Marthe Cohn, survivor and nurse who spied for the French, dies at 105
Her story was also told in a documentary “The Accidental Spy”
(L – R) Executive Producer Michael Potter, Holocaust survivor Marthe Cohn, Major Cohn, Historian Elizabeth B. White and Claims Conference Executive VP Greg Schneider attend “Eyewitness: Documenting The Holocaust On Film” at The Paley Center for Media on February 07, 2019 in Beverly Hills, California. (Photo by Michael Tullberg/Getty Images) Photo by Michael Tullberg/Getty Images
By Andrew Silow-Carroll June 30, 2025
(JTA) — Marthe Cohn, a Holocaust survivor and nurse who went behind Germany enemy lines on behalf of French intelligence and helped undermine the German military in the waning days of World War II, died May 20 in Rancho Palos Verdes, California. She was 105.
Born Marthe Hoffnug in Metz, France, on April 13, 1920, Marie was arrested in June 1942 and sent to the Route de Limoges camp for “foreign” Jews in occupied France. While a sister was eventually deported to and killed at Auschwitz, Marthe and her family escaped occupied France, eventually arriving in Marseille where she finished her nursing studies.
In November 1944, she joined the French Army as a nurse, but was soon transferred to the army’s intelligence service. She eventually crossed into German territory as the war was winding down. In her most storied piece of derring-do, she was able to report that the Siegfried Line, a German stronghold northwest of Freiburg, had been evacuated, and pinpoint the location of German troops lying in ambush in the Black Forest.
In 1945, the French Army awarded Marthe the Croix de Guerre. Germany also later awarded her The Cross of the Order of Merit, Germany’s highest honor.
“I had no idea what I was getting myself into,” Cohn told the Los Angleles Times in 2000. “I’m not a liar or an actor, but when your survival depends upon it… I did it for what Germans had done to us.”
Cohn lived in the United States beginning in 1956, and worked as a nurse anesthetist at Magee-Womens Hospital at the University of Pittsburgh. Only in 1999 did her children and grandchildren learn about her exploits during the war. In a 2002 she wrote a memoir with Wendy Holden, “Behind Enemy Lines.” That year she was awarded the title of Chevalier de la Légion d’honneu, the highest French order for military and civil merits
Her story was also told in a documentary, “The Accidental Spy.”
Cohn later worked as a research assistant in her husband’s neuroscience lab at UCLA/Drew Medical Center. In 2020, at the start of the COVID pandemic, Cohn celebrated her 100th birthday in the driveway of her Los Angeles home, as a parade of well-wishers drove by in cars. A letter of congratulations from Israeli President Reuven Rivlin was read over a bullhorn and Cohn later received a phone call from both Rivlin and the president of Germany, as well as hundreds of emails.
She is survived by her husband of 67 years, Dr. Major Cohn, and their sons, Stephan and Remi.
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