Walter Simon was born in Berlin on June 10, 1893 as the son of the librarian Heinrich Simon (1858–1930) and his wife Cläre (née Abraham, d. in Theresienstadt concentration camp). From 1911 to 1914 he studied Romance and Classical philology at Friedrich-Wilhelms University, Berlin. After a hiatus serving Germany in military intelligence during the first World War (1915–1918), Simon earned his doctorate in 1919 with a dissertation on the Saloniki (Thessaloniki) dialect of Ladino (Judeo-Spanish) (1920), as well as a dipl…