Museum Blindenwerkstatt Otto Weidt –biographie

Leo Lesser Cohn was born in Gollub in West Prussia in 1892. He married Rosette Recha Lump in 1926. From 1938, the couple lived at Berchtesgardener Straße 35, in the same building as the Licht family and the Bernstein twins. The Cohns ran several drugstores. They had to close the first one in 1937, and the others were destroyed during the 1938 November pogrom. Their daughters Hanna and Dorothea managed to escape to England in 1939.
When their Jewish acquaintance Walter Marwilsky went into hiding at the end of April 1942, they took him into their home. The Cohns also went underground, presumably during “Operation Factory” in February 1943. Leo Cohn was presumably able to work at Otto Weidt’s workshop during this time. Rosette Cohn was picked up by the Gestapo in mid-October 1943 and deported to Auschwitz-Birkenau extermination camp. She may have been arrested during a raid on the workshop for the blind.
Leo Cohn was also arrested several months later, deported to Auschwitz-Birkenau on August 10, 1944, and murdered there. The dates of Leo and Rosette Cohn’s deaths are not known.