Jack Cohen was born in July 1932 in Chalcis, Greece [Annotator's Note: Khalkís, Greece]. Before the war, they had peace. People occupied themselves with commerce, sports, and family. His family had a maid who had a daughter. Cohen's mother would have her take him for a walk. They went fishing one night. He fell into the sea. A Coast Guard sailor picked him up and took him to his father. It happened a second time and the same sailor picked him up. His father said he needed to learn how to swim. [Annotator's Note: Cohen gets emotional.] He later won races swimming. The neighborhood was called a Jewish neighborhood, but Greece never had ghettos. There were more Christians there than Jews. The synagogue had been there for 2,000 years. The only one in Europe that operated continuously for that long. His father was a cosmetic chemist and had the only cosmetic store in town. His mother was a seamstress but was also a housewife. Incidences of anti-Semitism were rare and not malicious. The only time he witnessed it was after the war when he was in school. A new teacher came who taught Classical Greek. There was a rumor that the Germans had made soap from Jewish fat. The teacher asked Cohen why the Germans had not made soap out of him. Cohen told the teacher he would find out. Cohen's uncle was influential. When Cohen told him the story, the uncle said he would take care of it. They never saw that teacher again. Cohen's next-door neighbors were Christians. Most of the houses around the town square were Christians. Cohen and his fellow Jews were good citizens. There were supposed to be two groups of Jewish peoples, the Ashkenazi or German and European Jews and the Sephardic or Spanish and Mediterranean Jews. Cohen was neither. Greek Jews are called Romaniote. After the destruction of the Second Temple [Annotator's Note: the Second Temple, a Jewish holy temple in Jerusalem between c. 516 BCE and c. 70 CE], some Jews had traveled to Greece. They learned the Greek language and customs. After the Inquisition [Annotator's Note: also called the Holy Inquisition, in this case, the Spanish Inquisition, or Tribunal of the Holy Office of the Inquisition, 1 November 1478 to 15 July 1834] a lot of Jews settled in the northern part of Greece. Salonika [Annotator's Note: Salonika (Thessaloniki), Greece] was called the New Jerusalem. The Ottoman Empire [Annotator's Note: a state that controlled much of Southeastern Europe from 1299 to 1922] opened the door to them. The Port of Salonika before the war was closed on the Sabbath [Annotator's Note: also called Shabbat or Shabbos, holy day of rest on the seventh day of the week (Saturday)]. As a child, Cohen knew nothing of the politics of Europe concerning the Jews. Their history had gone back centuries. Once the war started, they learned about the countries involved.

The war started for Jack Cohen when Mussolini [Annotator's Note: Italian fascist dictator Benito Amilcare Andrea Mussolini; also known as il Duce] asked the Prime Minister [Annotator's Note: Ioannis Metaxis; Greek military officer and politician] to let him have bases in Greece. He said no. In 1940, the Italians torpedoed a Greek battleship in the harbor [Annotator's Note: Italian submarine Delfino sank the Greek light cruiser Elli on 15 August 1940]. Greece was beating the Italians so the Germans started bombing [Annotator's Note: Germany invaded Greece in April 1941]. Cohen's father arranged to get a home away from town [Annotator's Note: in Chalcis (Khalkís), Greece] for when the airplanes came. Cohen had fun watching the dog fights [Annotator's Note: aerial battles between aircraft]. When the Germans came in, everybody was aware of what was going on. Greece took quite a few Italian prisoners. Cohen had no interactions with them. His parents did not have to tell him anything, because the Germans ruled with an iron fist. They stayed away from them. There was no peace and there were atrocities. There was hunger because the Germans confiscated most of the food. There was a lot of fear. People would try to stay away from the front doors of businesses. Cohen's father used to take a long walk home at noon for lunch. A boat was unloading war material. As he and Cohen walked by, they could see the guard eating while a little child watched. Some food fell and the child tried to get it. The German grabbed him and broke his arm. The bystanders could do nothing. Their home was close to the German barracks. They would wake up almost daily to the sound of machine guns killing people. Bodies were thrown on a cart and the fire department washed the blood away. One day in front of their window, there was a wounded young man who was killed. To a child of eight, it was devastating to see someone killed in front of him. The kids played soccer. They would stuff an old sock with paper or clothes to make a ball. They would play in the square where the Germans had a munitions depot. Someone gave them an actual ball and told them to kick it to the guard. The guard bayoneted the ball. They called him names and he took a shot at Cohen. He missed but the bullet hit and killed another kid. Cohen later found out that the people who had given them the ball were from the Resistance [Annotator's Note: there were several groups; Greek partisans were called andartes]. They threw grenades at the depot but did little damage. The Germans rounded up 110 people who they killed. They left the bodies lying where they were shot. There is a monument there now.

