Henry Kahn

Harper: If we can please begin by you telling us your name, your date and place of birth.
KAHN: My name is Henry Kahn. I was born on August 21st, 1902, in Bad Nauheim, Germany. Bad Nauheim is a health resort.

Harper: Can you spell the name of the town for us?
KAHN: Two words — Bad Nauheim [spells out].

Harper: Can you tell us a little bit about your family? Your grandparents, who they were, what their names were, where they came from?
KAHN: Yes. The father’s grandparents, we are not far from Bad Nauheim in the Hesse, in the Ranstadt, where my father was born. The Jews in Ranstadt, we go back several centuries. My grandfather, whom I never knew — he died, I think the year before I was born — he had a general store in Ranstadt, which was a small village. He traded in all kinds of things as it was used in these times. The sons went around with samples and sold the religious whatever they needed. There was everything from dry goods to groceries to grains, was traded. They had a big business with grain. He had a very good reputation there.

There are some stories connected with it. They visited villages. For example, my father told me there was a village which at that time — antisemitism was very strong at this time, at the end of the last century. There was propaganda. There were anti-Semites which incited the farmers against the Jews. There was a village, for example, they visited, which elected antisemitic delegates 100%. They were their best customers. There were expressions: “Fear undermines, but not so that we don’t like you.” Something like this. This is an example of how the situation was with respect to antisemitism.

Harper: What was your grandfather’s name on your father’s side?
KAHN: My father’s Morris Kahn [inaudible aside to wife]. It’s not in the book?

Harper: That’s OK.
KAHN: Here. I have here. I will show you later the whole family tree, which goes back. But this is here, the mother’s family tree.

Harper: That’s OK. Can you tell me about your mother’s parents?
KAHN: My mother’s parents were already born in Bad Nauheim. This family goes back to the 16th century. It was really the oldest Jewish family there. My mother was born Rosenthal, and my grandfather had a butcher store. He died very early, and my grandmother continued the business with her son. I found gravestones with the name, which as I said, goes back to the 16th century. There were two family Rosenthals in Bad Nauheim, two family branches. There were two butcher shops which were separate, Max Rosenthal and Brothers Rosenthal, but they came both from the same origin. One of the Rosenthals was sitting in the city council for 25 years. That’s so far as the Rosenthals are concerned. It’s difficult for me to express myself sometimes [laughs].

Harper: Were your grandparents religious?
KAHN: Yes. As a matter of fact, my parents also kept a kosher household because as long as my grandmother was there, we had a strict kosher household. We had separate dishes, kosher for Pesach. It was all separate and was strictly kosher. But outside my parents were not so religious anymore.

Harper: Can you tell me a little bit about your father, when he was born, what he did for a living?
KAHN: Yes. My father was born in Ranstadt, as I said, which is a small village not far from Bad Nauheim. The whole location is not far from Frankfurt. It’s half an hour by train north of Frankfurt. There’s something peculiar about the Jews of this district. They probably came with the Romans. They were traders there. They had business, cattle traders or corn traders, and they were distributed over the whole range of this part of the country. They had a good life, and they married. It’s not far from Bad Nauheim. My mother was born in Bad Nauheim, my father there, so they met there and married.

My father went to the high school in Friedberg, which is close to Frankfurt. Friedberg was an old Jewish community. They had a mikvah there, for example, which was built at the same time as the cathedral was built, from the same architect. It was famous. It was shown. Germans always showed it as Roman baths. They didn’t say a mikvah. It was quite interesting for people who came to see. Bad Nauheim was a small village until the water was discovered. Hot water came out of the hot springs. The middle of the last century, since then this place was loved as a famous bath to cure illnesses. It was famous throughout the world. The tsar of Russia came there. The Hearst newspaper came regularly and visited Bad Nauheim. It was very famous. It was before the First World War. Many Russians came.

I remember the time when the tsar came and when he went to church there. I was at that time nine years old, and we sat opposite on the [ball?] to observe the tsar coming. This bad, this place is still beautiful as it was for a special reason. The Grand Duke of this little country, Hessen — at this time, Germany was divided in principalities. The Grand Duke of Hesse, he reigned over Oberhessen — Upper Hesse, Starkenburg, and Rhenish Hesse. That’s in Germany. There was an art colony in the capital of this Hesse state, and through this the buildings in Bad Nauheim were built in an art nouveau style, very beautiful. Still exists today. I’ll show you pictures of it. The bath houses are extraordinary. You cannot find them in the world like this anymore. What should I say about my grandparents?

Harper: You said your grandparents had the general store. Did your father participate in that?
KAHN: Yes, sure. Another thing. My father, as I said before, visited the high school in Friedberg, and my grandfather was advanced in his vision. He sent his children to high schools, which was not the usual in this case, with Jews in the country. My uncle studied medicine, and my father married my mother in Bad Nauheim and opened a store in Bad Nauheim. Shortly before I was born, they moved from the first location to another location — I’ll show you pictures of it — and built a quite sizeable . . .

Harper: What kind of store was it?
KAHN: It was a store for textiles and women’s clothing. It was quite up-to-date and modern. I remember that our store was the first to have electricity. At first when I was born, a century back, there were gas lights everywhere. I remember the time when gaslights on the streets were lit at night and put out in the morning. But we had high-density lamps in front of the store. It was a sensation at that time.

Harper: Can you tell me a little bit about your childhood in the town? What the town was like? Your neighborhood?
KAHN: Actually, I went to the public school. I must say we were integrated in the public life. I never felt any different between the others. I grew up with Christian boys. Occasionally, it happened that teachers made an antisemitic remark. I remember that. The teacher said he finds that my coreligionists make mistakes in language. I don’t know how old I was, 14. I stood up and said, “I protest against this!” The others said, “Yes, you are right.” It was against the teacher. It was not an antisemitic general atmosphere.

There was another incident, but it was later. I went to this school, went only to the opus secunda. I don’t know what this means because our classes had Latin names: sexta, quinta, quarta. Opus secunda was the third class before graduation. It’s difficult to translate to the situation here. This school did not go to the last class before university. I continued my studies in the neighboring town of Giessen, which had gymnasiums. Our school was an oberrealschule, translated is very different. There were two different kinds of higher schools, gymnasiums which taught Greek and Latin — most elected [Germanikus?]. Then there were reform schools, real schools, which didn’t teach Latin, only taught modern languages. We learned French and English, and Latin voluntarily, which I learned later because I wanted to continue.

