Meta (Miriam) Bonne, née Hönlein, lived in Bad Kissingen in the summer months of 1926 and 1927 and worked as a nursery school teacher at the Israelite Children's Sanatorium („Israelitische Kinderheilstätte“).

She was born in Nuremberg in November 1905, the second child of Jakob Michael Hönlein and his wife Hannchen, née Schlachter, one year after her brother Joseph (1904 - 1998) was born. Meta's father came from Ermreuth in the district of Forchheim and was a butcher by profession. In 1903, he married Hannchen Schlachter from Braunsbach (a village in the Franconian region of Hohenlohe in the district of Schwäbisch Hall in Baden-Württemberg) in Ansbach and moved to Nuremberg with her. In the city centre, in Kohlengasse, the family owned a residential building on the ground floor of which was Jakob Hoenlein's kosher butcher's shop, whose customers were mainly members of the Orthodox Jewish community.

Meta first attended primary school in nearby Karthäusergasse and then went to a girls' secondary school. The Hoenleins belonged to the orthodox Jewish community, but also had good contacts with their non-Jewish neighbours. They employed a non-Jewish maid and rented out part of the house to a non-Jewish family. Meta was very open-minded and adventurous and enjoyed going to the cinema, the opera, concerts and lectures. (see USC Shoa Foundation interview with Miriam Bonne). In her circle of friends, Jewish and non-Jewish acquaintances met up for joint activities at the weekend.

Meta Hönlein first came to Bad Kissingen at the beginning of May 1926 and worked as a kindergarten teacher at the Israelite Children's Sanatorium in Salinenstraße until mid-October. She worked there again in the summer months the following year and finally returned to Nuremberg in October 1927. She obviously remembered her time in Bad Kissingen, as her granddaughter Linda writes: "I remember my grandmother telling me about working at the kindergarten. She said her voice would get sore from singing (Linda Nachenberg February 19, 2024).

In 1929, Meta met her future husband Martin Bonne at an event organised by the Orthodox Jewish community. In May 1933, she married the fur and skin merchant, and a year later their daughter Beatrice (1934 - 2010) was born.The couple realised early on that the situation in Germany would worsen for them as a result of Nazi rule. „In Dec. of 1933, Miriam went by boat to Israel (Italy to Haifa) to visit her brother-in-law, Alfred Bonne, and to check out Israel and see if it was a suitable place to live. At the time her husband was a businessman and bought and sold animal hides to be tanned. Her brother-in-law discouraged her from moving to Israel because of Martin Bonne’s profession…‚We don’t need business men, we need farmers’" (according to Miriam Bonne)

Meta and her husband then travelled to the Netherlands to explore the possibility of emigrating, but this attempt also failed, as did plans to emigrate to Portugal. They also applied for the American quota, but the waiting time was very long and they didn't know anyone in the States who could help them. (ibid)

As the situation became increasingly threatening at the end of 1938, Martin's brother Walter visited Meta in hospital, who had just given birth to their son Jakob, and told her that he was planning to emigrate to Cuba. There was a way to enter Cuba. A transit visa could be obtained from the American consulate. This would allow you to stay in the USA for 24 hours and then travel to another country. And it was still possible to travel to Cuba without a visa at that time. Meta then suggested that her husband do the same.

„Martin was reluctant to leave his wife with a 4 year old (Beatrice Bonne), and a newborn (Jack Bonne), but Miriam urged her husband to get out of Germany. She held the belief that maybe he could do more for the family (trying to get them out of Germany) from outside of the country, and hopefully women and children won’t be harmed. He left!" (ibid)

Meta also tried to persuade her mother to flee to Cuba with her, but she refused because she didn't want to be a burden on the young family and found it hard to imagine starting a completely new life in a foreign country (see interview with Miriam Bonne).

The rescue of Meta and her children turned out to be extremely dramatic and Meta's brother Joseph played an important role. „Joseph Hoenlein, who was a worldwide traveling salesman. Joseph Hoenlein had a friend/colleague that he worked with by the last name of Rasmussen. Rasmussen had married the Havanna mayor's daughter. Martin Bonne, who was now in Cuba, went to the Mayor of Havana and explained the situation, and that he would like to get his family out of Germany. The mayor gave Martin visas, which he sent to Miriam Bonne!" (ibid).
Meta and her two children boarded the St. Louis in Hamburg on 13 May 1939, which was to take 937 Jewish refugees to Cuba. The ship arrived in Cuba on 25 May 1939, but was not allowed to dock in Havana and had to anchor outside. The Cuban government declared the passengers' entry permits invalid after it was discovered that the Cuban Director General of Immigration, Manuel Benito Gonzalez, had sold entry permits for Cuba throughout Europe in order to make money. Most of the passengers only had these papers and were not allowed to enter the country.

Meta and her children were among the 29 Jewish passengers who had a valid visa and were allowed ashore. Martin Bonne was able to take his wife and children into his arms. The family remained in Cuba until November, when their quota number in the USA was reached. They sailed on the ship "Oriente" from Havana to New York and settled in Brooklyn (cf. ibid.).

The St. Louis had to leave Cuba with its passengers and the captain then headed for the US coast to dock at a harbour. However, the US government also refused to accept the refugees, so over 900 Jewish refugees were brought back to Europe and, after a four-week odyssey, were taken in by England, Belgium, the Netherlands and France. Around a quarter of them were later murdered by the National Socialists.

Meta's mother Hannchen managed to escape from Germany with the help of her son Joseph. Joseph Hoenlein describes the details of the complicated rescue: "We had taken them out of Germany in 1939 and settled them in Belgium, from where we brought them to Marseille after the invasion of unoccupied France. As I feared - and not without good reason, as recent events show - that she would not be safe from racial persecution there either, I managed to get her to Casablanca, and after my cousin, who lives in Cuba, had obtained an entry visa for that country, I got the ticket to Cuba" (letter from Joseph Hoenlein to Cuban President Fulgencio Batista, 19 October 1942). In this letter, he asks the president to release his 69-year-old mother, who had been detained in a transit camp after her arrival in Cuba. It is not known when Hannchen Hoenlein was released and when she travelled to the USA; she died in New York in January 1959.

Meta's brother Joseph survived the Nazi era. He emigrated to Colombia (it is not yet known when) and acquired Colombian citizenship. After emigrating, he called himself Jose Hoenlein and lived in Bogota. According to the family, the internationally active businessman often visited his sister in the United States. He died in Bogota in December 1998.  However, both the Koblenz Memorial Book and the Yad Vashem database contain an entry stating that Joseph Hönlein was deported to Riga-Jungfernhof on 29 November 1941. Yad Vashem states that he was murdered. Whether this is a mistake or whether there was a second Joseph Hoenlein in Nuremberg with the same date of birth (6 June 1904) has not yet been clarified. Linda Nachenberg, his great-niece, who had known Joseph (Jose) herself, writes that nothing is known in the family about a deportation (Linda Nachenberg, email of Feb.19, 2024).

Meta's husband Martin had also reopened a fur trading business in the USA after emigrating; he died in October 1982. Meta Bonne, who was always called Miriam Bonne after her emigration, was - in the words of her granddaughter Linda - hardworking and tenacious. „I believe that helped her survive, escaping Nazi Germany and having to start life all over in a new country, where she didn't speak the language. Her and my grandfather went through tough times trying to build their life over again (especially financially). Her characteristics also enabled her to live 5 months short of a 100. In other words ‚she was a tough old bird‘". Meta Miriam Bonne died in New York in June 2005, shortly before her 100th birthday. After her emigration, she never visited Germany or her native city of Nuremberg again.

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