Benjamin V. Cohen was a New Deal lawyer who helped rescue the Frierdiker Rebbe from Nazi-occupied Warsaw. Last week, his hometown honored him with a new Indiana state historical marker.

The marker stands in the 500 block of South High Street in downtown Muncie. It was dedicated on the anniversary of Cohen’s birth. The Indiana Jewish Historical Society, led by executive director Michael J. Brown, organized the event.

Cohen was one of President Franklin D. Roosevelt’s most trusted legal minds. He helped draft key New Deal laws and the Lend-Lease program. He later helped write the Civil Rights Act of 1957.

Rabbi Dovid Grossbaum, Chabad Shliach in Carmel, spoke at the ceremony. He described Cohen as “a shy and gentle man” who “preferred to do his work behind the scenes and let others take the credit.” Rabbi Grossbaum said Cohen worked “at the time of the most open antisemitism to plague this blessed land.”

In 1939, the Rebbe, Rabbi Yosef Yitzchak Schneersohn, was trapped in Warsaw under bombardment. American Chassidim “raised money, hired a Washington lawyer, and knocked on every door they could find,” Rabbi Grossbaum said. One of those doors was Cohen’s.

“He was not a Chossid. He was not a follower of the Rebbe. He was not especially observant as a Jew, but he was a Jew and he understood what was at stake,” he said.

Cohen’s quiet diplomacy started a chain that ran from the Secretary of State to Berlin, and then to German military intelligence. It ended with Ernst Bloch, the German officer who found the Rebbe and escorted him to safety. The Rebbe arrived in New York on 9 Adar Sheni 5700 (March 19, 1940).

“Many people had a part in that rescue, but Benjamin Cohen’s was a crucial link,” Rabbi Grossbaum said. He noted that Chabad historian Rabbi David Eliezrie sees Cohen’s role as the most crucial of all.

Rabbi Grossbaum connected the rescue to the Rebbe’s work in America, including the shluchim movement later led by the Rebbe. “I am one of those emissaries,” he said. “We are living out a story that passes directly through the actions of a quiet man from Indiana.”

“Benjamin Cohen could not save the world that was destroyed in Europe,” he concluded. “But he helped save one life, and from that life grew a world he never fully lived to see. May this marker remind every person who walks by that one quiet act of courage can echo for generations.”