Jenny Cohn, née Engel was born in Bad Kissingen on June 5, 1892. Her parents, Josef and Sophie Engel, née Seligsberger, had been living in the Franconian spa town since 1890 and ran a flourishing bath hotel there in Schönbornstrasse 18 (now 26), “Villa Engel”. Jenny’s younger sister was born in 1894. Her father Josef was in a mental hospital during the last years of his life and died in 1920 at the age of only 55. 

Jenny’s cousin Philipp Leopold Seligsberger, who between 1914 and 1924 visited his relatives in Bad Kissingen several times, tells in his autobiography how the paradisiac atmosphere in “Villa Engel” was tarnished by the beginning of World War I. His cousin Jenny had volunteered as a nurse after the beginning of the war in order to care for wounded soldiers in the hospital of Bad Kissingen.

Philipp Seligsberger describes her as “intelligent”, dedicated and tireless in her engagement for the invalids. She had also met her later husband, the factory owner Siegfried Cohn, in the hospital in Bad Kissingen and nursed him. After their marriage, they moved to Berlin in 1918, where their daughter Rosa Ruth was born on April 22, 1920. 

After the death of her husband in 1932, Jenny returned to Bad Kissingen with her daughter Rosa Ruth in July. There she stayed for two years before she emigrated to Haifa with her by then 14-year-old daughter in November 1934. Her mother Sophie had died shortly before that in July 1934.

Würzburg Gestapo ordered in March 1943 that Jenny Cohn’s capital that was on a blocked account for foreigners in Germany would be transferred to Nazi Germany. It amounted to about 700 Reichsmark and bonds worth 5000 Reichsmark. 

Jenny Cohn didn’t stay in Israel. She emigrated to North America in the 1950s. In June 1953, she went on board the ship “Constitution” in Naples and departed for New York. Her daughter Ruth emigrated there, too. More detailed information on her place of residence has been missing since then. At the end, Jenny Cohn lived in Mexico, where she died in November 1962 at the age of 70.