Marthe Cohn

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Marthe Cohn (* 13. April 1920 in Metz , France as Marthe hope ) is a French author and former spy .

Life

Marthe Cohn was born on April 13, 1920, as one of seven children of a Jewish Orthodox family in Metz, France. After her sister and fiancé, who were both active in the Resistance , were brought to Auschwitz and murdered there, the family fled to southern France . After Paris was liberated in November 1944, because of her good knowledge of German, Cohn joined the French secret service and was henceforth used as a spy in the German Reich to find out where troops were holed up and how the population still felt about the Nazi regime .

With the alias Martha Ulrich she traveled to the German Reich under the pretext of looking for her missing fiancé as a German nurse. After 14 failed attempts to cross the war front in Alsace , she managed to enter the German Reich via Switzerland near Schaffhausen . While working as a spy, Cohn reported two pieces of information to the French secret service. On the one hand, that the northwest of Freiburg was evacuated for the Siegfried Line and, on the other hand, where the exact positions of the German troops in the Black Forest were. She received the help of a Wehrmacht officer. The Allied troops were able to bypass the positions. After the Second World War she returned to France and worked as a nurse. In 1956 Marthe Cohn met the US medical student Major L. Cohn in Geneva . They married in 1959 and moved to the United States .

"If you don't know the past, you can't shape the future."

- Marthe Cohn

Marthe Cohn spoke in many lectures about her experiences as a spy. In 2002 she and Wendy Holden wrote a book about her spy experience; entitled Im Land des Feindes: A Jewish Spy in Nazi Germany . In 2019 the documentary film Chichinette - How I Accidentally Became a Spy by the German filmmaker Nicola Hens was released , which deals with the life and today's lectures of Marthe Cohn.

Awards

Works

  • In the land of the enemy: a Jewish spy in Nazi Germany . Schöffling & Company, 2018. ISBN 3-7317-6139-4 .

Filmography

  • 2019: Chichinette - How I Accidentally Became a Spy

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ a b c Mike Lingenfelser: Spy in Nazi Germany: Documentary about Marthe Cohn. Bayerischer Rundfunk, October 26, 2019, accessed on October 27, 2019 .
  2. ↑ a b Jessica Garrison: Past Catches Up to Palos Verdes Woman - Carrying a Medal. In: Los Angeles Times. July 14, 2000, accessed October 27, 2019 .
  3. ^ Cindy Mindell: Conversation with Marthe Cohn. In: Connecticut Jewish Ledger. June 24, 2015, accessed October 27, 2019 .
  4. ^ Kerstin Zilm: Alone among Germans. DLF, May 13, 2016, accessed October 27, 2019 .
personal data
SURNAME Cohn, Marthe
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Marthe hope
BRIEF DESCRIPTION French author and former spy
DATE OF BIRTH April 13, 1920
PLACE OF BIRTH Metz