COHN

COHN, Swiss family. ARTHUR COHN (1862–1926) served as the rabbi of Basle from 1885 until his death. He was a graduate of the Orthodox Rabbinical Seminary of Berlin and the leader of Orthodox Jewry in Switzerland. In 1907 helped to found the Central Association for Observant Jewry in Switzerland. His call to Orthodox Jewry during the Tenth Zionist Congress in 1911 to establish an independent organization to deal with religious issues contributed to the founding of agudat israel in 1912. Some of his essays and sermons were published posthumously in Von Israels Lehre und Leben (1927). His son MARCUS (Mordecai) COHN (1890–1953), jurist and Zionist leader, in the sphere of Jewish law wrote Die Stellvertretung im juedischen Recht (1920) on agency and Juedisches Waisenrecht (1921) on orphans. He was also active in communal affairs and the Swiss Zionist movement. He represented the Mizrachi party at several Zionist Congresses and from 1931 to 1936 was president of the Swiss Zionist Federation, establishing the Palestine office in Switzerland in 1933. In 1935 he became a member of the court of the Zionist Congress. He was a member of the executive of the Federation of Jewish Communities in Switzerland from 1938 until 1950, when he settled in Israel. During the last three years of his life, Cohn served as assistant attorney-general to the Israeli government. His son ARTHUR (1928– ) is a Hollywood film producer whose six Oscars is a record. His films sometimes have Jewish themes, as in The Garden of the Finzi-Continis (1970), based on a story by Giorgio Bassani. Cohn maintains his ties to the Swiss Jewish community, contributing to the Jewish Swiss weekly Tachles of Zurich. -BIBLIOGRAPHY: A. Weil, Gedenkrede fuer Rabbiner Dr. Arthur Cohn (1927). ADD. BIBLIOGRAPHY: Th. Nordemann, Zur Geschichte der Juden in Basel (1955). (Uri Kaufmann (2nd ed.)