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Colonel Frank Cohen, 100, recounts childhood in Breslau, escape in 1938 and service in U.S. Army
Summary
Colonel Frank Cohen described being the only Jewish child in his Breslau school, his family's narrow escape to New York in October 1938, subsequent drafting and naturalization in the U.S. Army, and work as an interpreter supporting war‑crimes prosecutions; he said he later learned extended family members died in concentration camps.
Colonel Frank Cohen, introduced as a Holocaust survivor and U.S. Army veteran, delivered a detailed personal testimony at the 33rd Annual Federal Interagency Holocaust Remembrance Program about persecution in Nazi Germany, his family's emigration to the United States in October 1938, and his wartime service.
Cohen described childhood humiliations and mounting exclusion after Adolf Hitler rose to power, recalling that by third grade his teacher arrived in Nazi uniform and he became an outcast. "I was the only Jewish kid in the class," he said, recounting beatings and the family's decision to move him to a Jewish private school.
He told the audience his father traveled to the United States to seek affidavits of support and that his family left Germany on Oct. 30, 1938. Cohen described arrival in New York, seeing the Statue of Liberty, and the relief when a policy change after Kristallnacht allowed them to remain.
Drafted in September 1943, Cohen said he was initially labeled an "enemy alien" because he had been born in Germany. After an FBI review he was cleared for service; he trained at Fort Benning and said he was subsequently naturalized in the Army. "I was sworn in as a U.S. citizen. And boy, was I proud. I was now a U.S. citizen and just as good as everybody," he said.
During the occupation, Cohen worked as a German‑speaking interpreter and assisted in locating names and records related to victims. He described traveling to Red Cross offices and finding lists that showed relatives had been taken to places including Terezin and Auschwitz; several extended‑family members were not on liberation lists and thus presumed to have died. He emphasized names over numbers when possible but said records showed 11 members of his extended family perished.
The moderator, Claire McMahon of the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum, guided the conversation and posed a final audience question about what liberation meant to Cohen; he replied that becoming an American soldier changed his status from victim to someone entrusted to follow the rule of law in administration of occupation duties.
The program then continued with remarks from State Department officials.