This school did not go to the last class, so the last three years I commuted to Giessen, which was by train half an hour distance, with others together. Every morning we took the train to Giessen, went to school, and came back in the evening for three years. I came to this because I wanted to relate another incident which happened there. There were painting classes. The teacher arranged voluntary classes on Saturdays for painting, for people who wanted to go there. I was always interested in painting. I went to this class, but on vacation I painted myself at home. I went out in the morning in the forest and painted pictures and brought them to school. One day the art teacher brought the director of the school in and said, “Look how beautiful he does this. He is a white raven under his [literaries?].” It’s different to translate. “Jews do not paint.” I protested against this again. But these antisemitic happenings were not usual. In the general population we didn’t feel any difference.

Harper: What about your neighborhood? Was it a Jewish neighborhood, or . . .?
KAHN: I think 40 Jewish families there. There were just a few [that lived between all the others?]. There was no Jewish neighborhood there.

Harper: Was there a synagogue in your town?
KAHN: That’s another thing. We had a synagogue, and we had a Jewish teacher, not a rabbi. The rabbis were in Giessen; this was a bigger town. There were two rabbis in Giessen, an Orthodox rabbi and a more liberal rabbi. Bad Nauheim had, I think, four Jewish hotels, which all kept strictly kosher. For this, they needed to be chauffeured. The teacher was chauffeured at the same time, and he made his livelihood mainly through the shchita he had to make for the hotels. We had every week lessons in Hebrew, lessons in religion, but we didn’t learn very much. This teacher was not very good. They had several. My mother went to the same teacher as I had, and she didn’t learn anything.

Harper: Did you keep the Sabbath? Did you go to the synagogue regularly?
KAHN: No, we did not go regularly. We kept the Shabbat. We closed the stores. We did not go to shul regularly, holidays always. But there were people who were Orthodox and went to shul every Shabbat.

Harper: Did you light candles at your home?
KAHN: Yes, we lit candles at home. Sure. Not far from us, my grandfather lived with my mother’s brother, who had continued the butcher shop which his father had [inaudible sentence]. There were butchers who dealt very much with the hotels which were there. Not only Jewish hotels, to Christian hotels they delivered the meat. My grandfather died very young through an accident. At that time, they grinded the meat with these big knives, which were like this in form. It fell off on his leg, and he got an infection and died at, I think, 34 years old. So my grandfather conducted this alone with my mother’s brother, Max Rosenthal, who later went to Israel when Hitler came, and we met them there. He died in Israel. A funny thing is, he also died from an infection of his leg.

The other brother was killed in the First World War in Russia. He went to the military voluntarily, immediately, and he was a prisoner of war in Russia, and he died of a wound in his leg also, in prison. We heard this only a year later that he was there and that he died. We didn’t hear anything else. I remember, for example, that he wrote a letter, all this stuff, 1914 the war broke out; he immediately went to the front, and he died probably in September already. He wrote a letter that he went to a dangerous patrol. It was the only thing we heard from him. Then one year later we did not hear anything until we got a postcard from a priest that he died in a hospital. This postcard was stamped “Grodno, Vilna.” Vilna is in Lithuania, and Grodno is another town there. Actually, we later found out that he died in Grodno. There was another relative, a German soldier, came to this town when the Germans advanced. That’s not important, actually. His son is now in Germany. He had the office of the Keren Kayemeth [Jewish National Fund] in Frankfurt. He’s now retired. His daughter lived in Israel and died there, too.

Harper: Did you have any brothers and sisters?
KAHN: No. I was an only child.

Harper: Let me get your education straight here. You went strictly to public schools all throughout, and you had a little religious education on the side?
KAHN: Yes. It was usual there. We learned the prayers but without learning the languages. My education, you want to know. I finished school with Abitur, the preparation class for the university, in Giessen, as I said before. Then I went to Frankfurt University and studied political science. After that, I graduated and made the doctorate in 1923. I was very early and went to apprenticeship in [Bauman?] for a time, in a big department store, and joined my father in the business. I was, after some years, part of this business. I decided later, in 1930, to study medicine. I went to Frankfurt University also, studied medicine until Hitler came in 1933.

Harper: Could I interrupt you there? Can you talk a little bit about when things started to change, when you first heard of Hitler and when things began to heat up?
KAHN: Sure. Hitler began already in the ’20s, but it was of no importance. There was a so-called putsch, which did not succeed. I remember at that time we always went to Berlin for purchasing merchandise which was necessary. Berlin was the fashion city for Germany. There were big fashion houses, which mostly were Jewish, and they were all taken over later. I remember that I went with my mother once, or with my father [we were a trinity?], that I was there. There were demonstrations. At that time Rathenau was murdered. I don’t know if you know about this. Rathenau was the minister of foreign affairs, and he was a Jew, and he was assassinated. This was the beginning, actually, of this. There were demonstrations.

I remember these demonstrations just at the time I studied in Frankfurt. I remember this big demonstration. Part of this demonstration went to the villas where the rich people lived. In this one case, a man went in front of his house. They came and killed him. The next day — at that time I used to bicycle to go to the university. I passed his house. I remember the windows broken. Then I was in Berlin also when such demonstrations were. We had to flee to a restaurant and stayed there the whole night. We couldn’t go out. That’s one of the experiences I had. Hitler at first did not succeed, but in 1933 — I don’t remember the time exactly that he came to power really legally, because they elected him. At that time, I studied at Frankfurt University, and I remember in ’33, in the beginning, I used to eat in the men’s cafeteria in the university where the students ate, and I saw the swastika, big swastikas on the walls. I said at that time, “I can’t stand this.” I went to the secretary and said, “I heard that Jews could not study here anymore.” He said “Oh, no. I don’t.” I said, “Give me the exmatriculation,” and I immediately left the university and tried to continue my studies abroad.

Harper: Now if I can interrupt you, was there discussion in your family about Hitler being dangerous for the Jews? And were you reading antisemitic things in the newspapers and propaganda at this time?
KAHN: There was much more. In the beginning already were demonstrations of the Nazi party in Bad Nauheim. I remember there were pharmacies [or a pharmacist?] who was the first official Nazi, but this went very quickly. I remember the time when, I think it was in the beginning when rowdies walked through the streets in formation and in Nazi uniforms, the brown uniforms. They sung — I can’t translate. I remember that we were in our room, the whole family was together and saw in the street when they marched and they sang, “[German line from song.] If the Jewish blood on the knife, [it’s still better?].” It’s such a gruesome melody. We thought that Hitler could not stay. That’s not possible. We could not believe that Hitler could keep his power longer, though we saw all this. My father had his business and a house. They wanted to try to sell it, but it did not go so quickly, so I went then abroad. They unfortunately did not come out.

