Samson “Cioma” Schönhaus is a German graphic artist and writer born on September 28, 1922 in Berlin, who during World War II was persecuted by the Gestapo for his Jewish origin and for falsifying passports.

Cioma Schönhaus is the son of Russian emigrated parents. A deserter from the Red Army in 1920, his father settled with the family in Berlin. From 1924 to 1925, the family moved near Haifa (Palestine), but then returned to Berlin. In 1940, he attended an art school for a year. From 1941, he had to work in an armaments factory.

After the deportation of his parents in June 1942, he went underground creating false passports for other Jews, including that of the historian Ernst Ludwig Ehrlich. For this he used various names such as Günther Rogoff, Peter Schón and Peter Petrov.

Schönhaus managed to escape to Switzerland in 1943, where he obtained a scholarship. At the art school in Basel he trained as a graphic designer and later worked on it. He has four children, two of them career musicians.

In 2004 he published The Passport Forger, the fictionalized memoir of him.