Looking into the Life of an Immigrant
The text below is an excerpt from a newspaper article about Max Cohen, who was a Russian Jewish immigrant to the United States. The article, which appears on this page, was originally published in 1944 in the Denver Post.
...Mr. Cohen was born in Russia in 1832. Now he's a resident of the Beth Israel home for the aged, in Denver. He smokes a pipe, cigarettes, and cigars. He enjoys a drink of beer, wine or "schnapps" when he can get it. He prays devoutly three times a day. Oftener than that, he curses Hitler. Of all the tyrants he has known in his more than eleven decades of life, he declares the little Austrian paperhanger is the worst...
On any sunny day, Mottal Cohen can be seen reading his Jewish paper, The Forward, printed in Yiddish, as he sits on his favorite bench in the Beth Israel grounds. He reads the type without glasses, too...
He knows some English, but his conversation is all in Yiddish. He is keenly interested in the war and current events...
Fifty years ago, Mr. Cohen left Russia as a colonist to Argentina. The colony was organized by the late Baron de Hirsch, as a Jewish agricultural settlement. The Cohens abandoned the South American farming effort because grasshoppers devoured their crops for several seasons. They moved to New York...
After six years in Gotham, the family moved to Denver. Mr. Cohen was a peddler here till he entered the [old-age] home at the age of 100, in June, 1942.