Harper: Did you leave because you knew that this was trouble?
KAHN: I left because I couldn’t stand to be a second — we never thought about what could happen, what happened later. We didn’t take it seriously enough, but still, we saw the danger coming and therefore I left.

Harper: So you left the university to study . . .
KAHN: I left the university. Another story I could tell you in this connection. When I started to study medicine, I was an old student because I had finished studies seven years back already in political science. With me were some other students which had also changed their studies. They were older students. There was one pharmacist, and I don’t know what other they studied. We built a group which studied together. There were perhaps four or five people. We did it this way that every week the study was done in one’s room, sometimes in another’s room. It’s difficult to translate. I don’t know. Still, I’m here 37 years later. It’s difficult still to express myself, to translate. We did it so that one studied a subject, all studied the same subject. Then one of us held a speech about the subject and we discussed it. That was in preparation for the university.

For example, I remember I talked about the heart, then we discussed it. But interesting is in this connection: one of the students who lived in my neighborhood and we visited each other, one day under his lapel he had hid a swastika. He said he doesn’t wear it outside because of me. But I found out they all were Nazis; they even come with me when I left, they come with me to the train station. The Nazis in the beginning, people didn’t believe. He told me, “Yes, the Jews have to sacrifice themselves for the unity of the Germans.” That’s what he said. But one could talk. I remember that I talked to Nazis there in the beginning. I tried to persuade them.

Harper: So there was no discussion within your family about them leaving or the entire family leaving?
KAHN: Sure. They wanted to leave when they can sell their business, the house. They wanted to do this, certainly. I remember in Frankfurt, they opened a café house where only the Jews came. Jews couldn’t visit other café houses anymore. So gradually this pressure increased.

Harper: Do you remember what year that was?
KAHN: That was in the beginning of 1933. I left in ’33. I left in the very beginning. But I came back again for a vacation, so we didn’t think it was so serious at the moment. It came only later. So after a time — I don’t know if I should say first what my parents did, if you want to. They couldn’t sell the business, so they sold out the store and tried to sell the house. One competitor, [name?], bought the house, but this was much later. Years later.

They moved to Frankfurt. We got still letters from them. I will tell you later. I was in Israel at the time, in Palestine. The Jews there were driven from one apartment to the other. I saw it on the change of address they sent me. Finally, they had to be in a certain place altogether. It was systematically done. Then my parents couldn’t send any letters anymore. There was a family in Hamburg, where my wife comes from, who lived in the same house, and they moved to Sweden. Through them, we could get news from my parents over there in Sweden. We got them for a time. Until also this stopped. The last I got was a Red Cross letter from my father. A Red Cross letter is like a telegram. That’s what they were allowed to send out. This was before his deportation.

Harper: We’re going to take a break. OK?

[Recording is paused and then resumes mid-sentence.]

KAHN: . . . between the general population and the Jews.

Harper: I won’t even ask you a question. When we start, just start talking about it. OK?
KAHN: May I go back to the general situation of the Jews in Bad Nauheim. In this part of Germany, we have to think that the emancipation of the Jews only began in the beginning of the last century because in 1820 there was an edict that the Jews should have names. Until then, they didn’t have really names; they were “son of Abram, Abramson.” They had no real names, so in 1820, I think exactly 1826, was this edict. I found out in the history of the Jews of Bad Nauheim — we have also other history of the Jews in Bad Nauheim which was written by Dr. Rudolph Stahl. First I will tell you the story about this, too.

Jews, for example, brothers had different names. One called themselves Rosenthal, the other Samuel, and the other Shoya. Three brothers took different names. Also many Jews took names of cities. The Friedberg, or [Ponkwelder?]. You hear the name Frankfurter, or Berliner, or Nauheimer. These are the names Jews gave themselves, or they gave to themselves beautiful names: Goldman, [Diplisch?], whatever this was who had nice names, and these are Jewish names. As a matter of fact, this is not only limited to Germany. Later I found in Italy, if the name was Roma, it was a Jew. Or Poland. Yes, these are Jewish names because they took their name from the city names. That’s one thing I wanted to say.

In general, the Jews of western Germany were assimilated very much, though they were proud of their Jewishness. They kept their Jewishness. An example is the synagogue. Nauheim built a new synagogue, opened it up in 1928, shortly before Hitler. I remember, and I have a photograph even, that the Jewish community went together with the Torah from one synagogue to the other. It was a public event in 1928. The men had high hats, cylinder, what do you call it? The city participated in the opening of this synagogue. By the way, this synagogue is one of the few synagogues which was not destroyed, and it was through some citizens who prevented it. It was for other purposes used in Hitler’s times, for all kinds of things, I don’t know. But the fact is that now the city rebuilt it on their own when I was invited to Bad Nauheim in 1986.

Well, this comes with an aside. I don’t know if I should follow this up. Many cities invited their former Jewish citizens, but by chance we two were invited alone, my wife and I. They honored us; they couldn’t do anything better. Every evening was some delegate to accompany us to a theater or to a concert. Everything they could do. When we came they had a big banquet in the Kuhlhouse. The Kuhlhouse is the central point. She will [his wife] show you this. The mayor held a speech, so I had to hold a speech, too, and I said, “Between us, the prejudices, that’s the only, the most important thing to give up, the prejudices. That is the root of all evil.” I have it here in the newspaper article.

Harper: Let me go back to issues of immigration. I’d like to hear about, first of all, your parents’ discussion about immigration, whether they tried or not, discussions about what countries to go to, and also your leaving Germany, the papers you had to obtain, where you went, and why you went to that location.
KAHN: For my parents, they of course wanted to emigrate. Wherever I went, they would have gone there. And I will tell you where all I went. They wanted to sell the business; they wanted to be free. At the end, as I said, they moved to Frankfurt. Later I found out that the property of the Jews was gradually taken away through taxes, immigration taxes, but they didn’t immigrate. I found out that bank accounts, everything was taken away. Everything. Finally, the furniture. Everything. My parents put the furniture of our house in storage, in a storage house in Frankfurt. I found later this storage house, the night the Nazis had taken everything away, and I couldn’t [could?] make claims for that. From memory I wrote down what we all had.

