Alice Ruth Cohn

Jacob Lentz | Alice Cohn

The National Holocaust Museum (currently in the process of development) presents the stories of two people who were closely involved with wartime identity cards. These identity cards were introduced in the Netherlands at the start of the Second World War. This led to the death of many people. Jacob Lentz was the inventor of the identity cards, and Alice Cohn was a Jewish woman who forged them. The exhibition Identity Cards and Forgeries: Jacob Lentz | Alice Cohn explores how each of them was connected to these documents. An impressive installation by the visual artist Robert Glas shows how ingenious Lentz’s creation was.

The exhibition weaves together Lentz’s story with that of Alice Cohn (1914-2000), a German Jewish graphic artist who had fled to the Netherlands in 1936. In her work for the Dutch resistance, she proved that Lentz’s supposedly perfect identity card could be forged. Working in secret, she used blank documents, exchanged photographs, and altered details, saving the lives of hundreds of people. Alice Cohn’s story, and her work for the resistance, are as good as unknown in the Netherlands because she emigrated after the war. Her story shows the need to rethink the prevailing, but incorrect, image that Dutch Jews had a passive role during the war.

The National Holocaust Museum will exhibit much of Cohn’s personal archive, which she kept throughout her life, and which is now in the possession of her daughter. It includes dozens of test cards, forged documents, falsely stamped papers, her tools, and blank identity cards. One noteworthy item is a notebook containing exercises for forging a signature. Alongside the objects from Cohen’s archive, the museum will display identity cards from its own collection, which illustrate how many different ways they could be forged and falsified.

Bronnen/sources:

• Reformatorisch Dagblad; ‘Juultje’ –Alice Cohn– zwoegde op vervalst persoonsbewijs
• Werk onbekende vervalser in Holocaust Museum
• Archiefkaart A'dam