Hedwig Stern lived in Wiesbaden during the Weimar Republic. In mid-March 1933, the heavily pregnant young woman was admitted to the Neu-Isenburg Home of the Jewish Women's Association. A few weeks later she gave birth to a girl in Frankfurt. She cared for her daughter about three months in Neu-Isenburg, before returning alone to Wiesbaden on September 1, 1933, alone. She left her daughter in the care of “Heim Isenburg."

In December 1936 Hedwig Stern returned to the home of the Jewish Women's Association again, where she worked as a maid. At that time, not only Hedwig’s daughter but also Hedwig’s younger son lived at the facility. After the November pogrom in 1938, the mother brought the two children to a children's home in Strasbourg and fled to the Netherlands. She lived in Amsterdam. There she met a native of Beverungen, Heinz Cohen, who emigrated from Germany in 1937. Hedwig and Heinz were married on August 12, 1942, in Amsterdam.

Hedwig Cohen-Stern was deported from Westerbork transit camp out on September 14, 1943, in the concentration and extermination camp Auschwitz. 1005 Jews, including 119 children and 245 senior citizens were deported with this transport. 194 women and 233 men were sent to the camp, 578 people murdered immediately upon arrival in the gas chambers (http://www.tenhumbergreinhard.de). The final information about Hedwig Cohen-Stern came from the satellite camp Malchow of concentration camp Ravensbrück. There she was murdered May, 1, 1945 one day before the camp was liberated.

Heinz Cohen was also a victim of the Nazi genocide.

Sources: Stadtarchiv Neu-Isenburg; information provided by Roiy Dayan, Hamuthal and Prof. Asher ben Arieh, Hessian State Archives; Memorial Book - Victims of the Persecutuion of Jews under the National Socialist Tyranny in Germany 1933 - 1945 (Bundesarchiv - National Archives) Spiegelgasse Aktive Museum of German-Jewish History in Wiesbaden e.V. (information, researched by Lothar Bembenek); Westerbork Database, Herinneringscentrum Kamp Westerbork