Hildegard Cohn lived with her son Karl, born 1938, and her younger sister Elsbeth Rosen at number 4 Dahlmannstraße in Berlin-Charlottenburg, after their parents had been deported from their shared apartment in November 1942.
On her way home from shopping on January 7, 1943, Cohn saw the Gestapo in the building from a distance. She fled into a store to warn her sister at her workplace by telephone.
The sisters hid in the home of Georg Bruns, a police officer and former war comrade of their father, and his wife Elisabeth. Elsbeth Rosen survived; Hildegard Cohn and her son were picked up a few days later and deported on January 12, 1943, to Auschwitz, where they were murdered.