Albert Cohen (novelist)

Biography

Abraham Albert Cohen (Greek: Αβραάμ Αλβέρτος Κοέν) was born in Corfu, Greece, in 1895, to Greek Jewish parents. Albert's parents, who owned a soap factory, moved to Marseille, France, when he was a child. Albert Cohen discusses this period in his novel Le Livre de ma mère (The Book of My Mother). He studied at a private Catholic school. In 1904, he started high school at Lycée Thiers, where he met and started a lifelong friendship with Marcel Pagnol, and graduated in 1913.

In 1914, he left Marseille for Geneva, Switzerland, and enrolled in law school. He graduated from law school in 1917 and enrolled in literature school in 1917, where he remained until 1919. In 1919, he became a Swiss citizen. That same year he married Elisabeth Brocher, who in 1921 gave birth to their daughter, Myriam. In 1924, his wife died of cancer. In 1925, Albert Cohen became director of Revue Juive (The Jewish Review), a periodical whose writers included Albert Einstein and Sigmund Freud. From 1926 to 1932, he worked in International Labour Organization in Geneva. In 1933, he married his second wife, Marianne Goss.

In 1939, living in France, he became a personal representative of Chaim Weizmann, the president of the Zionist Organization. He helped Jewish refugees from Nazism to reach Palestine. In 1940, after the German invasion in France, Cohen fled to London. The Jewish Agency for Palestine then made him responsible for establishing contacts with exiled governments. On January 10, 1943, Cohen's mother died in Marseille. That same year, he met his future third wife, Bella Berkowich. In 1944, he became an attorney for the Intergovernmental Committee on Refugees. In 1947, Cohen returned to Geneva where he held a senior post in International Refugee Organization until 1954. In 1957, he turned down the post of Israeli Ambassador in order to pursue his literary career.

He died in Geneva at the age of 86 and is buried in the Jewish Cemetery of Veyrier, near Geneva.