Memorials like this offer spaces for collective remembering and healing. This memorial acknowledges the suffering and perseverance of survivors and their families who started their lives anew in Philadelphia. It provides a space for collective commemoration, healing and action.
The testimonies combined with this memorial remind us that together we can learn, we can remember, and perhaps most importantly, we are empowered to take action when we see hatred and discrimination. We have the power to stand up and prevent atrocities like the Holocaust from ever occurring again.
Listen as Holocaust survivor Suzanne Cohn reflects on what she hopes we all can learn from listening to her testimony.
About the Interviewee
Suzanne Cohn (née Shulamit Dubiecka), daughter of Walter and Tania Dubiecki, was born on June 1, 1938, in Kobryn, Poland. During the war, Suzanne, her parents, and her older sister Rachel were sent to a ghetto in their hometown. They escaped from the ghetto and hid in various locations – factories, farms, houses, and schools – throughout Poland. Suzanne’s sister, Wendy, was born in 1944. In 1945, Soviet Armed Forces liberated the family in Piotrków, Poland. Suzanne’s brother George was born in 1945. The family lived in Australia and before they settled in the United States. In 1965, Suzanne married Norman Cohn. Suzanne has five children and ten grandchildren. This interview took place on November 1, 2011, in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania.