Isaak and Margarete Cohen family

Only a short distance from the synagogue, Hijman Cohen and his wife Grietje, née Goldstein, both from the Netherlands, had been running a slaughterhouse with a focus on horse slaughtering since about 1910. The first children were still born in Enschede (Nathan, Hendrika and Rachel), another four in the münsterländische Ochtrup (Samuel, Salomon, Isaak and Jakob).

When Hijman and Grietje Cohen retired to Enschede in the 1920s, their son Isaak took over the family butcher store together with Margarete, née Gottschalk.

On April 1, 1933, the boycott measures of the Nazi regime also affected this Jewish business: SA men stood threateningly in front of the door. When a customer criticized this, the SA man became so angry with Isaak that he wanted to kill him. Isaak was rescued by adventurous means to the Netherlands and returned only after several weeks. Then he had to learn that there was no more room for him in the neighboring guesthouse either: „Jews are not welcome here!“

In 1939 – after the pogrom night, which the children Magrit and Ilse spent with a neighbor – the family fled to Enschede.

With the invasion of the German Wehrmacht in the Netherlands, they were no longer safe there either, were soon imprisoned in the „Judendurchgangslager Westerbork“. October 1943 took place their deportation to Auschwitz, where Margarete, Ilse and Magrit were murdered immediately after arrival, father Isaak suffered three months later the same fate.

Salomon Cohen, brother Isaak, had lived until 1930 in Nordhorn, but had then moved to Hilversum/NL, where he was able to survive with his family with the help of resistance circles üüberleben. In 1952, he agreed to continue the family's butcher business in the Synagogenstrasse. Salomon Cohen, his wife Johanna née Terdenge and their children Edith and Carla thus formed Nordhorn's only Jewish family to settle back in their hometown after the war.