Stumbling Stones Zaagmolenkade 28

These 2 brass memorial plaques (Stolpersteine or stumbling stones), which were laid on 08-11-2024, commemorates:
* ISAAC COHENSIUS (born 1910, deported 1942 from Westerbork to several camps, Langenbielau 1, liberated).
* ESTER COHENSIUS-VAN DER HOEDEN (born 1914, deported 1942 from Westerbork, murdered 03-09-1942, Auschwitz).

These Stumbling Stones are here for Jewish war victims deported and murdered in the Second World War.

Camp doctor in forced labor camps near Auschwitz
Isaac Cohensius

Graduated as a doctor in Utrecht at the last minute. Then immediately on to Westerbork. And from there Isaac Cohensius made a long and arduous journey to various so-called 'Cosel camps' near Auschwitz-Birkenau. These were forced labor camps for the German industry, where Organisation Schmelt played an important role. Isaac was a doctor there, where he fulfilled an unenviable role between the camp guards and fellow prisoners. The poor Amsterdam Jews often did not trust him, while the SS despised him as a Jew.

Isaac worked in at least seven of these camps in Silesia: Niederkrich, Seibersdorf, Blechhammer, Sankt Anna, Faulbrück, Gräditz, Langebielau-Sportschule (Reichenbach). In Blechhammer he met the Polish sisters Eugenia and Frieda Lemberger. Eugenia succumbs to typhus, Frieda is seriously weakened and just makes it. After the war he marries Frieda. Later they emigrate to Israel. Isaac put his memories of Westerbork and the first three Cosel camps on paper around 1947. He never finished his story.

‘In addition to its importance for the specific historiography of the medical profession and for that of the destruction of the Dutch Jews, this book is also of great human value. This ‘ego document’ has an enormous power to make people, anyone who wants to read it, empathize with what it was like. As far as that will ever be possible.’

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Source

• Text: Dick de Bruijne
• Photos: Dick de Bruijne
• Isaac Cohenius, Joodsmonument
• Ester Cohenius-van der Hoeden, Joodsmonument
• COHENSIUS, ISAAC, Kampdokter, Verbum, 2024.