Harper: Why did they decide to go to Frankfurt?
KAHN: Many Jews went to the big cities because they could not be found, they thought. The big cities were anonymous, but they were not because later the Nazis found ways. They had to wear the star. It was a gradual development. They prepared this already. They wanted to emigrate. They wrote me letters. They’ll go everywhere I want, but they wanted to be established. My mother wrote that when I was in America they would open a mid-day lunch, something like this, a cook. They would do anything they could. But they took the passports away. They collected the passports of the Jews. But first they could still travel. I remember, and this will come later when I was in Spain, [inaudible] I met them in Switzerland still. They could come to Basil — with $10 it was allowed — and they had to come back, of course.

Then they took the passports, and my mother had her own passport. The policeman, which was an old policeman, came and said, “Well, I don’t know that your mother had a passport.” So my mother could visit me later than my father could. But they wanted to come out. They wrote that they would go to Shanghai, but the trip was too strenuous. My mother was very sick when I met her. They couldn’t do it anymore. I wanted to bring them to Palestine. I didn’t get the visa. I stood the whole night in Tel Aviv in the immigration office, British, from evening to morning, and I couldn’t get the visa for them. It was not possible anymore. I reproached myself, of course, that I couldn’t, I didn’t bring them out. My mother died still before in 1941, but in 1942 I will tell you the story later. My father.

Harper: You can tell us now if you want.
KAHN: I showed you the picture of my uncle. He was a doctor in [Niet?], near Frankfurt, a city that was near Hoechst, a town where the Hoechst Farben were, this chemical conglomerate. My uncle was a doctor for this town and treated these people. He was well-known, see the story there? And now they named a place after him. I found the street sign — Kahn Place — so our name is remembered there. How did I come to this? I come from one thing to the other [laughs].

Harper: You were talking about your parents trying to emigrate. I wanted to know what happened to them.
KAHN: What happened to them. My father I found out was deported in September of 1942 to Theresienstadt. In the Yad Vashem in Jerusalem, I found out that he died in October in Theresienstadt. Now I conclude from that, my uncle committed suicide with his wife in June of 1942. They took poison pills. I suppose my father got this, too, and should have been. I don’t know if you know that Theresiendstadt was what Nazis showed the outside world, the Jews are treated well, you know that? This was like a little town, and they had freedom, so far. And from there they deported the people. I suppose that my father was about to be deported, and he took poison. Otherwise he wouldn’t have died so quickly, I suppose. I wanted to bring my parents to Spain. I was in Spain at that time, but nothing came out of it. So unfortunately, I didn’t succeed.

Harper: You said your mother died in 1941. Was that of illness?
KAHN: Of illness. I met my mother in 1938 still — she alone could come out — in Italy. I have to tell you my whole story of why I came there to Italy at that time. She got very ill and had a nurse all day and night. Then I got the visa, the certificate for Palestine, and I had to leave because the date would have expired. I brought her to Switzerland, to relatives, because I had to leave for Palestine. There she was very ill. I suppose she had cancer, and she died then a few years later. Her grave is in Frankfurt cemetery. My father put a stone there, a very beautiful marble stone. You asked about my parents. That’s what I have to tell about my parents, only what I heard afterwards. I tried in Frankfurt later to find the address. There were American soldiers in this apartment. My father was deported from Frankfurt, not from Bad Nauheim.

Harper: Can you tell us about your story of leaving?
KAHN: Yes, my story is a long story. As I said, I did not want to continue studies at that time. One moment. Excuse me [brief pause while something is adjusted]. So I left Germany for Paris. I asked at various consulates. I didn’t want to lose what I had studied in Germany. I had studied from 1930-1933, and I didn’t want to lose this time. The French consulate told me to go to Paris and we’ll count it. So the first thing, I went to Paris. I remember that I felt guilty to leave Germany to the archenemy, the French. I tried to study at the Sorbonne. I was several months there, and they didn’t count the time. I would have lost these three years, and I didn’t want that. I lost everything after that. So I wrote to Italy. Italy, each university decides by itself how they accept students. I wrote to Bologna, and it seemed that they allowed students this time.

So I took Italian lessons from an old Italian there at the Sorbonne in Paris, and I left, I clearly remember, on the 14th of July, Quatorze Juillet [Bastille Day], the national day of the French. When the train left, I remember the fireworks, but I didn’t want to lose time, so I didn’t even stay to see this. I came to Bologna in July, vacation time there. I tried to make contacts and connections. To fill out the time, I went to the university and worked in the laboratory of a professor who made experiments with apes, studied the hands and comparative anatomy. I had already learned preparing bodies, so I prepared [I-pans?]. I quite remember in this laboratory there were big apes in caves, and we made experiments with them. There were two little monkeys, this size. They come spring on the table all of a sudden, [inaudible] memory.

I found out that Bologna also did not accept my studies, so I tried at other universities. My mother visited me then there. I went to Padua without success. I have still the little slip from a professor who recommended me to another professor. There was nothing. Finally, I found in Modena they accepted the studies in Germany, and I studied in Modena. I passed examinations there, which are comparable to which in Germany we called the physikum, pre-med studies, which is histology, anatomy, and so on. Various things for the clinical preparation. From Modena I went to the University of Milano. I remember the conditions there. They had still an old hospital, the Ospedale Maggiore it was called. It was a building out of the 13th century, big old halls where the sick laid. It is different from German study, in France and in Italy. The first-year students already go with the doctors making visits to learn practically. So I did this, and I studied there. Then in 1935 Mussolini changed the laws. Until then, in Italy there were [bonded?] foreign students, and they made it easy for foreign students to practice after they had finished their exams. Then Mussolini declared foreign students cannot practice anymore. That was the end of it. After so many years, I gave up. What to do?

I had a friend who had connections with the Scholl manufacturing company, which made arch supports and so on. At that time, they had a big factory in England, in London, and in Chicago. I went to England, to London. They have a national school of chiropody [podiatry] in Manchester. I met Dr. Scholl and so on, and I made this course in Manchester. As a matter of fact, I was first out of 30 students who passed the examination. Then I tried to get to use this knowledge. As I knew Mr. Scholl, the brother of Dr. Scholl, he offered me a license for Spain, not for the whole of Spain, but I got the license for Catalonia, a big province, the capital Barcelona. So I went first to Madrid to learn Spanish, and to learn I had to help them in the [inaudible word] stores. They had several stores in Madrid. Then I went to Barcelona to take over the Barcelona stores. There were two stores in Barcelona, the wholesale business of the whole province, and everything okay. This was in 1937. Then in July, I think, the revolution broke out. I remember there were Olympiad at that time in Germany. When was the German Olympiad?

