Frank Cohn, a Jewish refugee from Nazi Germany who returned to Europe in a U.S. Army uniform, served in the Battle of the Bulge and spent decades teaching others about the Holocaust, died on July 4 at his home at The Fairfax military retirement community at Fort Belvoir, Virginia. He was 100.

Cohn, a retired Army colonel, described himself as a “survivor, liberator and officer.” To his only child, Laura Cohn Piscitelli, he was something more personal.

When she thinks of her father, she said, she thinks of “Safety. Security. His smile. Just seeing his smile made me feel safe.”

Cohn was 13 and had just become a bar mitzvah when his mother took him for a walk in Breslau, Germany, and asked whether they should leave. The Nazis had tightened restrictions on Jewish life, and his father had gone to the United States on a visitor visa. Cohn’s mother had learned of a relative in a similar situation who had returned and been taken to Gestapo headquarters and killed.

Cohn said they should go. Within days, his mother arranged for them to leave.

“He had the foresight. He had the courage,” said Rabbi Randy Brown, a military chaplain who knew Cohn for 14 years through the Fort Belvoir Jewish Congregation.

Cohn was born on Aug. 2, 1925, in Breslau, now Wroclaw, Poland. His parents, Ruth and Martin Cohn, owned a sporting goods store. Frank and his mother fled Germany shortly before Kristallnacht, the pogrom of Nov. 9, 1938. Joining Martin in the U.S., they entered on visitor visas, but after Kristallnacht, President Franklin D. Roosevelt allowed German refugees already in the country to remain.

That escape shaped the rest of his life, Brown said.

“He learned resilience. He learned what it is to be oppressed. He learned the value of freedom, and then he didn’t take that value for freedom for granted.”

Coming to America, Piscitelli said, “made him the person that he was. He was very grateful to this country. He was very dedicated to this country, very dedicated to Judaism.”

Cohn attended Stuyvesant High School in New York City and was drafted into the U.S. Army in September 1943. He returned to Europe with T-Force, 12th Army Group, an intelligence unit, and served in the Battle of the Bulge and Rhineland campaigns.

He was later assigned to the Military Intelligence Center at Oberursel, Germany, where he guarded war criminals and processed documents for war-crimes prosecutions.

“He felt he had an obligation and a duty to tell as many people as possible about the reality of what he went through,” Brown said, “and that it isn’t just theoretical, but it was his lived experience.”

On the first Friday night Brown met him, Cohn introduced himself by saying, “My name is Frank Cohn. I’m a survivor, liberator and I’m not going anywhere.”

The two became friends. Brown visited Cohn at home over the years. Cohn later recited the prayer for the United States at the bar mitzvah of Brown’s oldest son, Yonah. The night before Cohn died, Brown came to his apartment for Shabbat with challah and wine.

Cohn was discharged as a staff sergeant in May 1946 but remained active in the Army Reserve. In 1949, he graduated from City College of New York as a Distinguished Military ROTC Graduate, returned to active duty as a second lieutenant in the Military Police Corps and later earned a master’s in police administration from Michigan State University.

His Army career took him to Germany, Korea, Vietnam and Washington. He served as a provost marshal, battalion commander, chief of operations in Vietnam and commander of the 42nd Military Police Group in Germany. With many decorations, he retired as a colonel in November 1978 from the Military District of Washington.

After the Army, Cohn worked at the University of Maryland as assistant director of resident life and later as director of graduate housing. He was inducted into the Military Police Hall of Fame in 2004 and continued speaking at schools, museums, military programs and civic events.

Even near the end of his life, he kept speaking. In May, Piscitelli drove him to New York for a United States Holocaust Memorial Museum event with more than 300 people.

“He spoke from the heart,” she said. “He spoke as if it was a conversation, a one-on-one conversation.”

Cohn remained deeply involved with Holocaust remembrance. Piscitelli said he gave personal tours of the Holocaust Memorial Museum, wrote poems and kept letters from students who thanked him for his service and teaching.

His message to young people was simple, she said: “Not to hate.”

Cohn met his wife Paula Brimberg when she was 13, playing ping-pong. After the war, he found her again. They married when she was 19 and were together for 72 years.

“They were best friends,” Piscitelli said. “He was devastated when she passed.”

Paula Cohn died in May 2021 and is buried at Arlington National Cemetery, where Frank Cohn also will be buried with full military honors.

After Paula’s death, Cohn carried on. He stayed with his routines: exercising, avoiding alcohol, reading the newspaper front to back and following the news. He also gave to many charities, including the Holocaust museum.

He remained engaged with the world around him, his daughter said, and with the memory he felt responsible for carrying.

Brown said Cohn should be remembered as he lived: as “a good father, a good husband, a good Jew and a citizen of the world.”

Ellen Braunstein is a freelance obituary writer. She welcomes suggestions for individuals who had meaningful ties to the greater Washington Jewish community. Email csix@midatlanticmedia.com.