May 1943, Berlin, Nazi Germany. Horst Cohn, a 12 years old Jewish boy together with his parents
are among to last Jews in Berlin to be deported to one of the Nazi concentration camps. After
years of immense torture and humiliation, the worst is yet to come. The train’s destination is
Theresienstadt – an evil Nazi concentration camp & ghetto in the Protectorate of Bohemia and Moravia.
Horst Cohn was born on May 21, 1931 in Berlin and he was only 2 years old when Hitler came
into power in 1933. Horst’s father was the only Jewish master tailor in all of Germany and his
first memory relates to Berlin Olympics in 1936. Although Nazis passed numerous anti-Jewish laws
before the Olympics, Hitler wanted Olympics to be held in Germany and still curbed his behavior.
However, after the 1936 Summer Olympics, the lives of Jews in Germany changed dramatically.
As a result of Nuremberg Race Laws, Jews were forbidden to go to cafes,
theaters, parks or the movies. Horst as a child could no longer attend German school, only Jewish
school. The Jews could not possess telephones, newspapers, radios or musical instruments.
Thus, Horst’s family had to give up their piano and guitar but Horst managed to keep
his harmonica, which would later save his life. The Jews were neither allowed to use
wheeled transportation, trains, buses, trams, bicycles nor to own pets. They could go to shops
only for 1 hour a day from 4 until 5 PM when all the food was already rotten and inedible.
In 1938 Horst’s grandfather was taken into Sachsenhausen concentration camp.
He was released after a few weeks after the intervention of his mother. He told his family
how they had to shovel piles of sand every morning while being whipped by the SS guards and marched
12 hours a day on mud or rocks to test the most suitable leather for the shoes of marching German
soldiers for the war which was to come. Horst experienced the Nazi torture, too.
On his way to school, he was beaten by Hitler’s youth almost every day. The so-called Aryan boys
enjoyed beating him with 40 cm stick attached to 2.5 m long leather cord at the end of which
was a metal ball. They beat him until he was covered with blood and laughed at him.
When Horst, covered with blood, asked them “ why “, they replied “ because you are a Jew “.
At that time, whoever laid hands on anybody walking in uniforms in Germany,
was to be punished. So, when Horst’s father accompanied Horst to school, the father could
not do anything to help his son and the Hitler’s Youth boys did the same thing to Horst again.
Horst solved this problem the way he went to school only after the Aryan
Nazi kids had gone to school and in the end Horst stopped going to school at all
and closed himself in their apartment for 2 years with his 7 books and harmonica.
When on May 7, 1943, two SS men knocked on the door to deport Horst and his parents to
the concentration camp, he was at home alone. He managed to call his parents to come home
only after he had told the SS men, he could play the harmonica. Horst played all the folk songs
he had learned to play during the years where he had been closed at home like a prisoner.
Suddenly, the SS guards saw a human being in Horst and let him wait for his parents.
When Horst and his parents were brought into the hall of the school situated on the outskirts
of Berlin, benches, chairs and tables were removed and there was nothing but the floor.
To humiliate the poor Jews as much as possible, the Nazis removed all the
restroom doors so that everyone in the hall saw others going to the rest room.
They even took away the toilet paper under the pretense that Jews wouldn't need it.
After all this humiliation, the poor Jews were deported but not put in cattle cars as it was
happening in other parts of Europe, but instead on a passenger train so that people in Berlin
wouldn’t see how the Germans were treating the Jews. Destination of the train was Theresienstadt–
the evil Nazi concentration camp & ghetto in the Protectorate of Bohemia and Moravia.
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