Farewell to Nina Nissim Cohen
Jun 25th, 2010 by admin
A few days ago my friend Jean Cohen informed me that the mother of our common good friend Dr. Mimis Cohen passed away during her sleep. Then he sent me an article written in Athens daily newspaper “Kathimerini” by Helen Bistika entitled “Saying Goodbye to Nina Nissim Cohen-Guardian Angel of the Family.” I was moved by the article and I asked him to translate it into English. This article expresses the feelings of all friends of the Cohen family and all people who had a chance to meet a great and brave woman like Nina Nissim Cohen.
Please read the article carefully!
Kathimerini 19.6.2010
Saying Goodbye to Nina Nissim Cohen-Guardian Angel of the Family
By Helen Bistika
They say that a good neighbor is better than a relative. With just a door separating me from the new generation of the Cohen Polena family, I met and appreciated the personality of Nina Nissim Cohen that passed away in her sleep on June the 13th, in the arms of her house. She had been through a lot of difficult and good times during her life, as a young girl of the Holocaust.
Athenian born and raised, daughter of Solomon and Bohorula Asser, she met the surgeon, and later owner of a private clinic, Nissim Cohen from Janina, a reserve officer and medical lieutenant of the Greek army in the mountains of Albania during the Greek Italian war.
It was the spring of 1943, in the Italian occupation. On a bench of the Acropolis they realized that they had to live together. Later, on September of 1943, Nina hide at the house of author and columnist of the “Kathimerini” newspaper, Andreas Fragias, at Saint Emilian suburb of Athens for 13 months along with her mother. With Nissim they married in 1945 raised a family. Mimis Cohen her first born is today a highly regarded professor and haed of the Reconstructive and Plastic Surgery at the University of Illinois at Chicago. His sister, Alina Cohen Polena is a well known instructor of Hatha Yoga a favorite student of Agapi.
Mother and grandmother Nina lived to love and take care of her family. A Greek Jew she used to knit during the war for the “soldiers shirt” * Her son Mimis served as a Second Lieutenant in the Greek Navy. With his wife Andrea Biel they had Saranna that studied Anthropology at the University of Michigan.
Alina got married to Chris Polena and gloat over their daughter Marilyn, a mathematician and economist, specialized in the economies of developing countries, working in London. Her sister Natalie faithful to her hometown of Kifissia is a kindergarten teacher that studied media and pedagogy.
Nina’s house was full of family pictures. After the funeral and for two days friends where purring in for the prayers of the Shiva, and the house on Dionisiou street was full of love just like Nina Nissim Cohen would want it.
Because life goes on for her family and all of us…
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* A women’s volunteer organization that would saw warm socks and underwear for the Greek soldiers fighting in the Albanian mountains during the Greek Italian War of 1940.



