When retired Col. Frank Cohn joined the U.S. Army at the age of 18 in 1943, he knew he would be taking up arms against his native land.
And he was fine with that.
Cohn, a founding member of the Joint Base Myer-Henderson Hall Retiree Council who today lives in Alexandria, Va., with his wife, Paula, was born in Breslau, Germany in 1925. He escaped to the United States with his family in August, 1938, months before the outbreak of World War II. But, Cohn said the family's fight to leave their homeland actually began in 1933, when the Nazis rose to power. Cohn's father owned a store, which the Nazis boycotted since the family was Jewish.
The boycott forced Cohn's parents to eventually sell their store at a great financial loss. Cohn's father had distant relatives in the United States and in 1938, he came to this country on a visa on what Cohn called a "reconnaissance mission," searching for a way to bring the rest of the family here. While Cohn's father was visiting America, the Gestapo came to the family's home to arrest him. That spurred Cohn's mother to bribe officials so they could cross the border to Holland. From there, they made their way to the United States.
"Each one of us packed one suitcase and were allowed to take less than $10 out of the country," he said. "When my mother left with me, the idea was to leave everything behind and get out."
Cohn and his mother arrived in New York on Oct. 30, 1938. On Nov. 9, in Germany, Kristallnacht -- a pogrom that targeted German Jews and left their homes and businesses in tatters-- began.
"This of course hit all the papers, and President Roosevelt issued an executive order that said any refugees in the United States could stay, and we were saved. Roosevelt saved me," he said. "The timing was strictly luck. That's why I'm here."
Cohn even had 18 relatives imprisoned in concentration camps during the war: 12 on his father's side of the family, and six from his mother's side.
Following graduation from high school and a semester of college, Cohn was drafted into the Army in 1943. He said fighting his native homeland wasn't a problem.
"That wasn't my country," Cohn said of Germany. "They declared us stateless, our passports were no longer valid. I was a kid. I couldn't care less about Germany."
He participated in the Battle of the Bulge and various other campaigns while assigned to T-Force, 12th Army Group, which was an intelligence unit.As the war neared its end, his unit's mission was to go into Germany's larger cities, including Frankfurt and Haagen, in search of building and personality targets.
"Building targets were those structures that had significance in terms of the political side or the economic side," he explained. "Personality targets were people on the automatic arrest list that we had to take in for war crime possibilities."
The unit was moving from Frankfurt to Kassel, Germany but was detoured to Magdeburg because the Soviet Army had already reached the Rhine River. Cohn's captain selected him to be an interpreter during a visit with the Soviets to convince them to stay where they were and not head to Berlin.
On the way to meet the Soviets, Cohn and his group got turned around and eventually stopped to ask another American unit where they were.
"They'd been told to watch out for German Soldiers wearing American uniforms and impersonating Americans behind the lines," said Cohn. "They thought we were Germans. They pointed their guns at our stomachs."
After several hours of answering questions, Cohn's group had their identities verified and they continued on with their mission.
When the war ended, Cohn returned to college and received his commission in 1949. He served in the Army for the next 35 years, retiring in 1978 as a colonel. His final assignment was chief of staff of the Military District of Washington. Just before he retired, the then Military District of Washington commander told Cohn he was forming the retiree council and invited him to take part.
"The first meeting was in January of 1979," he said.
During his time on the council, Cohn has served as its chairman, co-chairman and medical committee chairman. He is slated to be the guest speaker during this year's retiree appreciation day Oct. 9 at the Community Center on the Fort Myer portion of the joint base.
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