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Message: <br /><br /> If you are having trouble reading this email, you may view this article online at: http://www.jweekly.com/19054/full/19054/100-year-old-s-f-volunteer-saved-jews-in-germany-china/ <br /><br /> <b>100-year-old S.F. volunteer saved Jews in Germany, China</b> <br /> Friday, January 3, 2003 | by <p>JOE ESKENAZI </p> <br /><br /><p>Casual acquaintances of Martha Cohn know her as the kindly old woman with a steel-trap mind who more or less keeps a double-entry bookkeeping system in her head.<br /><br /> Better friends know her as something more: The woman who fought the Gestapo—and won.<br /><br /> Cohn was a driving force behind the founding of the Holocaust Center of Northern California 27 years ago, and her extraordinary mind—still sharp at 100—allows her to instantly recall and process the mountains of information that came her way.<br /><br /> "She was my right and left hand," said Lonny Darwin, a co-founder of the Holocaust Center and longtime friend of Cohn's.<br /><br /> "Her mind is as clear as a bell. She will remember telephone numbers, facts and figures."<br /><br /> Adds survivor and speaker Tauba Weiss, "She knows everything; she knows it even better than the young people."<br /><br /> Yet the German-born Cohn's deft mind and iron will were put to a much grimmer test in her native land. Following Kristallnacht, her husband—a rabbi—and much of his congregation were seized by the Nazis and sent to the Sachsenhausen concentration camp outside Berlin.<br /><br /> Every day, Cohn visited the Gestapo's offices, demanding the release of her husband, Eric, and his congregation. And, after four weeks, the Gestapo assented.<br /><br /> "You have to lie a lot. If you tell the truth, they don't believe you. I went every day to the Gestapo in Berlin, all over. It was a hard, hard time. I didn't want him to be locked in a concentration camp," recalled Cohn in a precise German accent.<br /><br /> "People ask me to tell them how I did it. I cannot tell you how I did it. Every person, every Gestapo is different. One woman was at the Gestapo every day, very anti-Semitic. And she told the Gestapo guy, 'That woman is here again.' I said, 'Listen, keep your mouth shut. If you have something to tell, tell that policeman.'"<br /><br /> Cohn was not content to talk her husband and his congregants out of Sachsenhausen. After Eric was freed, they took a cab to the Gestapo headquarters and liberated several Torah scrolls Cohn had noticed lying on the floor. The Gestapo man she had dealt with for a month didn't want to argue with her anymore, she said.<br /><br /> Eventually, Cohn and her husband boarded a ship bound for Shanghai, where, once again, her abilities would be needed.<br /><br /> "There was one famous incident she told me about. On the ship, there were a lot of Jewish women from Vienna. They were in the first-class part of the ship while Martha and her husband were in the third-class or steerage. They all got dressed up for dinner every night, but she and her husband would always eat separately," said Barney Cohen, a former Holocaust Center volunteer who worked alongside Cohn for years.<br /><br /> "When they got to Shanghai, those people were absolutely helpless, and Martha had to arrange to feed them."<br /><br /> Utilizing her power of persuasion to smooth things out with the city's Japanese occupiers, Cohn set up a soup kitchen, feeding needy Jewish families.<br /><br /> How did she keep the kitchen stocked with food?<br /><br /> "Oh, we bought it," said Cohn with a slight giggle. "There are ways. There are always ways."<br /><br /> Cohn had more on her plate than running the soup kitchen, however. She was placed in a textile mill, working alongside Chinese female forced laborers. Cohn learned to keep up with the Chinese women, but conditions were not pleasant. At one point, in fact, the mill was bombed by Allied planes.<br /><br /> Following the war, Cohn and her husband made their way to America. After he served as a rabbi in Stockton for several years, the couple settled into the Geary Boulevard apartment Cohn has lived in for the past 50 years. Eric Cohn died young, but Martha—who eschewed driving and walked everywhere—remained a community fixture, earning the title "the Mayor of Geary Boulevard" from former state Sen. Milton Marks.<br /><br /> Her days of smart-talking Nazis or sweet-talking Japanese commanders long done, Cohn threw herself into volunteering within the Jewish community. Even into her late 90s, Cohn floored Holocaust Center volunteers with encyclopedic knowledge of donors past and present and well-honed bookkeeping skills. In the last several years, Cohn has done her work for the Holocaust Center from her apartment.<br /><br /> In addition to her supreme competence, Cohn's friends and co-workers relish her kindness, humor and, not surprisingly, amazing stories about Germany and Shanghai.<br /><br /> "She's about 5-foot-4 and I'm about 6 feet, so she once said to me, 'I like a man I can look up to,' and then she looked up at me,'" recalled Cohen.<br /><br /> Nowadays, Cohn says she doesn't think much about her days in Germany and China. But, when she does, her persistence, attitude and success surprise even her.<br /><br /> "You know, when I think about it, I really think it was unbelievable," she said. "If everyone would have done a little more, more Jews could have been saved. If everyone helped a little more, it would have been better."</p> <p> </p>

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