When the Germans started picking up the Jews from the northern cities [Annotator's Note: of Greece], Jack Cohen's father came back and made arrangements for his family to go into hiding. His mother got some clothes, pots and pans, and bedding and made a bundle. The underground [Annotator's Note: there were several groups; Greek partisans were called andartes] came to pick them up and they took them Vasilikos [Annotator's Note: Vasilikos, Greece]. Before that, the German governor of Greece went to the Bishop [Annotator's Note: Archbishop Damaskinos Panandreou] and demanded a list of all the Jews in town. The list he gave only had one name and that was his own. He was placed under house arrest. Damaskinos [Annotator's Note: Archbishop Damaskinos Papandreou; also known as Damaskinos of Athens], sent a personal letter to Hitler [Annotator's Note: German dictator Adolf Hitler] stating that they did not distinguish between Jews and Christians. He also sent messages to the clergy to do everything they could to save the Jews. On Zakynthos [Annotator's Note: Zakynthos, Greece] in the Ionian Sea, the same thing happened. The Bishop [Annotator's Note: Greek Orthodox Metropolitan Dimitrios Chrysostomos] and Mayor [Annotator's Note: Loukas Karrer] there saved every single Jew in the town. They two only gave two names to the Germans and those were their own. [Annotator's Note: Cohen gets silent.] Cohen, his mother, father, and younger brother went to a home with four other people. Food was scarce in Greece, but those people fed them and housed them for several days. The village was close to the main town. The Germans traveled by there and made staying there dangerous for all of them. The Resistance [Annotator's Note: there were several groups; Greek partisans were called andartes] picked them up and took them by mule to a monastery called Saint George [Annotator's Note: Monastery of Saint George, Skyros, Greece]. There were no roads or paths. There were only two people there and there were small rooms. There was no furniture, no windows, no running water, bathrooms, or telephones. They chopped stumps to sit on. The big question was how they would eat. They were given some bread, cheese, and olives. They rationed them. Cohen was shown how to identify wild mushrooms. His mother would boil them and mash them into patties. There were also greens such as dandelions. [Annotator's Note: Cohen asks to pause the interview at 0:36:01.000.]

Living in a monastery [Annotator's Note: Monastery of Saint George, Skyros, Greece], there was nothing for Jack Cohen and his siblings to do [Annotator's Note: they had been hidden from the Nazis there]. They tried to find mushrooms to eat. One day, Cohen saw smoke nearby and he was curious to see if it was a grass fire. He hid in the bushes and saw a man who had built something like an igloo with smoke coming out of it. Cohen asked what he was doing, and the man told him he was making charcoal. He told Cohen he would show him how. He told his family they could make charcoal to use to trade for food. They made a small kiln and it worked. They then made a big one and used the charcoal to trade for flour, oil, and other things. Occasionally they got a chicken. They survived that way for years. One day, they found out Cohen's grandmother had been betrayed by collaborators and picked up by Germans. She, an uncle, and others were put before a firing squad. One uncle escaped. While waiting for the German officer to order them to fire, an interpreter who was close to his uncle called a priest who took his uncle away and saved him. The two uncles went to the Middle East via Cyprus [Annotator's Note: Republic of Cyprus] and Turkey. That news made Cohen's father feel they were vulnerable. Cohen and his father started walking north to where the Resistance [Annotator's Note: there were several groups; Greek partisans were called andartes] was headquartered. They walked for a whole day up the river. They could not find a place to cross and could not risk swimming. Suddenly, two people came out of nowhere. Cohen's name "Isaak Cohen" was translated to the Christian name of "Anthony" [Annotator's Note: unintelligible]. and they used that to say they were trying to see relatives. They took them to a log bridge over the river where they crossed. They made it to the Resistance and then returned to the monastery. [Annotator's Note: A phone rings at 0:45:19.000.] A few weeks later, musicians with mules came to get the family and take them to a boat so they could go to the Middle East. Snow fell during the night and they could not travel. Several days later, some of the underground [Annotator's Note: Resistance] who often came to the monastery to worship or patrol, told them that the boat had been intercepted by the Germans and blown up. This made Cohen's father decide to stay put. Towards the end of the war, the underground had found out the Germans were preparing to comb the island. They took the Cohens to a family that had sheltered them earlier. One day they heard the church bell ringing like crazy. They walked out and people were dancing in the streets. They had been liberated. They loaded their belongings and went back home. They were so happy and crying to be free and alive.