Harper: ’36.
KAHN: This was ’36, yes. The French made a counter-Olympiad in Barcelona. The boarding house where I was had lots of French athletes there. At this moment, the revolution broke out. I remember also that the evening before I went to the family of a friend, also an immigrant, to a cabaret in Barcelona. There were cabarets in the harbor district, as there are in Hamburg also. When we came home, came people and asked for identification. We didn’t know anything about this revolution. In the middle of the night, the guns went loose and the troops marched from the periphery into Barcelona. There were street fights and we could not leave the house for ten days. We had all the windows closed and barricaded. So we were in Barcelona. The left was the victor. The Franco troops were defeated.

Now in Spain, the main movement was not the socialist movement, but the anarchists, especially in Barcelona. They reigned. After this time, one could go out in the streets again. Dead horses in the street; it was terrible what we saw. They ransacked the convents in the middle of Barcelona. They took the nuns. They [inaudible] out of the graves and set them in the yards. People went past them to see this. Terrible things. After a while, one could go out again. With some other immigrants, we went to the beach, took the train to the coast. I remember in the boarding house where I was, there came a family from Girona, which is a smaller town in the north of Catalonia. People who were financially well were persecuted, so they fled.

As the Jews fled to the big cities, they fled to Barcelona, and they were in this boarding house. There was a father, mother, son, and a daughter. I remember that I said to the son, “Come with us. Nobody to bother you, we go to the beach.” “No,” he said. What happened? They picked him out of the house and shot him. Then it’s the following. All the consulates asked their citizens to leave Barcelona, also the Germans. The German consulate was full of Jewish immigrants, but I heard that the Germans had warships in the harbor of Barcelona and took the people out. They would have taken me out, too. I heard that they took out the Jews, brought them to the German border, and did not accept them. So they were there without means and didn’t know what to do. I went to the consulate and said, “Listen, I heard this. I don’t want this.” Two days later he called, Mr. [R–?], the German ambassador. “We have an opportunity for you. You can leave. This ship will stop in France, and you can leave then.”

I thought it over, and I didn’t trust the Germans, so I packed my things. I gave my main employee the power to conduct the business, and I left to the French border, which was not far from there. Of course, at that time there were people not in uniform with weapons all through the town. Also this I want to say. Shortly after one could go out, we sat in the café on one of the round [platz?], which was the [inaudible]. Suddenly they came, a group of anarchists, collected from the defiant fascists. We had to go to the wall, hold our hands up, and they examined everybody if they have weapons. Per chance, I had just my razor blade sharpened, which I had in my pocket. I was afraid, but they didn’t do anything, and we were sent away. But some of them they took away and shot them, which they found out they were fascists. It was one of these episodes.

Well, I left with nothing. One could take ten pesetas, that was all. At the border, the anarchist guards examined everyone. One had to empty pockets, and I remember while he examined me, I put the little things on the table which he didn’t see. So I went through France to Switzerland. In Switzerland, they had representation of Scholl, in Basil. For them I traveled for a month in Switzerland, sold and installed new shops through all Switzerland.

Harper: Could I interrupt and ask you, were you leaving to Switzerland because of your Scholl connection? Did you go there because they had . . .?
KAHN: A Scholl connection? Mainly, yes. First of all, in Basil, which was German speaking, they had this center. I went especially to there. Also, I had connection with the Scholl house in London. I had no money, so I telegraphed to London to send me money, and they sent me about 25 pounds to Switzerland. Here I worked for them, so I got a salary. I could work, but I couldn’t get the permit, so I had to leave Switzerland after a month. They didn’t allow to work. I did very well, sold; the representative in Switzerland wrote to London that he was very satisfied and I sold so much merchandise and so on, but I couldn’t stay. So what did I do? I went back to London to deal with Mr. Scholl, to get another possibility.

First of all, I found good work, and England was not so limited with the working. I could work in Liverpool. They had a store in Liverpool, and I worked there and waited until I could get another representation for the firm in another country. Finally Scholl offered me several things. To go to Australia, to Perth. I didn’t want to go there. Then finally in Yugoslavia [laughs], so sad we could laugh about it. So I went to Zagreb, which was the capital of Croatia, a town which was formerly Austrian. Very nice town. I made connections there with a Jewish shoe firm. They had several stores there. I got friendly with them. He wanted to open a Scholl in Yugoslavia, but I couldn’t get the permit to work. I remember I traveled to Bania Luka, because there was a minister of trade that lived there, to get the permit. No, they didn’t give me, neither the permit to stay nor the permit to work. Under these circumstances, I would have depended on the Yugoslav men associate, and I didn’t want to be dependent on somebody else, so I left again and traveled to Italy, to Milano.

Harper: What year was this?
KAHN: It was the beginning of ’38. In the meantime, I had made applications long before that for a certificate to emigrate to Palestine. At that time, this came that I got the permit, the certificate. There my mother visited me, I told you this before. She could visit because she had a passport. By the way, I forgot to say, my father visited me still in Zagreb. It was the last time I saw him, when I was there.

Harper: Can I interrupt and ask you why you wanted to go to Palestine? Was it because it was the only country you could go to, or you felt a strong conviction?
KAHN: I was no Zionist. I didn’t have a strong conviction, really not, but I loved Israel.
ESTER: He went there to meet me.
KAHN: I met my wife [laughs]. In Israel, I always had tried to found living with a connection with Scholl, a big international firm. They had stores in Haifa, Tel Aviv, Jerusalem, and all of these stores they had already, so I couldn’t get it. What I did, I opened a practice and made arch supports and such things on my own.

Harper: What year was this that you first went to Palestine?
KAHN: ’38 I came to Palestine. I lived first in Haifa, then we went to Tel Aviv. I think this has nothing to do with, not important. I had a room — do you know Israel? Do you know Tel Aviv? Yes? On Boulevard Rothschild, there was a rabbi who rented rooms. I don’t forget when I came there. He said that at 10:00 I have to be at his home [laughs]. So that’s the story. We got married.

Harper: OK. Let me ask you a few questions. When did you first hear about Kristallnacht?
KAHN: When was the Kristallnacht?

Harper: November 9th, ’39.
KAHN: ’39. We didn’t hear much. My parents couldn’t write anything. They wrote only, “It’s hot here.” They were afraid to write anything. We didn’t know.

Harper: Did you hear news about what was happening in Germany?
KAHN: No, we did not know. We did not know.

