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“With the stamp ‘Jew,’ you couldn’t go to any public space, train station, bus station.
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Her family went about their business in the face of creeping restrictions on Jews’ daily lives.
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She and her six siblings spoke German with their parents, but spoke French among themselves. Her parents had grown up when Germany controlled the region, hence they spoke only German. But in a twist of fate, her homeland soon fell under Nazi rule also. Her family provided shelter for Jews fleeing the Nazis. Infiltrating Enemy LinesĬohn was born in 1920 and lived just across the German border in France when Hitler came to power. How did a young woman from a devout Orthodox family with a rabbi as a grandfather end up becoming a spy? That’s a story Cohn only recently started to share with audiences across the world. Photo credit: Chrissy Plotner / Chabad Intown Atlanta She learned where the soldiers were going next and was able to alert Allied commanders.Ĭourageously accepting life-threatening missions into German territory, the tiny blonde never mentioned to her superiors that she was Jewish. Risking death, Cohn traveled throughout the countryside and troops believed her story that she was a German nurse trying to find out what had happened to her Nazi fiancé after the Allies captured him. Thanks to her perfect German accent, she was able to slip behind enemy lines and retrieve inside information about Nazi troop movements. Tougher than some might expect, Cohn joined the French Army and became a member of the intelligence service of the French First Army. “They took me for a bimbo,” the diminutive 97 year old recently told an Atlanta audience. In her 20s she was a svelte blonde with blue eyes and fair skin. Marthe Cohn was an unlikely French spy behind German lines in World War II.