Content warning: This article discusses historical events related to persecution, deportation, and the Holocaust, which may be distressing. Its aim is to educate about the resilience of survivors and the importance of remembrance, encouraging reflection on human rights and the dangers of discrimination.

Zvi Cohen, born Horst Cohn on May 21, 1931, in Berlin, Germany, endured the horrors of Nazi persecution as one of the last Jewish children deported from the city in 1943. At the age of 12, he and his parents were sent to the Theresienstadt ghetto camp, surviving amidst starvation and death. Through resourcefulness and luck, they escaped to Switzerland on a secret transport and eventually reached Palestine. Renaming himself Zvi Cohen, he rebuilt his life. This analysis, based on Cohen’s personal account and historical sources such as the Theresienstadt Memorial, provides an objective view of his story, highlighting the triumph of survival over Nazi terror.

Childhood in Nazi Berlin
Horst Cohn was born into a Jewish family in Berlin, where his father was the only Jewish master tailor in Germany. At the age of two, Adolf Hitler became Chancellor in 1933, unleashing a wave of anti-Semitic laws. Horst’s earliest memory was of the 1936 Berlin Olympics, when the Nazis temporarily halted their open persecution in the eyes of the international community. After the Olympics, life took a turn for the worse: his grandfather was sent to Sachsenhausen in 1938.

Horst faced daily violence on his way to school, being beaten by Hitler Youth with a 40 cm stick attached to a 2.5 m leather cord ending in a metal ball. Covered in blood, he asked “why” and was told, “because you’re Jewish.” Confined to his home, he learned to play folk songs on the harmonica, a skill that later saved him.

Deportation to Theresienstadt
On May 7, 1943, Horst’s twelfth birthday, two SS men knocked on the door. Alone, Horst delayed them by playing his harmonica and calling his parents home. Unlike other cattle cars, they were traveling on a passenger train to conceal the deportation from Berliners. Destination: Theresienstadt, a ghetto-camp in Bohemia and Moravia, Protectorate of Bohemia and Moravia.

Upon arrival, the first order was to hand over valuables or face punishment. The overcrowded barracks had triple-decker bunks; deaths at night led to corpses being dumped and collected in the morning. The latrines served 100 people, with no privacy. Theresienstadt lacked gas chambers, but it had a crematorium for the first 10,000 dead, burning the bodies at 2,500 degrees Celsius in 10 to 17 minutes, leaving ashes.

The secret transport to Switzerland

Rumors of extermination spread, but in 1945 an SS order offered “transport to Switzerland” for volunteers. Skeptical of Nazi trickery, only 1,200 people, including Horst’s family, volunteered, dressed in their finest clothes. The train passed through devastated Germany, carrying wounded Waffen-SS soldiers.

This was Heinrich Himmler’s secret agreement with the Swiss authorities for 5 million Swiss francs worth of medicine and supplies for Germany, in exchange for 500,000 Jews. Hitler, upon learning of this, canceled it as an act of treason. Horst’s family remained in Switzerland for six months and then boarded a British warship bound for Palestine in August 1945. Horst became Zvi Cohen.

Postwar Life and Legacy
In Palestine (later Israel), Zvi rebuilt his life, served in the IDF, and started a family. His story, shared in interviews, highlights the ingenuity of survival (such as the harmonica delay) and the cruelty of Nazi deception.

Theresienstadt, a “model ghetto” for propaganda purposes, masked 33,000 deaths. Zvi’s escape, one of the few, underscores luck and resilience.

Historians see his account as a testament to the resilience of child survivors amidst 6 million Jewish deaths.

Zvi Cohen’s journey from a tortured Berlin child to a Theresienstadt survivor and a free Israeli embodies the resilience of the human spirit. His harmonica stratagem and his escape to Switzerland defied Nazi intentions. For history enthusiasts, Zvi’s story urges us to remember the victims of the Holocaust, to discuss the dangers of discrimination, and to commit to human rights. Resources such as the Theresienstadt Memorial ensure accurate education and promote a tolerant future.