"The Charbor Chronicles": Behind Enemy Lines - Eternal Flame Lecture with Marthe Cohn at Pascack Valley High School on Monday October 19th, 2015

Thursday, October 19, 2017

Behind Enemy Lines - Eternal Flame Lecture with Marthe Cohn at Pascack Valley High School on Monday October 19th, 2015

This particular blog entry was long overdue. Somehow, it got lost somewhere along the line, as a blog entry that I wanted to post, yet one that never did actually get posted.

It was not two years ago today that I attended this lecture by Marthe Cohn, a former French spy during the German occupation. And for some reason, despite never having actually published this blog entry, I thought I had.

So, let me remedy that now.

Marthe Cohn co-wrote “Behind Enemy Lines: The True Story of a French Jewish Spy in Nazi Germany.” in 2006 with writer Wendy Holden. It is a true account of her own experiences as a Jewish spy in occupied France during World War II.

And on this evening two years ago, she spoke about her experiences before a packed audience at Pascack Valley High School. It was so crowded, that there was no parking (I got lucky with someone pulling out not long after I arrived). When I got inside, there were no seats, so I stood in the back and listened.

This is an incredible woman, and her story should have become more generally well known a long, long time ago!

At great risk to herself, particularly since she was a Jew in Europe while the Nazis were still in power, she served as a spy and reported on German troop strength to the Allied forces. As the Germans were in retreat, she crawled under barbed wire and across a field to gain critical information about the German military, and then crawled back.

In fact, she did it several times, doing her part to help the Allied cause, and beat back the Nazis and their persecution of Jews across occupied Europe. She spoke German fluently, which helped.

Cohn did receive some distinctions for her valuable service. She was given the Croix de Guerre in 1945. Yet, her story only became more well-known in 1999, when she received the Medaille Militaire from the French government, which is a particularly prestigious, and relatively rare, distinction. That was when she decided to go ahead and tell her story, which she had not even fully shared with either her children or grandchildren.

She explains:

“After the war nobody wanted to talk about it. People wanted to live and see the future and not talk about war.”

But receiving the Medaille Militaire put her story very much in the public. She started receiving invitations for speaking engagements, which was new. And in 2006, of course, came the book. Now, her story is starting to be much better understood and known. Cohn continues:

“Receiving the medal resulted in much publicity and I was invited to give talks about my life. Until then I didn’t speak about it. The memory of what happened in the past is very important to the future. Most people, especially young people, don’t know what happened more than 70 years ago."