ramen krockade vi med cykeln mot ett träd och den fick en spricka i ramen vid styret varefter den svetsades där.
Minst två barn skulle rymmas på ramen och en på pakethållaren. Cykeln hade en handbroms som tryckte en gummiplatta uppifrån på däcket. Den hade också en triangelformad verktygsväska som satt fast under ramen vid sadeln.
Jag minns tydligt första turen på den med pappa. Jag satt naturligtvis på den långa ramen. Vi cyklade från vårt hus på Królewska 2 mot den Okända Soldatens Grav och vidare till Plac Teatralny. Pappa cyklade med starka, jämna drag. Han hade på sig en mörkblå manchesterjacka med militär grön foder. Jackan har jag kvar!
Cykel var nog avsedd för våra semestrar i Dziwnów vid Östersjökusten. Sök ett tidigare inlägg i min blogg med ordet Dziwnow).
I Dziwnów åkte vi med cykeln till den militära förlägningens kök och hämtade maten där. Med tiden var vi Dziwnówbarn mer och mer samspelta och upp till 5 av oss kunde samtidigt färdas på den.
Bilden överst: Bröderna Wroblewski och Baczko samt Andrzej "Bambo" Sliwinski.

Nedanför lite info från www om bröderna Simson.


Because he was a Jew, Arthur Simson (the grandson of the company founder, Moses Simson) and several of his employees were eventually jailed by the Nazis in 1935. After seven months in prison, Simson was forced to admit evading income taxes and to sign the rights to his company over to Nazi Gauleiter Fritz Sauckel. A few months after his release on bail, Simson and his family fled to Switzerland and eventually to the United States of America. Sauckel renamed the company Berlin-Suhler Waffen- und Fahrzeugwerke (BSW), but after the assassination of the Swiss Nazi Party leader Wilhelm Gustloff, Sauckel renamed it Gustloff Werke.* The Parabellum machinery in the Simson factory was removed to the Heinrich Krieghoff Waffenfabrik, which was also located in Suhl.

The earliest Simson pistol, known as the Type I, or the Model 1922, was marked on the left side of the frame with the Simson logo and the inscription “WAFFENFABRIKEN SIMSON & CO. SUHL,”
The Nazis made an example of the Simson Company. ‘ ...Wilhelm Gustloff ... was an ardent Swiss Nazi shot dead in Bern by a Jewish student named David Frankfurter on 4 February 1936. To honor Gustloff, the Nazis had given his name to one of the first “Aryanized” companies of the Reich, in this case a firm formerly owned by the Jews Arthur and Julius Simson. The Simsons’ company, the Suhler Weapons and Vehicle Works, had received the dubious privilege of being the only Jewish firm to receive contracts from the German army after the Treaty of Versailles. That Jews should be entrusted with defense contracts, of course, enraged the Nazis. The national press had pilloried the Simsons since the 1920s, accusing them of embezzlement and demonizing them as the spearhead of a world Jewish consipracy to emasculate the German armed forces. By 1935, the Gauleiter of Thuringen, Fritz Sauckel, finally succeeded in throwing the Simson brothers in jail and appropriating their company.’ --The Business of Genocide, p. 191.

During the war, Gustloff Werke, which was under the management of Fritz Walther, opened a factory at the Buchenwald concentration camp to manufacture carbines, and later machine guns, using slave labor.

Gauleiter Fritz Sauckel, who was in charge of the Nazi slave labor program, was hanged for war crimes in 1946. Fritz Walther lived on to revive the Walther company in the ‘50s and died in 1966. Arthur Simson died in Los Angeles in 1969. The Simson family eventually received partial reparation for their losses from the German government.

Later the the USSR handed over the factory to German Democratic Repuplic (GDR), 1952 the government renamed it to "VEB Fahrzeug- und Gerätewerk Simson Suhl". Little by little the production of sporting guns, perambulators and bicycles started again.
The first motorbike I was ridning by myself MZ comes also from the old Simson Shul factory.

Check: http://unblinkingeye.com/Guns/Simson/simson.html