Walter Boninger (z”l)
June 21, 1928 – March 25, 2018
Birthplace: Hamburg, Germany
Religious Identity: Jewish
“I used to say I wasn’t a Holocaust survivor- I wasn’t in the camps, I wasn’t hidden, the only thing that happened to me is that my parents were killed when I was 11 years old in a Holocaust- related incident, and I’ve come to realize that I am a Holocaust survivor.”
Walter Boninger was born on June 21, 1928 in Hamburg, Germany. He was raised as an only child of two loving parents in an orthodox Jewish home. The family livied in peace until the Nazis were elected to power. The family experienced Kristallnacht, and Walter’s father was detained along with 30,000 other Jewish men. After two months he returned to the family, who had attained permission to leave the country. In 1939, the family boarded the Dutch liner SS Simon Bolivar on its way to Santiago, Chile. The ship struck mines laid by the Nazis in neutral merchant channels, killing both of Walters’s parents. He was returned on a fishing trawler to Harwich, England where he spent 10 months living in four different places.
Walter came to the U.S. in 1940, sponsored by a sister of his grandfather, who he stayed with upon his arrival. During a visit to see relatives, he met Julius Boninger, a cousin of his father, and his wife, Herda. Walter moved in with them, and though the couple never officially adopted him, they came to fill the role of his parents, and he stayed in their lives until they both passed away. He went on to earn his Bachelor of Music from UCLA, and a Master’s degree in Social Work, which was his career.
Walter passed away on March 25, 2018.
“For a good many years I was delivering vegetables from a vegetable store. They don’t have them anymore, they have supermarkets but this was a vegetable store. You got your vegetables in paper bags and I had to take them to be delivered. I kept a very detailed book, maybe it’s my Germanic roots. I kept a record of every delivery whether they gave me a tip and what their attitude was. I had that job for quite a while.”
-Biography adapted “In Celebration of Life: The Living Legacy Project” (2016)
More about Walter
Oral history interview with Walter Boninger