Harper: When did you start hearing — first let me ask you, how long did you stay in Israel?
KAHN: Long in Israel. Until ’52.

Harper: Can you tell me about life in Israel? You said you met your wife. Can you tell me about that?
KAHN: Yes, I liked being in Israel. We loved it; we had friends there. First I lived alone and had a room there on [Deziona Street?], a small street. I put a sign out, “Foot Comfort” — I can show you the sign — and people came. Well, I made a living. Then when we married, I rented another apartment. What can I say? It was a room, you could use the kitchen. That was all. That was in Rehov Ben Yehuda.

Harper: Did you meet your wife in Israel, or did you know her family or anything from . . .?
KAHN: Nothing. I met her there through a cousin of mine, a cousin who emigrated with her on the same ship to Palestine then. I had no connection with her family. My wife’s family is very Orthodox, Agudath Israel. We were not Orthodox; we had no connection. But then I heard that my father-in-law visited my parents. He met my parents. He came from Hamburg to Frankfurt to visit my parents. That’s where they met. A further thing I didn’t know.

Well, we lived life in Israel. We moved later to another apartment, Ben Yehuda 24, where we had really an apartment: two rooms, kitchen, and bath. Made a sign there, and I practiced there. As I was interested in painting, I found people who were also interested, and there was one man who was a dentist. He gave up his practice and opened an art school in Israel. He studied art in Berlin. He associated with an artist from Vienna who had a doctor in art, and this was the art school. I went on excursions and painted outside in the country. There’s also a story contained. In the north of Tel Aviv is the Hayarkon River. Do you know Tel Aviv? Have you been?

Harper: Yes. After my bar mitzvah I went.
KAHN: You know everything [laughs]. At that time, the Hayarkon was outside of Tel Aviv, in the north. We went there. There was a café, open house. It was not a house, it was a [inaudible word] with good strength coffee there, or whatever. This belonged to an Arab and an Israeli. They had it together. We always went there. My wife sat there in the easy chairs, and I went to the river and painted. I liked this. One day we came to the river. People said, “You can’t go. They shoot.” The Arabs shot in this café house everybody who was there. Fortunately, we were not there. That was the start of the Arab revolt, so we did not go out anymore.

Harper: Did you serve in the army at all?
KAHN: No, I was too young in the First World War and too old in the Second War.

Harper: I mean in the Israeli army. Did you serve at all?
KAHN: No, I was too old. My cousin served in the Israeli army.

Harper: Did you participate in any religious life in Israel?
KAHN: No. Well, sure we had. We were married in the Ben Yehuda. It’s an old building now [inaudible]. What was the name of the synagogue? I don’t remember exactly the name anymore. We had relatives there. My uncle and aunt lived in Tel Aviv. We visited always. He died there, and she went to visit her daughter here who lived in Portland, and she died here in Portland.

Harper: Why did you decide to leave Israel?
KAHN: I tell you, because I corresponded with the Jewish organization, the URO [United Restitution Organization] in Frankfurt. The lawyers there — I wanted restitution for loss of business in Germany and all. They said I had no claim because I’ve studied medicine, so I had lost the business. I went to Frankfurt. We went there to deal, to do it ourselves. I succeeded, of course. I was partner of the business, and the lawyers wouldn’t have succeeded. So we stayed and remained, first in Germany, then we left for here.

Harper: So you decided to go back to live in Germany?
KAHN: No, we didn’t want to live in Germany. We got an affidavit here. We had relatives here, so we went here, directly to Portland.

Harper: Can you tell me a little bit about what it was like to stay for a while in Germany, after?
KAHN: I tell you. Bad Nauheim is half an hour by train from Frankfurt. I did not go to Bad Nauheim. I didn’t want to know. I did not want to meet anybody.
ESTER: My husband came to Germany. He wanted to leave right away.
KAHN: I couldn’t stay there.

Harper: You then came to Portland?
KAHN: Yes.

Harper: What did you do here?
KAHN: First I didn’t know what to do [laughs]. I tried to get things to sell here. I couldn’t finish my medicine study here because they didn’t allow it. I would have had to finish all the studies I had done and repeat. If I would have a start exam and an end exam in Germany or in Italy, I could have practiced here, but I couldn’t. So I tried to have representations to sell on the road. First of all, I got representation for raincoats which were made in Israel and sold here, then other things from Germany. Went to the fair in Milano and tried to get some new things which were new inventions or something. Nothing turned out. So what I did was sell raincoats and took other representations and traveled here in Oregon and Washington.

We came here ’56. In ’59, I tried to buy a business here. I had some money. Maybe I shouldn’t have done it. I bought an electroplating plant, Columbia Plating Company. We worked very hard there to get business. We did business with Boeing Aircraft, which had to be done by specifications. We were very controlled, exactly. It was very difficult trying to learn this. I studied this in order to be able to do it. I had a ground of basic of chemistry, but that was not enough. Then we got a customer here, a car wash. We got Western Electric, which had a big plant across the river. We plated for Western Electric, big quantities of things which are also now out of date. The telephone was different at that time. They had big structures which we plated for them. They brought truckloads every day to us which we had to do. Suddenly the plant closed and moved to the [east?], so it’s the same happened with the car wash. They opened their own plating. Now I heard they got broken up. They had a big plant here. But we worked for these firms to develop the business until I sold it to a man, a chemist from Boeing, and for a time we did it together. Then he united with another plating plant, and they built a plant north of Portland. I was glad to get rid of it. [Someone sneezes] God bless you.

Harper: Were you involved in the Jewish community here at all?
KAHN: No. We are members of Neveh Shalom. Our son was bar mitzvahed there.

Harper: Tell me about your children. How many do you have?
KAHN: One son.

Harper: And was he born in the United States?
KAHN: No, he was born in Israel. He’s here in Portland. He has insurances and broker. He was bar mitzvahed in the old synagogue of Neveh Shalom. We go to synagogue, but we are not religious very much. We go to the holidays; we are members of the Jewish Community Center. Every week we have meetings there. My wife is a member of Hadassah.
ESTER: Sisterhood.
KAHN: Sisterhood, yes.

Harper: Is there anything else you want to tell us?
KAHN: What? I don’t know.

Harper: Do you have a message to future generations that may be watching this tape?
KAHN: Future generations? I always was proud of my Jewishness, and even in Germany we were proud to be Jews, and we are now, too, and we feel good.
ESTER: Talk about the speech you wrote to the Bad Nauheimer.
KAHN: I have it translated, the speech I held to the Germans. This is a message to the Germans, not to the Jews.
Harper: Let’s try that.

