This stumbling stone marks that Leo Kohn Kohút used to live here, with the text reading:
“Leo Kohn Kohút
Born 1917
Interned in 1945 in Sereď
Deported to Sachsenhausen
Then to Augsburg-Horgau
Then to Dachau
Survived”
I hadn’t really thought about it, but I thought these stumbling stones marked the last place that victims of the Holocaust willingly lived, but it’s actually wider and includes those who survived the persecution.
The Times of Israel noted that:
“Leo Kohn Kohút was a ‘young idealist’ who worked in the underground resistance printing false IDs. He was not caught until January 1945, when he was sent to Sachsenhausen and later a sub-camp of Dachau. Working in a Messerschmitt aircraft factory, he and other prisoners sabotaged the pipes of German air force planes.”
Leo (1917-2013) lost his wife in the Holocaust, but after the war he married Berta Berkovich Kohút (1921-2021) who became known for being the last survivor of the seamstresses at Auschwitz, who survived only because they made beautiful dresses for the wives of Nazi officers. The couple met in Bratislava after the war, moving to the United States in 1983. Both are buried at San Rafael cemetery in Marin, California which is just to the north of San Francisco.
California must have felt like such a different world to Bratislava, he nearly died at Dachau but instead he lived nearly 70 more years and his wife over 75 years after she was freed from Auschwitz.