Zvi Cohen - Part 2
- Brutal Nazi Torture of Jewish Boy & His Revenge - Nazi Berlin & Theresienstadt

21 April 2022

Category: Nazi Victims

On May 7, 1943, Horst Cohn and his parents arrived in Theresienstadt on Horst’s 12th birthday. The first sentence they heard was “anyone who has valuables and doesn’t hand them over will be punished”. The prisoners slept in overcrowded triple decker wooden bunk beds and when somebody died during the night, they threw him down. In the morning, all dead corpses were collected. In the barracks there were only latrines for 100 people, no rest rooms. Humiliation and suffering knew no limits here.

Theresienstadt did not contain gas chambers, but it did contain crematorium. Crematorium was built because after the first 10 000 people died, there was no place to bury the others. To burn corpses in the furnace with a temperature of 2,500 degrees took from 10 to 17 minutes and all that remained was ash.

Transport to Switzerland

One day the order came from the SS about transport to Switzerland and prisoners were asked to volunteer. The inmates did not believe it was a train to Switzerland because they already knew the Nazi’s tricks and heard rumors about what was happening in other camps such as Auschwitz. Thus, the prisoners were hesitant as they did not want to die in gas chambers. In the end, 1,200 Jews including Horst and his parents volunteered and boarded the train dressed in their nicest clothes. The direction - Switzerland. While they were traveling through Germany, they saw the country in ruins and soldiers with amputated legs and arms in the Waffen SS trains.

The transport which brought Horst and his family to Switzerland was the first and the last one. Despite Hitler’s order to exterminate all the remaining Jews in concentration camps, Heinrich Himmler saw the end of the war approaching and wanted to save his own skin. Himmler negotiated this transport as a secret agreement with Swiss authorities in exchange for five million Swiss francs worth of medicine and relief supplies for Germany. 500,000 Jews were to be deported this way. However, when Adolf Hitler got to know about it, he immediately cancelled this activity and condemned his former faithful henchman for betrayal.

Horst and his family were allowed to stay in Switzerland for only 6 months. In August 1945, 5 months after their arrival, Horst and his parents boarded the British warship and sailed to Palestine. In Palestine, Horst Cohn changed his name and became Zvi Cohen. H This story is dedicated to our dear friend Zvi Cohen.

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