Juliet Kinchin: Fré Cohen was from a Jewish working-class family and like many in her community, her family was a backbone of the Social Democratic Workers Party in the Netherlands. And these organizations had an affiliated youth group, like many political parties in the 1920 and 1930s, the AJC. They were her first main client.
The activities of this youth organization were hiking, camping, singing and dancing, and performing these plays. The idea was that this would be a genuine working class, socialist culture. We know of the Hitler youth organizations, but there were also their left-wing or socialist counterparts. The Nazis did try to shut down these rival organizations because they were aware of how powerful they were in really forming an ideologically, politically engaged and informed new generation.
So these intersecting socialist and Jewish circles in which she moved throughout her life, allowed her to develop this flourishing practice as a graphic designer but ultimately they also made her doubly vulnerable during the Nazi occupation of the Netherlands. And, sadly, she chose to take her own life in 1943, when she was captured by the Germanische SS.