Chicago woman saved family from Holocaust, escaping Germany for Shanghai ghetto

[Behind the Aegis]

Pauline Cohn was a tigress when it came to protecting her family. She had to be.

In 1938, when anti-Semitic mobs rampaged across Germany, destroying Jewish businesses and synagogues, she was a shaken but determined wife and mother. Her husband was imprisoned in the Dachau concentration camp. Her baby boy was only months old.

After Kristallnacht, the “Night of Broken Glass,” Mrs. Cohn masterminded her family’s escape. Germany had spent the 1930s taking away the rights of the Jewish people and pressuring them to emigrate.

Mrs. Cohn bargained with Nazi functionaries. She finessed and assured them. She pledged her family would leave.

Based on her promises, her husband Walter was freed from Dachau, which was a jail for political prisoners before it became part of Hitler’s killing machinery.

Thanks to her tenacity, the Cohns escaped and sailed to the port of Shanghai, a wartime haven for an estimated 20,000 Jews from Germany, Austria, Lithuania and Poland. Most countries required papers to gain entry, but China did not.

more of a very interesting read: http://www.suntimes.com/news/obituaries/26463995-418/pauline-cohn-saved-family-from-holocaust-by-escaping-germany-for-shanghai-ghetto.html

[Solly Mack]

1. K&R