Eliezer ‘Eli’ Cohen

כהן אליעזר

Kohn Karl

Born in Vienna in 1918

Member of “Maccabi Hatzair”

Eli’s family moved to Slovakia. With the worsening of the situation and the increasing danger coming from the Germans, Eli set up an agricultural hahshara for the members of the movement next to the Hungarian border. Upon the beginning of the deportations of Jews from Slovakia, in three days he smuggled 28 members of the hahshara into Hungary by crossing the Vág River. In the same way another twenty comrades crossed the border with his help. Eli was a member of the movement’s leadership and was in charge of the refugees, members of the “Gordoniya movement” that arrived from Poland to Slovakia. Eli himself escaped to Hungary after the German invasion on 19.3.1944 and took part in rescue operations. He left Hungary on the Relief and Rescue Committee train.
After the war he made aliya. He lives in Jerusalem. Eli’s wife, Iluci (born in Bratislava in 1922), accompanied him and cooperated with him in all his underground activities.