Elisabeth Kohn (11.2.1902 Munich – 25.11.1941 Kaunas / Lithuania)

The doctor of law Elisabeth Kohn was one of the first three women to be permitted to practice law in Munich. She was a member of the attorneys’ society of Max Hirschberg and represented, among others, the Social Democratic Party of Germany (SPD), the ‘Allgemeiner Deutscher Gewerkschaftsbund’ (ADGB) (General German Trade Union Association), the Münchener Post, and the ‘Liga für Menschenrechte’ (League for Human Rights).

Because of her Jewish origins she was forbidden to practice in 1933 according to the Law concerning Admission to Practice Law of April 7, 1933. When she objected, she was told, among other things, that she was young and single and would therefore not be so badly affected by the revocation of her admission that this would represent a hardship for her. Like her sister, the painter Marie Luise Kohn (Maria Luiko), Elisabeth Kohn maintained close ties to her mother when she worked in the welfare department of the Israelite Religious Community in Munich.

In 1940-41, she was a legal assistant in the practice of Julius Baer. On March 30, 1941, in a letter to Max Hirschberg, she wrote about this activity: “You’re always trembling, thinking that it could all be for nothing. It's so critically important to get as many people as possible out [...] also because of the ones who are staying. The space question, everything would not be so scary if we could set a few hundred people on their way in the next few weeks” (Weber, p. 135).

The antisemitic law forced the three women to move four times starting in 1939. Hirschberg procured her a visa for Cuba from the USA, however due to the prohibition on emigration for Jews, she was not able to use it. Elisabeth Kohn, with her sister and mother, was among the people of Jewish origin who were the first sent from Munich and southern Germany and deported to Kaunas, where all the people from Munich were shot with those who arrived by transport on November 25, 1941.