Eva Mendelsson

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Eva Mendelsson-Cohn (born March 27, 1931 in Gengenbach ) is a Jewish contemporary witness of the persecution of the Jews .

Life

Born the third child of Sylvia (1904–1942) and Eduard Cohn, Eva grew up in Offenburg . Her father was arrested during the Reichspogromnacht in 1938. He was released after six weeks for promising to leave the country. He fled to England , leaving the family behind.

Eva Cohn and her sisters had to attend a compulsory school for Jewish children in Freiburg . After the outbreak of war, the mother and the children fled from the bombs to Munich for a short time , where Eva's eldest sister Esther , partially paralyzed after an illness, was left in a children's home.

In 1940 Eva was deported to the Gurs camp together with many Jews from Baden, including her mother and sister Myriam, during the Wagner-Bürckel campaign . The two sisters were rescued by the organization Œuvre de Secours aux Enfants (OSE, German for children's aid organization ). Eva never saw her mother or sister Esther again. The mother was murdered in Auschwitz , the sister was killed in Theresienstadt .

During the war Eva and Myriam Cohn lived in overcrowded children's homes in France and Switzerland. After the war the sisters moved to live with their father in England. After finishing school, Eva Cohn worked in the hotel industry. In 1954 she married Wolfgang Mendelsson (died 2000), with whom she has three children. Today she lives in London and works as a textile artist.

Eva Mendelsson-Cohn contributed to the editing of poems and letters from her mother Sylvia Cohn.

literature

  • Eva Mendelsson, Martin Ruch (eds.): Sylvia Cohn. Poems and letters: selected and published for the 100th birthday of the Offenburg writer on May 5, 2004 , Norderstedt: Books on Demand GmbH 2004 ISBN 383340678X
  • Martin Ruch: The Cohn family. Diaries, letters, poems by a Jewish family from Offenburg , publications by the Cultural Office, vol. 17. Offenburg: Reiff Schwarzwaldverlag 1992 ISBN 3922663168
  • Martin Ruch: We have now been starved. The diary of Esther Cohn from Offenburg and the children from Munich's Antonienheim , Norderstedt: Books on Demand GmbH 2006 ISBN 3833454733

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ a b c d Lecture against forgetting - Eva Mendelsson-Cohn on February 3, 2012 at the Theodor-Heuss-Realschule in Offenburg, report on Baden Online.
  2. ↑ Interview with Eva Mendelsson on the Radio Dreyeckland website.
  3. ↑ On the OSE in German cf. Kerstin Muth: Hidden children. Trauma and survival of the "hidden children" under National Socialism. Psychosozial, Göttingen 2004 ISBN 3898069370 p. 12. The book can be read online. For the rest, see the French Wikipedia in detail on the OSE
  4. ↑ Pictures and curriculum vitae on Alemania Judaica. (PDF; 285 kB)
personal data
SURNAME Mendelsson, Eva
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Mendelsson-Cohn, Eva (full name)
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German contemporary witness of the persecution of the Jews
DATE OF BIRTH March 27, 1931
PLACE OF BIRTH Gengenbach