Leon Cohen

Leon Cohen was born in 1910 in Thessaloniki

Leon Cohen was born in Thessaloniki on January 15, 1910. His father was a merchant who imported goods from Germany and Austria. He had two sisters, Agnes and Margot, and a brother, Robert.

He studied at the Leon Gatenyo business school, a French-German institution, and received a strong French education. He then worked at the Thessaloniki international fair and later for Decca Records. Before the occupation he supplied the Greek Ministry of Defense, and he was later drafted into the Greek army.

He was arrested in 1942 and escaped from the German prison in Thessaloniki. In 1943 he married Germaine Perahia, and the couple escaped the ghetto. He was arrested in Athens and held in the Haidari camp.

He arrived at Auschwitz in April 1944, where his mother and his sister Margot were murdered. From May he served in the Sonderkommando, mostly at Krematorium III, where he removed gold teeth from the dead. He took part in preparing the Sonderkommando uprising of October 7, 1944.

In January 1945 he joined the death march out of Auschwitz and passed through Mauthausen and other camps. He was liberated at Ebensee by the US Army in May 1945 and returned to Thessaloniki in August 1945. He had two children, Lily and Jean-Jose, and died in August 1989.