photo #8414563

#OTD July 8, 1944, Marianne Cohn, Jewish resistant, was tortured and brutally murdered by French militiamen. She gave her life saving children. Her body would be discovered after the war. She had been arrested by the Gestapo for smuggling Jewish children into Switzerland. Marianne and Lisette were sent in 1939 to the office of the EIF (Israelite Scouts of France) to be evacuated. After the outbreak of war, Marianne's parents were interned in the Gurs camp, as German citizens. She and her sister Lisa then went to Villefranche-de-Rouergue and were cared for by the Israelite Scouts of France in a children's home in Moissac. In 1942, Marianne joined the Zionist Youth Movement (MJS), under the name of Marianne Colin. She is a liaison officer and participates in the false papers service in Grenoble and the clandestine rescue actions of the Garrel network. On May 31, 1944, while conveying 28 children aged four to fifteen, the group was arrested by the Germans and imprisoned at the Hotel Pax in Annemasse. Georges Loinger and Emmanuel Racine offer to help her escape with the help of the local Resistance. Marianne Cohn refuses, for fear that the Germans will take revenge on the children entrusted to her. Through the mayor of Annemasse, Georges Loinger and Emmanuel Racine let the German commander know that the Resistance would execute her if the children left the town. Indeed, from Lyon or Paris, they would have been deported. Jean Deffaugt initially obtained the release of 17 children, then later that of the last. A few hours before the liberation of the region, on the night of July 3 to 4, 1944, Gestapo agents from Lyon took away Marianne Cohn and two other prisoners. About ten days later, their mutilated bodies were found in a mass grave at a place called La Rape near Ville-la-Grand (Haute-Savoie), including that of Marianne Cohn, who was about to be 22 years old.