JUNE 24 • 2021 | 21

another for shelter. Though she
was young, Cohen learned the
story of her family’s survival
through their stories and their
photographs.
Her dad’s skills as a great
outdoorsman and her moth-
er’s perfect German helped
the Schechter family survive.
With the help of friends, they
were able to escape the ghetto
in which they lived and hid in
different properties. To make
hiding easier, Cohen’s parents
decided to separate. Cohen
stayed with her mother, who
was able to pass for German
thanks to her blonde hair and
blue eyes, and the two were
taken to Durnholz, Germany,
where they lived under false
papers.
Cohen’s father remained in
Poland working as a Polish
laborer. Cohen’s mother, how-
ever, struggled to work and
take care of her newborn child,
but a German woman offered

to watch the baby while she
worked. One day, the German
woman, who grew attached
to the baby, told her mother
she could no longer visit. Yet
Cohen’s mother hatched a plan,
and on her final visit claimed
she was going for a walk and
ran away with her young
daughter in her arms.
They stayed on the road
with thousands of other ref-
ugees until they arrived in
Dresden, which had recently
been bombed by the allies.
Luckily, the bombing spared
them. The Schecters ended up
in a displaced persons camp in
Stuttgart where Cohen’s father
was able to find them through
the Red Cross.
In 1946, with the help of
relatives who sponsored the
family in New Jersey, they were
able to rebuild their lives in the
U.S. Cohen graduated from
the University of Michigan as a
physical therapist and contin-

ues to educate people about the
Holocaust. She has traveled to
Poland and Israel with students
from Frankel Hebrew Academy
as a guest survivor.

HENRY WORMSER
Born Henry Claude Wormser
in Strasbourg, France, in 1936,
Wormser was a child survivor
of the war. His father was draft-
ed to fight in the French Army,
so his mother took care of him.
One night, they received a
notice slipped under their door
in an envelope to report to the
City Hall with identification
papers. Refusing to show up
with a fear of what might hap-
pen next, Wormser’s mother
went to her brother for help,
and they escaped via car to the
town of Sayat.
They were able to find a
family who would hide them.
Wormser remembers being
able to play with the other
children and roam around,

except for when Germans came
by to get provisions. Wormser
and his family stayed at their
shelter until France was lib-
erated, when they returned
to their apartment. Every day
for six months, Wormser and
his mother went to the train
station to look for Wormser’s
father. Finally, one day, he
arrived, and the family was
reunited.
With family in the U.S., the
Wormsers decided to emigrate
in June 1953. They first resided
in different cities along the East
Coast, where Wormser’s father
worked for a Jewish hotel and
in factories. They eventually
bought a farm in Vineland,
N.J., where Henry grew up and
received an education in phar-
macy and medicinal chemistry.
In 1965, he began teaching at
Wayne State University and
raised his family in Metro
Detroit, often speaking at the
Holocaust Memorial Center.

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