From the left Ruth, Tamara and Susanne Cohn, September 1939.

The number of Jews desperate to leave Germany after the November Pogrom surged, but they found few countries willing to take them in. In Mandatory Palestine, British quotas, issued every six months, limited the number of Jewish immigrants. Preference was given to young applicants who were fit for agricultural work. In 1935, fifteen-year-old Ernst Abraham Cohn, Willy Cohn’s son from his first marriage to Ella, née Proskauer, received an immigration certificate through Youth Aliyah, a rescue program that helped young Jews escape Nazi Germany. His sister Ruth got out in 1939. Willy Cohn and his second wife, Trudi, née Rothman, could not secure certificates or visas to other countries for themselves or their two daughters, Susanne and Tamara. In 1941, they were deported, along with other Jews from Breslau, to Nazi-occupied Kovno (today Kaunas, Lithuania) where they were murdered. Two family photos document the earlier farewells.