Leon Cohen

Leon Cohen

Leon Cohen (Greek: Λεών Κοέν; 15 January 1910 in Thessaloniki, Greece – in August 1989 in Bat Yam, Israel), was a Greek Jewish survivor of the Auschwitz concentration camp. He was a member of the Sonderkommando in Birkenau from May to November 1944. He was one of the only three members of the Sonderkommando who wrote his memoirs after the war,[1] along with Filip Müller[2] and Marcel Nadjari.[3] He took part in the preparation of the Sonderkommando uprising.

  1. ^ See Gideon Greif, We wept without tears, Yale University Press, 2005, p. 80 : Only five former members of this unit published memoirs : Marcel Nadjari, Leon Cohen, Filip Müller, , Miklos Nyiszli, and Zalman Gradowski. We can consider that the last writer mentioned by Dr. Greif, Dr. Miklos Nyiszli, may not be really part of the Sonderkommando, as he was performing autopsies for Dr. Josef Mengele, even if he was living with the members of the Sonderkommando. The other books about Sonderkommando members, such as Shlomo Venezia or Daniel Behnnamias, are testimonies or interviews, and not strictly speaking memoirs.
  2. ^ Filip Müller, Eyewitness Auschwitz: Three Years in the Gas Chambers, Stein and Day, 1979.
  3. ^ Marcel Nadjary, Χρονικό 1941–1945 [Chronicle], Ιδρυμα Ετσ - Αχα'ι'μ, Thessaloniki, 1991.