Artifacts - Jack Cohen

The Greek underground resistance issued identity papers to Jack’s family with a new last name, Athanasopoulos. Jack’s mother, Mary Koev (Cohen) became Mary Athanasopoulos, a name making it possible for her to leave Chalkis.

These three Greek Orthodox Church leaders saved the lives of many Jews and were well known to the Cohens as instrumental in their own survival. Top: Powerful Archbishop Damaskinos Papandreou wrote a letter of protest to the Nazis defending the Jews of Greece, and published it in the face of a death threat. He wrote a religious edict stating that every clergyman and priest in Greece.

Jack Cohen returned many times to Greece, taking his family there to visit relatives. His father, Albert, refused to return to Greece, burdened by memory. Here Jack is with his late cousin, Rabbi Menasseh Cohen, who led a High Holiday service at the Chalkis Synagogue while visiting from Israel in 2000.

Jack admires the monastery interior where he lived during the Holocaust, on a visit in 2015.

Jack often told how he walked up a mountain as a boy to reach the safe monastery walls. These photos show what the walk meant. Lower left show the Cohen family on a return visit in 1982.

Albert Koev (Cohen) gets a new last name in his fake ID Card, issued by the Greek underground resistance to assist him to avoid identification as a Jew and resultant capture, labor or death.

Jack Cohen with his mother Mary and two cousins

Mary and Albert Cohen’s wedding photo. Jack’s grandmother is standing behind and on the left of Mary. Later, Jack’s grandmother was identified as a Jew and killed.