No One Bears Witness for the Witness

Born in Bucharest, Romania after World War One to a poor Jewish family, exposed to the virulence of pre-World War Two Romanian antisemitism, Baruch Cohen experienced directly the advent of fascist antisemitism in the pogrom he terms the Bucharest “Night of Broken Glass” in January 1941. Impressed into forced labor in a work camp, aware of and evading the death camps set up in occupied Transnistria, Baruch survived the Holocaust and left Communist Romania for Israel with his family. After several years there, they came to Montreal, Canada in 1959. 

Upon his retirement in 1988, Cohen did graduate work in Jewish history, became Research Chair in the Canadian Institute for Jewish Research, and made it his life’s challenge to bear witness for the millions of Jews who suffered and died in the Holocaust. This memoir not only tells one person’s remarkable story, but also shows how one courageous and persistent person—by researching, teaching, and bearing witness—can be a model for the fight against antisemitism and Holocaust denial today.