Hilda Stern Cohen: Honoring a strong woman in Bad Nauheim!

Hilda Stern Cohen: Honoring a strong woman in Bad Nauheim!

A particularly moving culture of remembrance is cultivated in Bad Nauheim: Today the first information board was unveiled as part of the “Strong Women” project, which commemorates the Jewish poet Hilda Stern Cohen. At the Sophie Scholl School, where she once worked as a religion teacher, the plaque not only honors her work, but also the suffering she experienced during the Holocaust. Hilda Stern Cohen, who lived from 1924 to 1997, is a symbol of the strength and resilience that many women showed in difficult times. Her contributions to literature, discovered only after her death, reflect the horrors and overcoming of her trauma.

The information board contains a photo of Hilda, a short description of her life and a QR code that allows access to multilingual texts. This innovative approach makes it possible to spread the memory of Stern Cohen beyond the city's borders. A total of twelve women from Bad Nauheim's history will be honored by autumn 2025, with the plaques being placed at their former homes or places of work. Another sign that our memories remain alive.

An impressive life story

Hilda Stern Cohen was born in Nieder-Ohmen, Upper Hesse, and grew up in a time marked by persecution and suffering. As early as 1937 she attended the Israelite teacher training college in Würzburg and from 1939 taught at the Jewish district school in Bad Nauheim. Her life was brutally interrupted when she was deported in 1941; she was deported to the Lodz ghetto and later to the Auschwitz concentration camp. Despite these horrific experiences, she survived, a miracle in a dark time in history.

After the war, she came to the USA via a detour through Austria, where she worked as a Jewish religious teacher. During this time she began to process her experiences in the form of poems and prose texts. All of this remained hidden for a long time because her literary work only came to light after her death. Her husband found 150 of her texts that reflect her traumatic experiences and address the return to normal life. These texts were published posthumously and found their place in the literary culture of remembrance.

A voice for the forgotten

The Holocaust cost millions of lives, and many survivors like Hilda used their voices to document the horrors of their past. Every year on January 27th we commemorate the victims of National Socialism and remember the suffering that people had to experience because of their origins, their faith or their identity. Hilda Stern Cohen's work is part of this warning, which is still relevant today, especially since many of her texts have been rediscovered and published in recent years.

The “Strong Women” project in Bad Nauheim, organized by tour guide Gabriele Freyer, is not just a tribute to the deceased women, but a living contribution to the culture of remembrance that connects the past with the present. By telling their stories and making them visible, we give them and their fight for life a voice that will also reach future generations.