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Rosa Cohn * 1882

Lübecker Straße 102 (Hamburg-Nord, Hohenfelde)

HIER WOHNTE
ROSA COHN
JG. 1882
DEPORTIERT 1942
THERESIENSTADT
1944 AUSCHWITZ
ERMORDET

further stumbling stones in Lübecker Straße 102:
Rudolph(f) Cohn

Rosa Cohn, born 17 May 1882 in Lübeck, deported on 19 July 1942 to the Theresienstadt Ghetto, transported on 15 May 1944 to the Auschwitz concentration and extermination camp, murdered there
Rudolf Cohn, born on 16 Jan. 1888 in Lübeck, deported on 18 Nov. 1941 to Minsk, perished there

Lübecker Strasse 102

The couple Sara and Moritz Cohn had four children, one girl and three boys: Rosa, Iwan, Rudolf, and Bruno. Moritz Cohn was born in 1843. His parents were Ephraim Herz and Rosalie, née Guthmann. A native of Schwerin, his wife Sara also came from a Cohn family. However, she and her husband were not related. Moritz Cohn worked in Lübeck as a wholesaler for paper goods and blue dyes. The latter were used for coloring glass, ceramics, fabrics, and paper. He also operated a lottery company at the same business address. All four children were also born in Lübeck: Three and a half years after Rosa, Iwan was born, followed three years later by Rudolf and another two years after that, in 1890, by Bruno.

As early as 1910, at the age of 25, Iwan Cohn emigrated to Sweden. There he changed his first name to Iwar. Around 1917, Rosa, Rudolf, and Bruno also left Lübeck together with their parents and moved to Lübecker Strasse 102 in Hamburg-Hohenfelde. In 1919, Bruno married Clara Laser, two years his senior and also Jewish. She lived in Harburg, which at that time did not belong to Hamburg, but to Prussia as part of the Province of Hannover. Bruno moved in with her and they had a daughter in the year after the wedding, 1920, whom they named Hildegard (see Stolpersteine in Hamburg-Harburg and Hamburg-Wilhelmsburg and www.stolpersteine-hamburg.de). In the same year, they opened a shop in Harburg for men and women’s fashion, which they called "Sa-La.”

At the beginning of 1920, Rudolf and Rosa Cohn and their parents joined the Hamburg German-Israelitic Community. Only a few months later, in November of the year, his father, Moritz Cohn, died at the age of 77. He was buried in the Jewish Cemetery on Ilandkoppel.

Rudolf Cohn was seriously injured as a soldier in the First World War and was subsequently considered 30 percent war-disabled. He had completed commercial training and worked from his apartment on Lübecker Strasse, initially as a knitwear manufacturer, and from 1931 as a sales representative for advertising articles. His sister Rosa was employed as a typist. In 1934 – the National Socialists had been in power for over a year – Rosa Cohn became unemployed. In 1936, she found employment again, but from the amount of the Jewish religious tax (Kultussteuer) payment, one can infer that she earned very little. In the same year, Iwar Cohn was employed in Sweden by the Svea Textil Company as a travelling salesman (representative). Unlike his three siblings and his mother, he was not threatened by the increasing deprivation of rights, harassment, and persecution by the Nazis due to his early emigration.

At the beginning of Mar. 1941, Rudolf Cohn received a letter from the foreign currency office of the Hamburg Chief Finance Administrator (Oberfinanzpräsident). Under Sec. 1 of the "Ordinance on the Use of Jewish Assets” ("Verordnung über die Anmeldung des Vermögens von Juden”) dated 3 Dec. 1938, it ordered him to liquidate his company by 31 Mar. 1941 and to have his business enterprise deleted from the company register. This measure was a building block of the anti-Semitic measures of the National Socialists threatening the livelihood of Jews, and it deprived Rudolf of the basis of livelihood.

In the same year, on 8 Nov. 1941, Rosa and Rudolf’s brother Bruno together with his wife Clara were deported to Minsk. Both died in the ghetto there. In 1939, they had been able to get their daughter Hildegard to safety on a children transport (Kindertransport) to Britain.

Ten days later, on 18 Nov. 1941, Rudolf Cohn, 53, was also taken to the Minsk Ghetto. There he was killed, though the exact date of his death is not known.

His mother, Sara Cohn, moved from her apartment on Lübecker Strasse to the Jewish Nursing Home at Grünestrasse 5 in Altona, today’s Kirchenstrasse, in the early 1940s. She died on 5 Feb. 1942 at the age of 86 and was buried near her husband Moritz in the Jewish Cemetery on Ilandkoppel in Ohlsdorf.

After her brother Rudolf was deported and her mother moved out, Rosa Cohn had to give up her apartment on Lübecker Strasse and move into the "Jews’ house” ("Judenhaus”) at Grindelallee 23. Most of the furniture and household effects from the apartment where she had lived with her brother and mother for about 20 years were auctioned off, with the very modest proceeds going to the Chief Finance Administrator.

In July 1942, she got the deportation order to Theresienstadt delivered to her address on Grindelallee. On 19 July 1942, she was taken to the ghetto, where she survived for almost two years despite hunger, epidemics, and cold. On 15 May 1944, two days before her sixty-ninth birthday, she was deported together with 2,500 other Jews from Theresienstadt to Auschwitz. Of these deportees, 2,364 were murdered, including Rosa Cohn.

Iwan Cohn was the only one of the four siblings to survive the Shoah. He died in Stockholm in 1950 at the age of 65.


Translator: Erwin Fink
Kindly supported by the Hermann Reemtsma Stiftung, Hamburg.

Stand: December 2019
© Frauke Steinhäuser

Quellen: 1; 2; 4; 5; 7; 8; 9; StaH 214-1 Gerichtsvollzieherwesen 212; StaH 314-15 Oberfinanzpräsident R 1941/63; StaH 522-1 Jüd. Gemeinden 992 d Steuerakten Bd. 5; StaH 522-1 Jüd. Gemeinden 390 Wählerliste 1930; StaH 522-1 Jüd. Gemeinden Nr. 992 e 2 Bd. 2, Transport nach Minsk am 08. November 1941; StaH 522-1 Jüd. Gemeinden Nr. 992 e 2 Bd. 3, Transport nach Minsk am 18. November 1941; StaH 522-1 Jüd. Gemeinden Nr. 992 e 2 Bd. 25, Transport nach Theresienstadt am 19. Juli 1942; Lübeckisches Adreßbuch für 1900; Barbara Günther, Clara Cohn, in Günther u.a., Stolpersteine in Hamburg-Harburg und Hamburg-Wilhelmsburg, S. 294f.; Schmidt-Bachem, Aus Papier, S. 75; Walk, Sonderrecht, S. 262; Hamburger Adressbücher; Ilandkoppel Grabregister, PDF-Download von: Jüdischer Friedhof Altona, Friedhofsdatenbank, www.jüdischer-friedhof-altona.de/datenbank.html (letzter Zugriff 1.5.2015); Institut Theresienstädter Initiative/Nationalarchiv Prag, Datenbank der digitalisierten Dokumente, Rosa Cohn, online unter: www2.holocaust.cz/de/victims/PERSON.ITI.323701 (letzter Zugriff 1.5.2015); Rijksarkivet Stockholm, Referenskod SE/RA/730791 (Judiska (Mosaiska) församlingen i Stockholm, Iwar Cohns papper), http://sok.riksarkivet.se/?postid=ArkisRef+SE%2FRA%2F730791&type=2&s=TARKIS08_Balder (letzter Zugriff 1.5.2015).
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