ERIKA (KATY) SIMONS was born in Amsterdam, Holland on February 13, 1911 and died in Winnipeg, MB on February 16, 2005. Katy was the daughter of a Jewish father and a Mennonite mother, and her long and productive life reflected this heritage. During the Second World War, Katy and other family members risked their lives to save Jewish people from the Holocaust. The Germans imprisoned Katy and after six weeks her mother managed to barter her release by giving a Nazi officer a handcrafted doll. In 2002, Katy was awarded the Righteous Amongst the Nations Award from the Israeli government for her war efforts on behalf of Jewish people. Katy was the only Canadian to receive the award in that year from Yad Vashem, the Holocaust museum and memorial centre in Jerusalem. Katy is quoted as saying “I don’t remember if I was afraid, it didn’t matter. You just did what you needed to do. It is simple. If you can save a life, you do it”.

Despite the knowledge that their home could be searched at any time, it was not uncommon for Simons family – comprised of Katy, her mother and two younger siblings, to be hiding at least one Jewish person. Time passed without incident but then one evening a warning cane through the underground that soldiers were coming to search the Simons’ home. A young woman was staying with them at that time. “We hid her under my father’s writing desk. They searched from one home to the next, but then decided to stop just before they came to our house”. Despite the close call the Simons continued to help other Jews and were finally caught and imprisoned by the Nazi’s “Four people shared a cell built for one” remembers Katy. The four prisoners took turns sleeping on the single straw mattress. When guards permitted one of Simons’ cell mates to send a letter home she slipped in her own note into the envelope. “I was worried because my family was still hiding the Jewish girl in our house”. Katy carefully printed a note on a scrap of toilet paper and waited. “Once a fortnight we received fresh laundry from home. My mother sewed a note into the hem of my pyjamas…then I knew they were all okay”

The young woman hidden by the Simons family, named Eva Weissman, survived the war and eventually emigrated to the United States. Weissman stayed in touch with Katy and is the person who nominated Katy for the special humanitarian award from Israel.

Katy trained in England to be a nurse and came to Manitoba in 1961 to work in the T.B. sanitarium in Ninette. Many of her patients were children from the far north and Katy has been described as their guardian angel. She introduced unconventional treatments such as bringing a cat into the wards. When she was in her 60s, Katy enrolled at University of Winnipeg to pursue her lifelong dream of a university education. She studied under Professor Don Bailey, another long time Unitarian Church member, and even left hospital early after a surgery to attend his class.

Katy was a vigorous and active member of many groups, including the Unitarian Universalist Church, Veterans Against Nuclear Arms, and the Humanist Association of Manitoba. She advocated strongly for peace and social justice.

Content summarized from Winnipeg Free Press Passages and University of Winnipeg Alumni Journal Fall 2002.