[Rustling of papers.]

KAHN: “The root of all evil are the prejudices.” This is what I said in writing this article. I can read this in English, but it’s a German article. “The root of all evil are the prejudices. Bad Nauheim. His father refused to believe what developed in Germany against the Jews in 1933. He, like so many Jews, made this terrible mistake with his life in the gas chamber.” My father. This was not true I found out. He was deported. “In spite of this, Dr. Henry Kahn returns with his wife Ester to his hometown, this time as a guest of the city. But here on Tuesday evening in the Kuhlhouse” — I cannot explain this; I show you — “at the official reception by the magistrar said about the relations between Germans and Jews is one of the most impressive warnings which has been expressed at such occasions.”

“Burgermeister Mayor van [Droder?] thanked the Kahns for returning to Germany and his hometown. The Nazi period should not just be forgotten. In discussing and exploring the recent past, it would not be sufficient to study the history of the hometown, but it is important to include all the happenings in the Third Reich. Therefore, the resort town has decided to seek contact with those who had suffered there, to especially include the young generation. A meeting in conversation with boys and girls of the [Ansluchein?] Schule has been arranged. Roda [or Droder?], who knows Henry and Ester Kahn from their last year’s visit, was sure. The citizens are glad to have you here.” It’s an article of the paper in German, which I’m translating.

“In regards to the invitation, the city has approved of the new spirit in Bad Nauheim. The young generation sees the world differently than the generation of the Nazi time. [inaudible] Jewish business like [name?] and Rabbi [Bodenhamer?], too, had expressed before. Physically moved by his own memories of his life in Bad Nauheim, Kahn looks back to the time of his childhood views, a time he vividly remembers. From his mother’s side, this is an offspring of one of the oldest Jewish families, the Rosenthals. He remembers, like the other boys of his age, he played cops and robbers. He remembers a school excursion to the Winterstein. He remembers standing on the neighboring wall when the Russian tsar visited the Russian Orthodox church. Apart from two incidents under antisemitic teachers and one schoolboy, he had no problems. [Inaudible] reported the same, ‘I never had the feeling to be different. They were proud of their Jewishness and also of their German nationality. As an 11-year-old, the national anthem was moving. It was inconceivable to us that there could be fertile ground for anti-Jewish propaganda.’”

“According to Dr. Kahn, ‘The root of all evil are the prejudices. We therefore must do everything in our power to fight them and overcome them.’ The 86-year-old” — I was 86; this was eight years ago — “expressly enclosed this challenge, all religions, all races, and all nations. For this reason, there cannot be a community guilt of the German people. The invitation of the city is proof of the effort to overcome prejudices. Bad Nauheim has lost a culture in spiritual respect which can clearly be shown to on whom he counts fate. He visited the [Ansluchein?] Schule, and studied later economics in Frankfurt for the doctor degree in political science, was a pupil of Martin Buber. Later he studied medicine, a study which he had to interrupt in 1933. His flight from Germany led him from Italy, Spain, England, Yugoslavia, first to Palestine. In 1956 he came to Portland, Oregon state, in the west of the USA, where he managed a plating plant. Kahn helped [inaudible word] to an extraordinary degree in the investigation of the history of the Jews of Bad Nauheim and formed connections with other descendants of the motherly family. The chief editor of the New York Times, Jack Rosenthal, is the son of his cousin.” My cousin who lived here. I had two cousins lived here. My one cousin was married to . . .

Reich: The tape is running out. We have another tape.

[Pause as tape is changed.]

Harper: Dr. Kahn, thank you very much for sharing your story with us. I’d like to turn the interview over to Jeff now, if he has any questions.
Lang: Dr. Kahn, you mentioned that it was your father who went to a school in Freeburg.
KAHN: No, in Friedberg.

Lang: Was that a Jewish school?
KAHN: No, it was not a Jewish school. It was a gymnasium, a public school.

Lang: So there were no Jewish gymnasiums at that time?
KAHN: No, there were not so many Jews there. They didn’t have Jewish schools. They had Sunday school. The Jewish teacher was there. These towns did not have enough to keep a rabbi. In Friedberg there was also a teacher. [Leon Ermond?] was his name. He was better than our teacher.

Lang: And then I also had a question about your town. You said it was a resort town.
KAHN: Yes.

Lang: Because of the baths. There were other resort towns, like Bad Herrenalb.
KAHN: Herrenalb was in Switzerland.

Lang: Herrenalb? I think — OK.
KAHN: There was Wiesbaden and Baden Baden.

Lang: Was there any distinction, or were there more Jews living in the town that you grew up in? You mentioned there were three or four resorts, which is quite a bit.
KAHN: I don’t know how many Jews were in the various resorts.

Lang: The Jewish resorts must have just catered, I would imagine, to the Orthodox from other parts.

[Inaudible. Shuffling around of people and mics.]

KAHN: Many Jews came to this resort. We had four Jewish hotels, which had strictly kosher. They were under the supervision of the rabbi of Giessen. The Giessen rabbi, the Orthodox rabbi, supervised these hotels. Many Russian Jews came to Bad Nauheim for heart diseases, to this town. It was so that my parents learned Russian, not only because of the Jews, but because the tsar, with his family and state, came to visit Bad Nauheim. It was also a special reason, the Grand Duke of Hesse, who reigned this province of the state of Hesse. The sister was married to the tsar, and therefore the tsar came and lived in this castle in Friedberg, which was the neighboring town, five minutes by train, half an hour walking from Bad Nauheim. Mainly the guests, the many Jewish guests, this caused the butchers to exist.

Lang: So a community grew up to support those hotels.
KAHN: Did I tell you about the synagogue which was built in 1928? Yes. I have a picture here from when the Jewish community walked from the old synagogue to the new.

Harper: And you said that that was saved; it was not destroyed.
KAHN: It was not destroyed, and the city put it again in shape, so it’s standing as it was. Here are a few pictures of it.

Harper: OK. Jeff, do you have any more questions? [He nonverbally indicates that he does not.] Let’s look at some of your pictures now.
Reich: Could you just tell me who they are?
KAHN: I don’t know exactly. These are grandparents. To left, I don’t know exactly. The grand-grandmother from my mother’s side. In the middle, I don’t know exactly. Also family three generations back from me.

