Cora Berliner Collection.

Cora Berliner was an economist and social scientist who held leadership positions in several major Jewish organizations in Germany between 1910 and 1942. From 1912 to 1914, she was the secretary of the Association of Jewish Youth Organizations in Germany (Verband der Jüdischen Jugendvereine Deutschlands—VJJD), and from 1922 to 1924 she headed the organization. During her term of office, she consistently advocated for the rights of Jewish girls. As the Nazis came to power she was active in the League of Jewish Women (Jüdischer Frauenbund, JFB).

The fifth and last child of a prominent intellectual Jewish family in Hanover, Berliner studied mathematics and political economy, earning her doctorate and then taking a position as department head in the city administration of Schöneberg. She worked for many of the highest governmental departments during the Weimar Republic, including Reichswirtschaftsministerium and Reichswirtschaftsamt. She also became a professor of economics at the Technical College (Berufspädagogisches Institut) in Berlin. With most other German Jews, she was dismissed from the civil service in 1933.

In 1933 Cora Berliner started working for the Reichsvertretung der Deutschen Juden (Reich Representation of German Jews), founded in September 1933, later the Reichsvertretung der Juden in Deutschland (Reich Representation of Jews in Germany). She was the head of the department of statistics and responsible for economic and social questions. During these years she wrote reports about the economic vicissitudes of German Jews after the Nazi rise to power, highlighting the especially difficult situation of Jewish women in her reports. At this same time she became active in the JFB, becoming vice-president from 1934 on. Together with her friend Hannah Karminski, she was in charge of assisting women and children with emigration matters. On June 19, 1942, Cora Berliner was deported and it is presumed she was killed in Maly Trostinec.