Olga Wilhelmine Lina Semon

This biography was written based on information primarily sourced from the StolperSteine Project, which seeks to tell the stories of Jews displaced by or murdered during the Holocaust. It was compiled by Michaela Selway.

1941 Graduate

Life before New Zealand

Olga Wilhelmine Lina Semon was born on 22 March 1902 in Danzig, Prussia (now Gdańsk, Poland) to Max Julius and Fanny Semon (née Friedburg). (1) She was the third of three children: Elisabeth (born 27 August 1898), Hans Martin (born 22 July 1900), and Olga. Max was a gynaecologist, which may have inspired Olga to also pursue medical studies.

In 1923, Olga completed her first set of studies, as an infants and children’s nurse. She had originally hoped to study medicine but had been unable to obtain the funds to support this due to inflation after World War I. While studying, her parents divorced, and Fanny came to live with Olga in Jena. By 1929, Olga had completed her medical studies at the Friedrich Schiller Universität Jena. She obtained a position as an assistant physician in a children’s hospital in Karlsruhe, Germany, but was dismissed in 1933. The reason is unknown. Her next position was at a sanatorium in Berlin-Grunewald. It is unknown why, but in 1935, Olga changed career yet again and completed an examination in massage therapy. She subsequently moved to Hamburg and worked as a masseuse until the worsening conditions for Jews in Europe forced them to seek a life elsewhere.

Fanny and Olga arrived in New Zealand on one of the first refugee ships in 1938. It is unknown how they obtained a visa to New Zealand, especially considering it was extremely difficult to receive approval. Olga’s sister later emigrated to New Zealand and her brother escaped to Buenos Aires, Argentina. (1)

Retraining in Dunedin

Olga, along with fellow medical refugees Hilda Fleischl, Rachel Monk, and Catherine Newman, was in the first two intakes of the new course. The students entered into the fourth year of a standard medical programme and had to complete all four parts of the professional examinations. This could take a varying amount of time, depending on their knowledge of English.^[1] Olga completed her second professional exam in 1939, (5) the first section of her third professional exam in 1940, (6) and the second section of her third professional exam in 1941, along with Catherine Newman. (7) Hilda Fleischl completed her final examinations one year later in 1942 and Rachel Monk in 1943. The medical refugees could now practise in New Zealand, but their degrees were not conferred until around five years later, in 1947. This delay may have been on account of naturalisation, which had been halted for the duration of the war—Monk naturalised in May 1946, Newman in August 1946, and Fleischl and Semon in April 1947. (2) While she was studying, Olga supported herself and her mother by working as a masseuse.

An Unstable Career

After Olga graduated from the Otago Medical School, she moved to Waitakere, in West Auckland, where she attempted to establish a practice, which unfortunately failed. (3) In the 1949 census, her occupation is listed as ‘spinster’. (2) In 1954, Olga and Fanny moved back to Germany, where Olga attempted to open a practice in Bremen, which also failed. (1) In 1954, she was listed in the New Zealand Medical Register as living in England. Here, she attempted to open another practice in Kent, which also failed due to her worsening mental health. (1) Her brother, who also returned to Germany after the war, admitted her to the Eppendorf Psychiatric University Hospital for treatment. She was later treated at the Friedrich Husemann Clinic, where she was diagnosed with “uprooting depression of regression age”. When she was released, she moved back to England. (1) She died at the age of 90 on 20 December 1993 in St Martin’s Hospital in Canterbury.

Bibliography

1. “Auguste Friedburg * 1879,” Stolpersteine Hamburg, 2023, https://www.stolpersteine-hamburg.de/en.php?MAIN_ID=7&BIO_ID=1157.
2. Jillian Rothwell, Against All Odds: The Dramatic Story of Escape from the Horrors of Nazi-Occupied Vienna to a Life in New Zealand (Mangawhai, Northland, New Zealand: David Ling Publishing Limited, 2020), 120.
3. Grenville and Steinberg, “Restricted Refuge,” 115.
4. “Electoral Rolls, Auckland, Waitakere,” 1949.
5. Timaru Herald, 14 December 1939, Page 8.
6. New Zealand Herald, 14 December 1940, Page 18
7. Auckland Star, 8 January 1942, Page 3

Further Notes:

^[1] Georg Lemchen, for example, failed his final exam in the one-year course purely on account of his poor control of the English language. He was given a “special” the following year which he passed. Instances like these were one of the arguments for a three-year course as it assumed the refugees would have more time to catch up.