The Jewish Camp Doctor: The Incredible Gripping True Story of a Holocaust Survivor by Isaac Cohensius

Author:Isaac Cohensius [Cohensius, Isaac]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Historical
Amazon: B0D92DQYZL
Goodreads: 216221807
Published: 2024-09-08T06:00:00+00:00

Epilogue

Written by Tamar Zohary, Dorit Cohensius-Kent,

and Daniel van den Bos

The life story of Dr. Isaac Cohensius is completed here, as told after his death by his wife, Dr. Frieda Cohensius, and his son, Micky (Shlomo) Cohensius, and recorded by his granddaughter, Dorit Cohensius-Kent. Tamar Zohary, his daughter-in-law, edited and added content based on conversations with additional family members and research by Daniel van den Bos.

Isaac (nicknamed Ies) Cohensius was born on 14 November 1910 in the small town of OudeTonge on an island in The Netherlands. He grew up in a religious Jewish family as the only son of his parents Saartje (Sarah) and Salomon (Shlomo) Cohensius. He spent his early childhood years in a "heder." During his school years, he attended a local public school, but in addition, on Sundays and Wednesdays he took a tram with three other kids to the Jewish school in Middelharnis. His family made a living from a clothing store.

His mother was ill with tuberculosis. To alleviate her suffering, in 1923 the family moved to Saartje’s native village, Niejkerk. On 17 December 1926, when Isaac was 16, his mother passed away. His father remarried. Isaac no longer found his place at home, left, and rented a place with the De Vries family.

Isaac the boy was an excellent athlete. He used to ride horses, and at an older age he rode his motorcycle. A newspaper clipping tells us that in 1929 he jumped fully clothed into a canal and saved a girl in danger of drowning. He had good hands and enjoyed building things. As a child who grew up by the shore, he loved the sea and swimming. In his adulthood he returned to live by the sea, in Nahariya, northern Israel.

At a young age he developed asthma that tormented him and limited him all his life. The only exception were the years in labor and concentration camps, as he detailed in his testimony.

Isaac studied medicine at Utrecht University in The Netherlands. His father advised him against studying: “You would be much better off becoming a merchant.” But Isaac persevered. During his studies he was active in the Dutch Zionist Union. He stopped his studies for two years to undergo agricultural training to immigrate to Palestine as a Zionist but did not receive an immigration certificate because he was £50 short of the required £1000. Following this, he resumed his studies and completed them shortly after the German invasion, as told in his testimony. He remained a Zionist at heart.

His father committed suicide after the Germans occupied the Netherlands.

During World War II, Isaac served as a doctor in eight forced labor camps and various concentration camps. As a Camp Doctor, his “sick room” was the only area in the camps that the Germans did not dare to enter for fear of disease. He took advantage of this to hide whatever he wanted to in his sick room, including written notes that were the basis for this book. He also reported about two days late

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