Ernest Kan
Ernest Kan (born July 14, 1922 in Berlin ; † February 2, 2014 ) was a Latvian survivor of the Holocaust . He was active in commemorating and commemorating the Holocaust.
Life
He was born Ernst Kahn in Berlin in 1922 . His parents were the Latvian citizens Rosie and Marcus Kahn. They had fled to Germany before the Russian Revolution in 1920 , but had then adopted Latvian citizenship. The Jewish family lived at Solinger Strasse 8 in Berlin- Moabit . From the summer of 1928 he attended the 231st community school there and in April 1932 switched to the Menzel secondary school. On November 11, 1938, he was the last Jewish student in his class to be expelled from school. After the father was briefly imprisoned for allegedly falsifying a lottery ticket, but was ultimately only sentenced to a small fine, the Kahn family emigrated to Latvia again. The family lived in Riga . Due to his lack of knowledge of Latvian, Ernst Kahn had problems finding a job and then started working as a mechanic at Ford .
In the summer of 1941, German troops occupied Latvia. The Kahn family's apartment was occupied by the field newspaper “ Die Front ”, so the family had to move into a rear building. Ernst Kahn and his father had to do work for the German occupiers in the front building and for the newspaper. This resulted in a good relationship with the commanding officer Hans Eckensberger. Eckensberger finally saved the lives of the family and the Jewish neighbors: when the SS tried to brutally evacuate the residents, he intervened with drawn weapons and successfully demanded the publication of the Jews assigned to his newspaper. Ultimately, however, the Kahn family had to move to the Riga ghetto . Ernst Kahn worked as a car mechanic on SS vehicles outside the ghetto. On November 30, 1941, the ghetto was cleared to make way for Jews expelled from Germany. 15,000 Latvian Jews were killed by the Latvian SS under the supervision of the German SS. A second wave of murders, which killed 12,000 people, took place on December 8, 1941. Among them was Rosie Kahn, Ernst Kahn's mother. While Ernst came to the Kaiserwald concentration camp , his father stayed in the ghetto and was probably later murdered in an extermination camp. Until 1944, Ernst Kahn lived under the worst conditions in the Kaiserwald concentration camp. Due to the approach of Soviet troops, the concentration camp was dissolved. Kahn was brought to Danzig by ship in October 1944 and from there to the Stutthof concentration camp . The conditions were even more catastrophic than in the Kaiserwald concentration camp. In particular, there was no clothing even remotely adequate for the harsh winter conditions, although it was compulsory to stay outdoors during the day.
After three weeks he was classified as still fit for work and transported by train with other prisoners to Magdeburg . He was taken to a subcamp of the Buchenwald concentration camp and had to work in the ammunition-producing Polte works , where he was responsible for the maintenance of conveyor belts in twelve-hour shifts . He was severely beaten with a log for stealing sugar beet , causing permanent vertebral injury. He repeatedly sabotaged conveyor belts with small mistakes, but remained undetected.
In view of the US troops advancing on Magdeburg , the prisoners were assembled for a march. In the confusion, Kahn and two other prisoners managed to escape to the Polte factory, which had been badly damaged by air raids; he hid in an attic and put on German overalls he had found there . The next morning, however, they were found by SS men and driven into a courtyard with other prisoners. From there, a small group was picked up in a small truck, which, however, returned empty a short time later. He concluded that they were all executed. At that moment, however, another air strike began. Kahn was trapped with fellow inmates. During the air raid, he noticed that the door was unlocked. Maybe the air pressure from a bombing or a compassionate guard had opened the door. Kahn ran through the airstrike with three of his fellow prisoners and hid in an elevator shaft. After a while, US troops reached the plant and freed Kahn and his fellow prisoners.
Kahn then left Germany on a train together with some Belgians and French for Brussels . Because of his good knowledge of German , he was suspected by Belgian police officers as a fleeing SS man on the way. To make matters worse, Kahn had an injury at the point where SS members had a blood type tattoo that he had sustained in the Kaiserwald concentration camp. However, after a 24 hour review, it was able to continue driving. When he arrived in Brussels, he was able to make himself understood thanks to his good knowledge of French and tried to get new papers to travel to the USA, where one of his uncle lived. It took him two years in total before he was able to travel to the USA in 1947. In the course of reapplying for his papers, he changed his name to Ernest Kan . Kan already spoke good English through his schooling and found a job in the USA after just a week. In 1948 he married his wife Ana, a daughter of German parents. He became a father of three.
From 1998 Kan worked as a witness to the Holocaust. He gave lectures at the University of Florida and worked as a student supervisor in the school district of Palm Beach . In this context, he also visited Germany several times, for example in 2003 and 2005. For example, he was in Magdeburg on the 60th anniversary of the liberation and on April 18, 2005 signed the city of Magdeburg's Golden Book with his wife .
Ernest Kan died on February 2, 2014 at the age of 91.
Web links
Individual evidence
| personal data | |
|---|---|
| SURNAME | Kan, Ernest |
| ALTERNATIVE NAMES | Kahn, Ernst |
| BRIEF DESCRIPTION | American contemporary witness of the Holocaust of Latvian origin |
| DATE OF BIRTH | July 14, 1922 |
| PLACE OF BIRTH | Berlin |
| DATE OF DEATH | 2nd February 2014 |