Gustav Gabriel Cohn

Eintrag im »Gedenkbuch« des Bundesarchivs:

• Cohn, Gustav Gabriel
• geboren am 16. Juli 1863
• in Rawitsch (poln. Rawicz)/Posen
• wohnhaft in Hamburg
• DEPORTATION
• ab Hamburg
• 15. Juli 1942, Theresienstadt, Ghetto
• TODESDATUM
• 10. September 1942
• TODESORT
• Theresienstadt, Ghetto

cf.: https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Liste_der_Stolpersteine_in_Hamburg-Ro...ßen_A–H%29

Gustav Gabriel Cohn was born in Rawitsch in what was then Posen, the son of the Jewish religion teacher Markus Cohn and his wife Pauline née Brie. As a young man he went to Berlin, where he spent about ten years and completed his education at the Rabbinical Seminary. Still in Berlin, he then decided for a secular career as a banker and financial broker. He would compile a large private collection of Jewish religious literature during the course of his life. He stayed in Hamburg since about 1887, where he lived with his growing family since about 1900 in a spacious apartment in Grindelallee 166 , in which he expanded his library for almost four decades. His six sons were born between 1893 and 1910.

Since 1933, the Cohn family had been torn apart by the progressive persecution. Gustav Gabriel Cohn’s wife Ella died young in 1917. In 1935 the sons Adolph (Netherlands) and Leon (Palestine) went into exile. Marcus followed Adolph to the Netherlands in 1937, later went via London to Argentina. Son Simon fled to France in 1939. Only Nathan Walter stayed in Hamburg. Gustav Gabriel Cohn himself had to change houses several times. He first moved to a smaller apartment in the Klosterallee. In 1942 he was forced to live in Dillstrasse 15, one of the so-called „Judenhäuser“ in which Jews were quartered in very cramped conditions.

He probably took at least part of his library there. Jakob Katzenstein, a friend of Cohn, described Cohn’s relationship with his books after the war: „At the time of Mr. Cohn’s deportation, I was still in Hamburg and saw Mr. Cohn one day before the deportation. [%E2%80%A6] The thought that Mr. Cohn voluntarily gave away his library or parts of it is simply absurd. [%E2%80%A6] Even serious economic hardship could not have caused Mr. Cohn to give up his books. I’m even convinced that Mr. Cohn would have preferred to go hungry rather than part with his books.“

The persecution took on life-threatening traits for Gustav Gabriel Cohn and his sons in the summer of 1942. On July 11th 1942, Nathan Walter Cohn was deported from Hamburg to Auschwitz at the age of 47. Gustav Gabriel Cohn himself was deported four days later to Theresienstadt. Adolph Cohn, who now had a wife and two children in Amsterdam, went into hiding. In August, Simon Cohn was arrested in France and deported via Drancy to Auschwitz.

Gustav Gabriel Cohn and his sons Nathan Walter and Simon did not survive the Holocaust. Adolph Cohn and his family had to change their hiding place until the end of the war. His sons Michal and Uriel, at the age of two and five, were hidden on farms, often separated from their parents. They were extremely lucky to have survived. Adolph’s son Uriel Cohn now lives near Jerusalem and will take the books of his grandfather back into the family’s possession.

See: [http://www.lootedart.com/news.php?r=SX79B9263631]