1. The amazing (updated) story of Two-Gun Cohen
http://www.jewishpress.com/indepth/opinions/the-amazing-saga-of-two-gun-cohen/2012/08/29/
The Amazing Saga Of Two-gun Cohen
By Steven Plaut
Jewish Press August 31, 2012In November 1947, the United Nations was considering the creation of aJewish state in parts of Western Palestine and a new Arab state in theother parts.
it.
The head of the Chinese delegation was approached by a hero of theChinese campaign against the Japanese during World War II, a man whohad been a general and senior adviser to President Sun Yat-sen. Thegeneral persuaded the delegation to abstain. The Security Councilvoted approval and the Partition Resolution was sent to the GeneralAssembly, where it passed. Modern Israel came into existence.The general who persuaded the Chinese not to oppose the resolution wasnot Chinese himself – but, in fact, a Jew born in Poland in 1887.Morris Abraham Cohen was brought to London from Poland when he wasstill a toddler and grew up in the impoverished East End of London.By the time he was 12 he had become a skilled boxer and a pickpocket.He quickly amassed a police arrest record and his family sent him toreform school until he was 16. Once released, he went to Canada towork on a farm in rural Saskatchewan, near some Indian reservations.The farming bored him; he preferred work as a carnival barker and con
man. This got him arrested yet again and he did some jail time.
While wandering the Canadian West he became friendly with the localChinese. Cohen liked Chinese cuisine (what Jew doesn’t?) and the
Chinese outlook on life.
One day Cohen wandered into a Chinese eatery and realized the ownerwas being robbed. Cohen beat the robber to a pulp. The Chinese wereso impressed, they embraced Cohen as one of their own. He joined thelocal chapter of nationalist leader Sun Yat-sen’s political movementand started to pick up some basic Chinese. Cohen raised funds for
Sun’s movement and helped procure arms.
After serving in World War I as a Canadian soldier, Cohen headed offin 1922 to China with plans to work as a railroad developer. But oncein Shanghai he found work as a writer on the English-language
newspaper associated with Sun Yat-sen’s movement.
The Chinese called him Ma Kun (“clenched fist”), which was as close asthey could get to Morris Cohen. He procured arms for a warlord ofCanton in the 1920s and was adviser to Wu Tiecheng, the Canton policechief who later became mayor of Shanghai. Cohen began to serve as partof Sun’s guard force, and eventually commanded the entire 250-man
presidential bodyguard unit.
Always armed, Cohen managed to defend Sun from more than oneassassination attempt. After Cohen was wounded in his hand whiledriving off one group of assassins, he started carrying a secondpistol and local Westerners immediately dubbed him “Two-Gun” Cohen,
the nickname he carried with pride for the rest of his life.
Eventually he was appointed head of the Chinese secret service. Hissidekick was another Jew, an anti-Soviet Russian named MosesSchwartzberg who had been part of a plot to assassinate Lenin in 1918.(Schwartzberg was the model for the James Bond character later
developed by Ian Fleming - SP)
Because of the importance of the Schwartzberg-Cohen pair, Yiddishbecame one of the three languages of the Chinese secret service, afterMandarin and English. Schwartzberg would later organize a regiment of1,200 Jewish volunteers to fight for Israel in its War of
Independence.
After Sun Yat-sen died, Two-Gun Cohen was named commander of theChinese 19th field army. He worked for a while for Chinese PresidentChiang Kai-shek. He led Nationalist troops in fighting against boththe Japanese and the Chinese communists. He was the only European
ever to serve as a Chinese general.
When the Japanese invaded China in the 1930s, Cohen worked for Britishintelligence. Just after the attack on Pearl Harbor, Hong Kong wasinvaded by the Japanese. Two-Gun got Sun Yat-sen’s widow out safelyon one of the last planes to escape. Cohen himself was captured by theJapanese and thrown into the Stanley Prison Camp, where he was beaten
and mistreated.
After the war he lived in Canada, where he helped the Zionists obtainarms for Israel’s War of Independence. He eventually returned toEngland, where he died in 1970. On his tombstone in Manchester hisname appears in English, Hebrew, and Chinese characters. His funeralwas attended by representatives from both Chinas, which were still atwar with each another. It was the only thing in the world on which
they could agree.
There is a special entry about Two-Gun in the Spy Museum inWashington. Two books have been published about Two-Gun’s life. RobReiner (the "meathead" from the Archie Bunker show -- SP) is working
on a movie about Two-Gun.
Two-Gun’s cousin, the journalist Marion Dreyfus in New York City,tells me her family still has many scrolls and silks that Two-Gun sentthem from China. She found a plaque on the wall of the Shanghaisynagogue commemorating Two-Gun as one of the ten most important Jews
in Chinese history.
When Cohen returned to Manchester after the war, he and his cousinswent into the raincoat business, the weather in England being idealfor such a venture. Two pistols and a Chinese generalshipnotwithstanding, Two-Gun was a proud Jew – and he could even get youa raincoat wholesale!
[PA TV (Fatah), July 2, 2012]
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