Fredj Cohen was born in May 1942 into a Jewish family of twelve children. He narrowly escaped the infamous “Vel d’Hiv” roundup, during which 13,152 people were arrested and later murdered at the Auschwitz-Birkenau extermination camp.

Fredj Cohen knows very little about his Moroccan father and Algerian mother. At the age of two, he was taken in by a family in the Pyrenees as a hidden child, where he remained long after the war had ended.

By the time he was ten years old, Fredj dreamed of living with wolves in Canada. He preferred the simplicity of life in nature among animals, as human beings had deeply disappointed him. However, being too young, his plan came to nothing. At 14, with few other options, he trained as a carpenter. At 17, he set off to travel the world. Fredj Cohen completed his military service in Alsace and now lives and works as an artist in Strasbourg.