Zvi Cohen - Part 1
- Brutal Nazi Torture of Jewish Boy & His Revenge - Nazi Berlin & Theresienstadt

18 April 2022

Category: Nazi Victims

May 1943, Berlin, Nazi Germany. Horst Cohn, 12 years old Jewish boy together with his parents are among to last Jews in Berlin to be deported to one of the Nazi concentration camps. After years of immense torture and humiliation, the worst is yet to come. The train’s destination is THERESIENSTADT – an evil Nazi concentration camp & ghetto in the Protectorate of Bohemia and Moravia. Horst Cohn was born on May 21, 1931 in Berlin and he was only 2 years old when Hitler came into power in 1933. Horst’s father was the only Jewish master tailor in all of Germany and his first memory relates to Berlin Olympics in 1936.

Although Nazis passed numerous anti-Jewish laws before the Olympics, Hitler wanted Olympics to be held in Germany and still curbed his behavior. However, after the 1936 Summer Olympics, life of Jews in Germany changed dramatically. In 1938 Horst’s grandfather was taken into Sachsenhausen concentration camp. Horst experienced the Nazi torture, too. On his way to school, he was beaten by Hitler’s youth almost every day. The so-called Aryan boys enjoyed beating him with 40 cm stick attached to 2.5 m long leather cord at the end of which was a metal ball. They beat him until he was covered with blood and laughed at it. When Horst, covered with blood, asked them “ why “, they replied “ because you are a Jew “.

Transport to Theresienstadt - concentration camp

When on May 7, 1943, two SS men knocked the door to deport Horst and his parents to the concentration camp, he was at home alone. He managed to call his parents to come home only after he had told the SS men he could play the harmonica. Horst played all the folk songs he had learned to play during the years where he had been closed at home like a prisoner. Suddenly, the SS guards saw a human being in Horst and let him wait for his parents. Horst and his parents were not put in cattle cars as it was happening in other parts of Europe, but instead on a passenger train so that people in Berlin wouldn’t see how the Germans were treating the Jews. Destination of the train was THERESIENSTADT – the evil Nazi concentration camp & ghetto in the Protectorate of Bohemia and Moravia.

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