Cohen Yehoshua
Submitted by Chaya and Efrat Raz, Ashdod, Israel
Family Story: Yehoshua Cohen z”l
My daughter Efrat Raz is the granddaughter of my father Yehoshua Cohen z”l. As part of the requirements for her degree in History and Education at the Ben Gurion University, she was asked to select a person symbolizing a holocaust survivor as viewed by a Sabra (Israeli born).
Efrat selected her grandfather for this project. She was very proud of him and felt that his life was truly the reflection of the expression, From Holocaust to Revival.
My father Yehoshua Cohen was born in 1929 in Drohobycz in Galicia. He was the third child of David and Chaya Klara Kohn. He had two sisters Sarah (Lela), and Gila (Giza) and one brother, Benjamin. They had a business of poultry and also produced duvets from geese feathers. The family was very wealthy and they were known as very charitable people. It was a well-known fact that they offered their house for weddings of poor grooms and brides. The blue box of (of the Jewish National Fund) was always in their house where they donated and asked others to donate for Eretz Israel.
The Nazis’ occupation of Poland had tragic results for my father and his family.
This work was written in commemoration of my dear father and 150 members of the Kohn and Tarpner families: his parents, his sisters and brother, his aunts, uncles, cousins, proud Drohobycz people who perished in the Aktions, death camps, mass graves and who fought as partisans.
In commemoration of my father, the 12½ years old Holocaust survivor, who did not even have a chance to celebrate his Bar-Mitzvah, who survived the unimaginable, who had such a strong will to survive and strong desire to get to Israel and build a family.
The work describes bravery of a boy-young man who always remembered his Jewish roots thanks to what he had absorbed at home, his schemes, intuition and wisdom to survive in lost-case and impossible situations.
How we need to remember the Holocaust
Interview with Jacob Sztorch about Yehoshua Cohen
ראיינה: דניאלה מבור
צילם: הנכד של יעקב- אלון יששכר
Yehoshua Cohen Life Story