Jack Cohen had a speaking engagement at a school, and a child asked him what was the important thing that kept him alive [Annotator's Note: when he and his family were hiding and evading the Nazis in Greece]. The fact that they were together meant they gave each other courage. That is how they survived. When they returned to their home, seven people were living there. They could not kick them out because they had nowhere to go. It was a modest home but good for that time. The 11 people decided to share the home. He has a joke for that situation. A great American comedian, Bob Hope [Annotator's Note: Leslie Townes "Bob" Hope KBE; British-American entertainer who was famous for entertaining American troops serving overseas during World War 2, the Korean War, and the Vietnam War], said once that he was raised in a big family and he learned to dance while waiting to go to the bathroom. They stayed that way for several months. People had to find empty homes to rent. Cohen's father reestablished his business. Cohen and his brother had lost two years of school. The schools consisted of six years elementary and six years high school. Good students jumped from elementary after four years and took eight years of high school, which is what Cohen did. The Germans had come when he had finished his first year of high school [Annotator's Note: Germany invaded Greece in April 1941]. The government made a provision that both Jews and Christians who had lost school years were allowed to attend a fourth year and take exams for their second and third years. Cohen had a tutor who helped him pass the tests and he caught up. [Annotator's Note: The interviewer asks Cohen how he found out what had happened to his grandmother while he and his family were in hiding.] They only learned it and never heard again from the grandmother. She was very old. [Annotator's Note: The interviewer pauses the interview at 0:54:37.000 and then asks when Cohen started speaking about his Holocaust experience.] He does not recall exactly when he was asked to tell the story between Christians who exposed the Jews and Christians who risked their lives to save them. He could not get a speaking engagement until one day someone gave him a call and gave him a school. Since then, he has been in demand. There are only three or four people left there [Annotator's Note: of the ones who survived it]. One of them only wants to speak to adults so that leaves Cohen. For him, to create a better world, we must teach them about what happened so they can understand and try to prevent the genocides going on all over the world today. Maybe they can make a better world.

Jack Cohen does get emotional talking and thinking about what he went through. He also thinks about what happened in the East. What if he had delayed a couple of seconds when the German guard shot at him, but missed? Where did the people come from who helped him and his father cross the river? If it is luck, then why cannot he win a million dollars at the casino? It had to be Divine Providence [Annotator's Note: God's intervention in the Universe, sometimes used as the title for God]. Why did it snow and prevent his family from taking the boat that the Germans blew up? Later in life, he started going to Hebrew school to study. He learned of the two angels who saved Lot from the destruction of Gomorrah and Sodom [Annotator's Note: story included in the Holy Bible book of Genesis]. The people who saved him came out of nowhere. So he does not know. In hiding, they were Christians in a monastery [Annotator's Note: Monastery of Saint George, Skyros, Greece]. Their names were Christian. The Jewish holidays are based on the lunar calendar. Friday nights, Jews light a candle to welcome the Shabbos [Annotator's Note: also called Shabbat or Sabbath, holy day of rest on the seventh day of the week, Saturday]. In the monastery, they did not have candles, so his mother created something they could use. For Passover [Annotator's Note: also called Pesach, major Jewish holiday], they did not have to worry about bread because they had unleavened bread all year. [Annotator's Note: A phone rings at 1:00:53.000.] There were no bakeries, so his mother made bread. Passover comes close to Greek Easter [Annotator's Note: or Orthodox Easter, falls on the Sunday after the first full moon after Passover], so his parents oriented themselves to that. Being in the monastery at night, they went to bed on the floor which was clay. While they slept the light made him think about the school he was missing. He was missing his friends and fishing, but it gave him hope of a better day and liberation. [Annotator's Note: The interviewer asks Cohen if there was a moment where he started identifying internally as a Holocaust Survivor.] He does not want to be a movie star and is not looking for publicity. He just wants to tell the stories of what people did to save other people and total strangers. He especially gets emotional when thinking of his grandmother.

