Marthe cohn biography examples
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The Spy’s Tale
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March 27, 2011By Joseph Wakelee-
On Sunday, March 27, a small, frail woman with a big story came to LMU: Marthe Cohn, spy.
Cohn, born in 1920, is a French Jew who was raised in a family that spoke German as well as they spoke French. Her fluency made her valuable in the Second World War to French intelligence officers, who in January 1945 needed information about size and movements of the retreating German armies. Her command of the German language also was her protection when as she walked across the border from Switzerland into Germany to learn all she could about the enemy locations and plans.
Marthe Cohn spoke to members of the Jewish Book and Discussion Group at the William H. Hannon Library about her book “Behind Enemy Lines: The True Story of a French Jewish Spy in Nazi Germany.” Trained as a nurse, Cohn was a social worker for the French army in early 1945 when an officer asked her to mind his phone for a time. Apologizing for the boredom of the task, he said he’d offer her a book to read but all of his were in German. When she replied that she read German, he asked if she also could speak it. Then came the most serious question of all: Would she be willing to cross into Nazi Germany under false pretenses and gather i
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Winston Churchill once famously said, “I never worry about action, but only inaction”. It is a sentiment that seems to have been shared by Marthe Cohn, who risked her life to act as a spy for the allies in Nazi Germany.Indeed, it is not the only thing that she has in common with Winston Churchill.Now 98, she has amassed a plethora of medals, including the Croix De Guerre, a commendation for bravery in wartime and the Medaille Militaire, France’s most prestigious military honour, both of which she and Churchill were awarded.
Born in Metz, France in 1920, she and her family were relocated to Poitier in 1939. Marthe was one of seven children in a close-knit family.Her grandfather had been the devout and highly respected rabbi of the Orthodox shul in Metz.
In 1940, the Germans invaded Poitier and on 17 June 1942, a date which is forever etched in Marthe’s mind, one of her adored sisters was arrested by the Germans. She and her sister had been collaborating with a local French non-Jewish farmer. Hundreds of people would knock on Marthe’s family home on a daily basis with entreaties for help.For various reasons, these people were at risk of being killed if they were discovered to be in Nazi-occupied France.Many of them were American or English pilots for example, whose plane