2026 New York Next Generation Event

Frank was born Franz Cohn on August 2, 1925, in Breslau, Germany (present day Wrocław, Poland) to Martin Cohn and Ruth Potlitzer Cohn. An only child, Frank lived comfortably with his parents in German middle-class society. Martin owned a successful sporting goods store. But violent antisemitism impacted Frank’s family even before the Nazis came to power. In January 1927, a group of Nazis brutally beat Frank’s uncle Max Berdass, who later died in June 1930 from his injuries. On April 1, 1933, Nazi leadership carried out a nationwide economic boycott targeting Jewish-owned businesses. A demonstration outside the Cohns’ store intimidated the store’s employees. Soon after, the Cohns sold the store, and Martin found a position selling bales of cloth to clothing stores and tailor shops.

In 1934, when Frank entered the third grade in a German public school, his favorite teacher began wearing a Nazi SA uniform with a swastika armband. His peers joined the Hitler Youth and displayed the Nazi emblem on their clothing. When his classmates sang Nazi songs, Frank was instructed to remain seated, as Jews were forbidden to participate. Hitler Youth members chased him after school, but he managed to avoid being caught. For Frank’s next year of school, his parents placed him in a private Jewish school. 

Soon after Frank’s bar mitzvah in August 1938, Martin left for a trip to the United States. He sought an affidavit from relatives to get Ruth and Frank out of Nazi Germany. Shortly after Martin left the country, the Gestapo came to the Cohn house looking for him. This visit scared Ruth, who was instructed to tell her husband to report to Gestapo headquarters as soon as he returned. Instead, she sent Martin a letter warning him not to return to Germany. Meanwhile, Ruth sought a tourist visa to travel to the United States and bribed a German consular clerk to add Frank’s name to the visa. They secretly packed one suitcase each, without alerting others or saying goodbye to their friends. 

Ruth bought two first-class tickets on the Statendam Steamer of the Holland-America Line, departing from Rotterdam for New York. Ruth feared that if immigration authorities knew that her husband was already in the United States, they would order their immediate return to Europe. Frank remembered his mother being afraid that the border inspectors would not let them into the country or that the inspectors would find a problem with their visas. Luckily, they came ashore without issue. 

The Cohns reunited in New York on October 30, 1938. On November 9, less than two weeks later, a wave of anti-Jewish violence referred to as Kristallnacht took place throughout Nazi Germany. In response, President Roosevelt used his executive authority to extend the visas of all Germans traveling in the United States on temporary visas. The Cohns were allowed to stay.

Just a month after his 18th birthday in 1943, Frank was drafted into the US Army to fight in World War II. During basic training at Fort Benning, Georgia, he was sworn in as a US citizen and assigned to the 87th Infantry Division. Frank was sent as an infantry replacement to England. In France, he disembarked on Omaha Beach a few months after the June 1944 D-Day invasion. He was then sent to Belgium, where the Army discovered that he spoke German. They sent him to Le Vésinet, France, for a two-week military intelligence course. Frank served during the Battle of the Bulge and later in the Rhineland and central Europe campaigns as a member of a six-man interrogator prisoner of war team, attached to an intelligence unit named T-Force, 12th Army Group. Their job was to assess the value of captured individuals and buildings related to the government, the Nazi party, industry, and technology for use during the Allied occupation and for the prosecution of war criminals. At one point, he was tasked with overseeing German prisoners of war detailed to help pack and ship Nazi documents to the United States, in support of future war crime prosecutions.

While in Germany, Frank tried to find out the fates of his relatives who had remained behind. Eventually, he learned that 11 members of his extended family, including his aunt Else Berdass Lichtenstein, were killed in the Holocaust.

After the war, Frank completed his undergraduate degree in psychology and education at the City College of New York. He later obtained a master's degree in police administration from Michigan State University. Frank served in the military for 35 years, achieving the rank of colonel before retiring as chief of staff of the Military District of Washington. He married Pauline Brimberg in 1948. They have one daughter, Laura. Pauline died in 2021 after 72 years of marriage. Frank is a volunteer at the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum.

Her first book, Rescue Board: The Untold Story of America's Efforts to Save the Jews of Europe (Doubleday, 2018), won the National Jewish Book Award for excellence in writing based on archival research. She and her work are featured in the 2022 PBS documentary “The U.S. and the Holocaust,” directed by Ken Burns, Lynn Novick, and Sarah Botstein, a film for which she served as a historical advisor.  She is currently writing Guests of the President: The 982 Holocaust Refugees Who Changed–and Were Changed By–an American Town on the Fort Ontario Emergency Refugee Shelter (1944–1946), which will be published by Simon and Schuster in 2027.

In 2025, the President of the United States appointed Dayani to the United States Holocaust Memorial Council. Reflecting on being sworn in as a Council member, she said, "I took this oath at a time when antisemitism has risen at a pace that should alarm every American. To be appointed by the very government that saved my family fleeing religious persecution as Jews, and trusted with helping preserve and protect the story of the Jewish people, is a privilege and a responsibility I carry with deep reverence."

Dayani has worked as a surrogate on three presidential campaigns and serves as a strategic advisor to some of the world’s political and philanthropic leaders. She is the founder of culture-shaping philanthropic companies, including top civic engagement organizations: Calanet Foundation, One Mitzvah a Day, Our Campus United, and I am a voter. 

As a leading voice on democracy, antisemitism, and women’s rights, Dayani’s video—posted after the October 7, 2023, Hamas terrorist attack on Israel—about her childhood living under a terrorist regime has had more than 50 million views, and her powerful speech before the United Nations has had more than 18 million views globally. She credits her experience fleeing Iran and coming to the United States as a religious refugee as the defining motivation behind her activism.

Dayani began her career as a corporate attorney and talent agent. At Rachel Zoe, Inc., she launched the company’s consumer products, investments, and digital media ventures and produced its TV show on Bravo. After six years, she left to join tech company, EBTH, where she helped raise $84 million in venture capital and executive-produced its show for HGTV.

She lives in Los Angeles with her husband, their two daughters, Anderson and Miller, and their giant goldendoodle, (Jack) Bauer.