Jack Cohen says that today we hear a lot about tolerance. To him, there is a great difference between tolerance and acceptance. The Jews of Europe were tolerated by the people who, at their first chance, gave them away to be slaughtered. On the other side, the Jews of the Mediterranean and Greece were accepted by the people who stuck their necks out to save them. That is why Cohen advocates acceptance more than tolerance. He is not a religious man but knows about the Jewish religion. Their books say the wolf lies down with the lamb, and the leopard with the kid [Annotator's Note: name for a baby goat]. Can it happen? It did happen in Noah's Ark. The animals behaved in the ark and did not devour the people. The snake did not bite anybody because they had a common enemy. They behaved until they got to their habitats. Humans have several common enemies. We have war, poverty, AIDS [Annotator's Note: acquired immune deficiency syndrome], and a number of things. Cohen asks why we cannot come together and fight those instead of each other. If we can accept each other, we can together create a better world. [Annotator's Note: Cohen gets emotional and then laughs.]

Jack Cohen finished high school and his father wanted him to study cosmetic chemistry in order to take over the family business. He took exams in Athens [Annotator's Note: Athens, Greece]. Schools were crowded and his institution had over 700 students taking exams for 50 slots. Cohen failed there with 650 others. His father made arrangement with the University of Padua [Annotator's Note: in Padua, Italy] and he was accepted. He attended for four years. He had been an athlete in Greece. He joined the basketball team at the University. His studies became too heavy for him to do both. At the end of his fourth year, his father sent him a letter stating that they were going to the United States. His mother was reluctant to go. Cohen did not want to break up the family and decided to stay until he finished his studies. His father had a relative in New York [Annotator's Note: New York, New York] who died whose children found sponsors for them in Memphis [Annotator's Note: Memphis, Tennessee]. [Annotator's Note: The names of their sponsors are hard to understand.] They came to the United States and had to wait five years to become American citizens. They did not know the language. Somebody from a Jewish agency took Cohen to a cosmetic plant in Memphis. He spoke Italian to someone who interpreted and said he needed to learn the language. Cohen worked in the warehouse of a furniture store for a while. He got someone to understand he was a chemist. It was suggested that he go to work for an aluminum company. He worked there for 17 years. He attended the University of Tennessee for metallurgy. Cohen had come to New York on 29 December 1955. They took a train to where their sponsors were. The people in Memphis were not very curious about them. They started attending a synagogue where they were asked how they were Jewish and also Greek. They did not speak Yiddish [Annotator's Note: language used by Jews in central and eastern Europe before the Holocaust, now spoken in mainly the United States, Israel, and Russia] so they asked how they could be Jewish. Cohen got fed up with this, so he started asking if his questioners spoke Judezmo [Annotator's Note: sometimes called Ladino], which is what Sephardic Jews spoke instead of Yiddish. He got rid of the questioning that way. Even today the Greek priest [Annotator's Note: in Memphis, Tennessee] still tells the story that Cohen's mother, who was a talented cook, was always called to help cook for the church. The first clergy to visit them was a Greek priest and not a Jewish rabbi. Cohen is the only Greek Jew Holocaust survivor in Memphis. He calls himself the minority of minorities. [Annotator's Note: Cohen laughs about it.]