Sara Cohen never came to her first birthday. When he died at Auschwitz he was only eight months old.
She was born on 13 May 1943 in Groningen, the Netherlands occupied by the Nazis. In his few months of life he had no time to know almost nothing of the world. Yet the world had already decided its destiny for one reason: Sara was Jewish.
The persecution struck his family even before she was born.
While his mother Carolina was pregnant, his father Joseph was deported to Westerbork. Carolina could temporarily stay at home waiting for the birth of the child.
Sara was born in May.
Two months later, on July 23, 1943, his father died in Sobibór.
Carolina remained alone with three children: Louis, Malka and the very little Sara. Around them, in the occupied Netherlands, the persecution of the Jews had now entered its most ferocious phase.
Then came on February 8, 1944.
Carolina and his three sons were deported to Westerbork. From there they were transferred to Auschwitz.
They just spent three days.
On 11 February 1944, Carolina, Louis, Malka and Sara died at Auschwitz.
In the face of the Shoah, millions of victims are inevitably spoken. They are so huge numbers to risk, with the passing of time, to become something abstract.
The story of Sara forced herself to stop in front of a single life.
Eight months.
He had a name, a date of birth, a mother, a father, a brother and a sister.
Sara didn't have a first day of school. He didn't learn to read. He could not find out what his interests would be, his character, his dreams. He didn't even turn off the first candle.
It is also in this that the violence of the Shoah is measured: not only in the murdered lives, but throughout the future that was erased together with those lives.
Remembering Sara means then making a simple but essential gesture: to return an identity to those who the Nazi system had turned into a person to be eliminated.
Her name was Sara Cohen.
She was born in Groningen on 13 May 1943.
He died at Auschwitz on 11 February 1944.
He was eight months old.
A life may have been very short and still have the right to memory. Because eight months were enough to exist, enough to have a name and enough because that name, more than eighty years later, is not forgotten.