Yvonne cohen

Yvonne Cohen was born on March 5, 1909, in Thessaloniki, Greece. She was the daughter of Raphael and Allegra Abastado. She left Greece for France and married a man named Léon Cohen on September ^1, 1932, in Marseille, when she was 23 years old. Yvonne did not work, and the couple had no children. In 1943, Yvonne and her husband finally decided to leave their Marseille home and flee to the town of Saint-Martin-Vésubie, a small town then located in the Italian-occupied zone where Jews were safer. Unfortunately, on September 8, 1943, the Proclamation of Badoglio (symbolizing the Armistice between Italy and the Allied Forces) was issued, and the Italians withdrew from the territories they occupied in France, including the town where Yvonne and Léon Cohen had taken refuge. The Nazis regained control of the region, and the couple, like dozens of other Jews, decided to cross the Italian border, which appeared as a mountain range, with the aim of reaching the town of Borgo San Dalmazzo. They were ambushed and arrested on September 18, 1943, before being interned for a few days in a camp in Borgo. They were then repatriated to Drancy, where they spent a few weeks. Yvonne was assigned the prisoner number 8703. On December 7, 1943, Yvonne and her husband were deported on convoy number 64 to Auschwitz. Neither of them returned from the camps. There is no trace of Yvonne in the Auschwitz records, which may mean that she died upon arrival of the convoy or that the records concerning her were destroyed by the Nazis when they tried to erase the traces of their massacre.

Thank you to Catherine Cohen for the content she provided and for her testimony.