Reich: And that’s a — how do you pronounce it?
KAHN: Daguerreotype [spells out]. That was photography when it first began. It’s done on glass. This glass is partly broken, unfortunately, so one can see only a part of it. To the right is a brother of my grandmother on my mother’s side. His name was Hess. On the left down is a photo of my grandfather from my mother’s side. In the middle on the right is his wife, my grandmother, who I knew. I did not know my grandfather because he died earlier, but my grandmother I knew very well. Taken at my grandmother’s, I don’t know exactly, 81st birthday.

Reich: Lots of flowers.
KAHN: This is a photo of my grandfather from my father’s side. This is my father as a young man, and here, too. Below, too.

Reich: This is also your father?
KAHN: My grandfather. Which I discovered when one of the Nauheim men drove me around there, and this is as it is today. My mother, and here’s mother and father. This is what they wrote to somebody. It’s my father’s handwriting. They could send cards to the family; it has nothing to do with the pictures. I don’t know if we should cover this. That’s me as a little boy. These are servants. Here is — that’s me with my mother. Here that’s also me with [Ed–?] Rosenthal, which died last year, here in Portland. This is a picture of me, 1909. I was seven years old. Here are several pictures of me. There was a rose festival in Bad Nauheim. We have a rose festival in Bad Nauheim, too, and here I was there for this rose festival when I was in the secunda, the year before the graduation year. And here this is a graduation picture. You don’t need to [inaudible]. Here’s also me in the company of a friend who died last year. We had a visitor, a B’nai Brith member from Lithuania at that time, a daughter. I was the youngest member of the B’nai Brith in Frankfurt. I didn’t tell you. I was a member of the [inaudible word] lodge in Frankfurt. As a matter of fact, I was the youngest member at that time.

Harper: Yes, I forgot to ask you about political, or any sort of organizations that you belonged to.
KAHN: Yes, I was. Here was an expedition of his friends in [Altshus?], Jewish friends here in the neighborhood. Mountain. We skied there. Here this was an excursion. We were in Milan with a friend that I met. It was interesting. These two people, he was a pharmacist in Berlin. I met him in Tel Aviv afterwards. That was in Milano. My mother visited me the last year.

Reich: Which one are you?
KAHN: That’s me. And here is my father with two friends in the Como area. These are two Italians; I don’t know their names anymore.

Harper: Beautiful pictures.
Reich: Yes.
Harper: Beautiful clothes.
KAHN: In Manchester. Graduation celebration. Here this is my father and my uncle. Here’s my uncle and his wife. It’s the same shop. There they are. Specialty sausages.

Harper: I wanted to ask you. The butcher shop of your mother’s family, did they provide kosher meats for the hotels?
KAHN: Sure [laughs].

Reich: OK? Next.
KAHN: She died last year. They were in Portland here, were also members of Neveh Shalom. She died with 99 years.

Harper: That’s very impressive.
KAHN: This is the brother of my cousin here, and that’s his wife. She died this year here in Portland. And that’s the son, the editor of the New York Times now, chief editor of the Sunday part. His daughter and his son. Here, that’s his wife and children. Here this is also Hanan, a son which was killed in very bad circumstances. He was an uncle of mine, a brother of my father, the elder brother, and his sister. That’s his younger sister. That’s also a cousin. She was married to the older brother. These are sons of my younger aunt, [Oyla?] was her name. They are both not alive anymore. He lived in New York and I think in Brazil. This is the cousin, the son of the younger sister of my father. Also he had bad luck. His wife was killed in a car accident, and the children were killed in the car accident. Here, this is my uncle, my father’s brother, now a servant [inaudible word] to my cousin who lives in Chico, California. She took there. Here is a picture of them, of the family, here again.

Harper: What is that article?
KAHN: This article is about they named in this place, [Niet,?], where my uncle practiced as a medical doctor. They named a place after his name. There’s a street sign. I have a photo and I don’t find it. The street sign is “Kahn Place” in his memory. This is a translation of the article here in German. There’s another picture where you see him as a German officer in the First World War. He got the Iron Cross, First Class, and still he was supposed to be deported. These are all under him. He’s the head of this group. This is the grave of my mother in Frankfurt.

Harper: What’s this?
KAHN: The grave of my wife’s father in Hamburg. These are advertisings I made — Dr. Kahn, specialist of foot comfort. This is also which I had in Tel Aviv.

Harper: Do you speak Hebrew well?
KAHN: No, not well.

Harper: But you spoke well enough to get by.
KAHN: Sure. We lived in Ben Yehuda Strasse [interchange in German between Henry and Ester]. Celebration when the new synagogue was opened. The history of the Nauheim Jews. My neighbor gave it to me. It’s written by a Dr. Rudolph.

Harper: OK. Hold on. I have to focus this.
KAHN: I don’t know if you get this out.

Harper: OK. That’s the best I can do.
KAHN: Yes, you can’t get much out of this.

Harper: That’s OK. So that’s you as a baby?
KAHN: Me as a baby. That’s my grandmother. That’s my father, my mother, two uncles. This is a friend killed in the First World War. Here is his gravestone, but he was killed in Russia.

Harper: This was your house?
KAHN: The house is gone, yes.

Harper: What street was that on?
KAHN: The street was [Firsten Strasse?] and [Strassenmon Strasse?].

Spouse: Nice house.
KAHN: This is Professor [Grubel?], Franz Grubel. This was the doctor of this man, Kerckhoff. For gratitude to his doctor, he left one million dollars to the town of Bad Nauheim to build a heart research institute, which was built with the permission that this professor should be the director of this institute. He was Jewish, and by the way, he converted to Christian, but when Hitler came, he had to leave.

And that’s a program they made. That’s the program. Every evening there was something else, only for us. We were accompanied by these dignitaries. These are newspaper articles which appeared in the papers. I translated one article. I just read it to you. All articles which appeared in various papers. Dr. Kerckhoff didn’t want to believe in antisemitism. There are citations for what I said. Another thing. I talked to a class of the school, and they asked me for two hours questions, 16-year-olds. I wrote prejudices abound — how do I say it?

Harper: Prejudice is the root of all evil. Is that what you want to say?
KAHN: No. One should renounce prejudices. Yes. Should go to the bottom of things. There’s the citation of what I said. When I came first, I didn’t want to talk to anybody; I saw a Nazi in everybody. But now, there’s nobody there left from the Nazi time. All these people are born after Hitler. Only this was made it possible, depression for when I can’t leave. Here’s something interesting which has nothing to do with Jewish. This is a letter which Delano Roosevelt wrote to his uncle when he was in Bad Nauheim. 1891. He was a boy and wrote this letter and drew this.