Most present in the Greater Paris area, OSE is back in Alsace: in January 2018, a new day car center for elderly people suffering from Alzheimer’s disease opened in Strasbourg.
Some of OSE’s most central figures, who marked the history of OSE during the war – Joseph Weill, Andrée Salomon, or Georges Loinger – were from Alsace and were at the heart of the Resistance and rescue networks of Jewish populations. It is therefore all natural that OSE pays a tribute to its Strasbourger roots by giving to its new address in Alsace the name of a heroic couple: Jacques (Bô) and Margot Cohn.
Jacques (Bô) Cohn (1916-1974) – educator and teacher, born in Strasbourg – is one of the heroic figures of the resistance fighters of OSE. In charge of several children’s homes of OSE during the Occupation, he joined in 1944 the armed Jewish resistance group of the Israelite Scouts of France in the South Ouest and participated in operations in this maquis. His wife, Margot Cahn, was also a resistant and smuggled Jewish children out of France, as part of her activity in the Garel network.
At the Liberation, both continued to work for the association. Named OSE Director of Education, Jacques Cohn made every effort to help Holocaust orphans learn how to live again.
Since January 2018, a new day-care center for 25 patients with Dementia is up and running at the heart of the city of Strasbourg, close the main synagogue. The center offers daily therapeutically activities to elderly citizens with dementia who still live at home. OSE now runs 5 of such centers, helping more than 400 families cope with the ageing of their loved ones.