page_title: Leon Cohen
section_title: Experiences in Auschwitz
hierarchical_section_title: Leon Cohen / Biography / Experiences in Auschwitz
caption_attribution_description: Polski: Ruiny Krematorium III w obozie koncentracyjnym Auschwitz II (Birkenau) English: Ruin of the Crematorium III in the concentration camp Auschwitz II (Birkenau)
context_page_description: Leon Cohen, was a Jewish-Greek 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, along with Filip Müller and Marcel Nadjary. He took part in the preparation of the Sonderkommando uprising.
context_section_description: He was deported from Athens on April 2, 1944, and arrived at Auschwitz on April 11. His mother and his younger sister Margot, who was pregnant, were murdered upon their arrival. Cohen is one of the 320 Greek men selected for labor (serial numbers from 182,440 to 182,759). His number is 182,492. As he could speak German, it was a vital asset, considering that most of the Sephardic Jews from Thessaloniki could only speak Greek, Ladino, Italian, or French. They were isolated in the camp most of the time, in particular with regards to the other Jews who were speaking mostly in Yiddish. On May 15, after 4 weeks in the Männerquarantäne Block (quarantine barracks) in Birkenau, he was selected, along with 100 Greeks, to be part of the Sonderkommando After a few days at the cremation pits of the Bunker 2 and at the Krematorium IV, he was permanently assigned to Krematorium III as "dentist" or Zähnekontrolle (i.e. examining the mouths of the people who have been murdered and ripping out their gold teeth). He witnessed the destruction of the Hungarian Jews during the summer of 1944, the definitive evacuation of the family camp (from 10 to 12 July) and the gassing of the Gypsies in the beginning of August. As with many witnesses, he remembered the cruelty of the Hauptscharführer Otto Moll. At the Krematorium III, he met the French painter David Olère and was very close with French industrialist Hersz Strasfogel. He took part in the preparation of the Sonderkommando uprising, alongside Yaacov Kaminski, Lemke Chaïm Pliszko, Dawid Kotchak, Giuseppe Baruch, Leibl Paul Katz, Marcel Nadjari and Alberto Errera. But when it happened on October 7, 1944, the prisoners of the Krematorium III could not take part in the rebellion and were quickly surrounded by the Germans. After the end of the extermination by gas at mid-November, Cohen and his comrades were drafted into the Abbruchkommando Krematorium, which means the unit in charge of the demolition of the Krematoriums (about 70 prisoners). On January 17, 1945, the SS begun to evacuate Auschwitz, and the few thousand inmates that could walk were filed out of the camp on a death march. Although the members of the Sonderkommando were not allowed to leave the camp, Cohen and other members of the Sonderkommando mingled with the crowd of prisoners (about a hundred members of the Sonderkommando escaped from the camp this way). He was sent to the Mauthausen concentration camp. He was deported to Melk, Linz, Gusen and Ebensee concentration camps from which he was liberated on May 6, 1945 by the 80th Infantry Division of the US Army. Almost dead, he was treated in hospital (between 40 and 50 former members of the Sonderkommando survived after the camps were freed).
caption: Ruin of Krematorium III in Birkenau
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