This Cedarhurst resident came to America during World War II

As Holocaust Remembrance Day, April 18, nears in the United States and Israel, Cedarhurst resident Margot Cohen recalls leaving Germany at the beginning of World War II in 1939, but she doesn’t consider herself a survivor in the traditional sense. It’s more an appreciation that she and her family were rescued from the horror. 

“My mother doesn’t really consider herself a survivor, because my mother was never in a labor camp nor a concentration camp,” Margot’s son, Thomas Cohen, explained. “Her family got out in time and didn’t suffer that horror that other families went through, so she is always fortunate she and (they) had escaped.”

Cohen, 99, the only child of Morris and Lena Libau, was a teenager when many Jews fled Germany and other countries the Nazis invaded. Her parents escaped to the Dominican Republic, and Margot had two choices: remain in Germany, her home, or flee to the United States.

“The feeling was very awkward,” Margot recalled. “It was not a pretty thing to go from one country to another.”

She was placed on a children’s transport ship heading to America, without knowing any English or having any idea how long she would be separated from her parents.

Margot arrived in New York in March 1939, and her three aunts on her mother’s side were awaiting her arrival. Afterward, one of them took her upstate to Binghamton to attend high school.

Adjusting to American culture took time, but she didn’t shy away from learning English or other subjects. At first, however, she often sat in the back of her classrooms, writing down the words the teacher would say and translating them with an English-to-German dictionary.

As the war went on, Margot and her parents, in the Caribbean, stayed in contact, sending letters back and forth between New York and the Dominican Republic and looking forward to their eventual reunion.

“We had expected it to happen,” Margot said, “and we were waiting for it and knew it was going to come.”

After the war ended in 1945, her parents made their way to Brooklyn. Margot graduated from high school with honors, and then attended Brooklyn College, graduating in 1951.

She met her future husband, Leslie Cohen, in 1945.

The couple had three children, Judith, Nancy and Thomas. Leslie died in 1993.

“We, as children, could never imagine what it would’ve been like to have left our homes or our extended family to be thrown into a foreign country that didn’t speak the language,” Thomas said, “as well as being separated from parents, only to be reunited years later.”

“It must not have been easy,” Nancy said, “but I’m glad she was able to make it through.”

The Cohens moved to Cedarhurst in 1972. Margot, who will turn 100 on June 9, is a past president of the Long Island Quilters’ Society.

She said she was grateful for the opportunity the U.S. gave her and other Jews during the most horrific time. “It was a very good feeling knowing there was a place to come to,” she said.

Holocaust Remembrance Day, next Tuesday, is commemorated in the U.S. and Israel, and marks the anniversary of the 1943 Warsaw Ghetto Uprising.