יומן של יצחק כהן - הקדמה

(This is the diary (translated from Dutch to Hebrew

Introduction written by my mother, Jane Sophie Fresco-Cohen:

"My father, Isaac Cohen, was born on 3 June 1893 in the city of Amsterdam, the son of Benedict Cohen and Jaantje Dupont. On 3 July 1919 he married my mother, Vrouwtje Zwart.

They had two children:

1. Bernard (13.2.1923) was murdered in Auschwitz beginning April 1944

2. Jane Sophie (1924), who married Henry Fresco in 1946 and moved in 1968 to Israel, along with their two children, Hannah Sarah and Bernard.

In 17/07/1942 Isaac, Vrouwtje and Jane found a hiding place in the apartment of Joop & Wil Westerweel in Rotterdam. Brother Bernard was hiding earlier so he could escape from the Hardenberg work camp.

He was arrested on 15.3.1944 while he was distributing food stamps for other hiding people. He was sent to Auschwitz along with the transport of Gypsies, and was killed by gas, on 4/10/1944.

After my brother was arrested father decided to travel to Amsterdam three weeks later to deliver some clothes to the members of the Judes Rath (Joodse Raad) for them to forward to Westerbork Transition camp, where my brother was located. On this trip my father was arrested. That same day my brother was sent on to Auschwitz.

Dad was sent first to prison in the city of Scheveningen and later to Westerbork where he developed pneumonia. A friend, by profession a nurse, helped him as much as possible in the camp.

On 01/09/1944 he was sent on the last transport, sent to Teriesienstadt concentration camp, where his diary ends."