Joseph Cohen was born on 15 April 1868 in Gorredijk, municipality of Opsterland, as son of David Abraham Cohen and Sara Godschalk. On 8 March 1905 he married in Stad Ommen Frederika Gozina Godschalk, who was born there on 14 September 1873 as a daughter of Salomon Godschalk and Willemina de Lange. The couple had three children, namely Saartje in 1906, Salomon in 1907 and David Hartog in 1912. Saartje was mixed married and due to that she survived the Holocaust. Her parents and both her brothers and their families were killed during the Shoah.
On 7 January 1921 Joseph Cohen and his family moved from Gorredijk to Leeuwarden, where he lived in the Breedstraat, since 1931 in the Vijzelstraat and since 1934 in the Beethovenstraat 19. Joseph him self was a butcher and also his son Salomon, who later became a commercial traveller. His son David Hartog was a baker and confectioner; he practiced his trade in many cities in Holland, like in Amsterdam, Groningen, Dordrecht, Maastricht, Deventer and Rotterdam and on 20 January 1939 moved to the Bijlwerffstraat 32a there.
Also Joseph Cohen moved at some point to Bijlwerffstraat 32a in Rotterdam as at the time of the mandatory registration of the Jews in the Netherland, up from 10 January 1941, they stayed already on that address. However, already from 2 August 1933 his daughter Saartje lived there with her non-Jewish husband and school teacher Johannes Antonius Schouten.
Joseph Cohen and his wife Frederika Gozina Godschalk were deported from transit camp Westerbork to Auschwitz on 12 October 1942. On arrival there on 15 October, they both were immediately killed there in the gas chambers of Auschwitz-Birkenau.
Sources among others: website Alle Friezen.nl/family registration card peoples registry Joseph Cohen; City Archive Rotterdam/family registration card of Johannes Antonius Schouten; the file cabinet of the Jewish Council, registration cards of Joseph Cohen and Frederika Gozina Cohen-Godschalk, Salomon Cohen and David Hartog Cohen; City Archive of Amsterdam, archive card of David Hartog Cohen.