- [INAUDIBLE] and I'm interviewing Ernst Kahn,
- who lives at 1559 Shenandoah.
- It is 7:30 PM on Tuesday, March 31, 1981.
- Why don't we begin, Mr. Kahn, with when and where you
- were born and a little background information
- of your early childhood?
- OK.
- I was born July 31, 1920 in Bad Homburg vor der Hohe.
- Vor der Hohe means, well, there were a lot of mountains there,
- and this was just the city was located below the mountains.
- And this was a town about 30 minutes away from Frankfurt
- on Main.
- My parents had a business of their own.
- Actually, my father and his brother, they had a meat market.
- And this was wholesale and retail.
- My father did most of the buying of cattle,
- and my uncle did the inside work.
- Now, up till, I guess it was about 1934, '35,
- when it was forbidden to slaughter cattle the proper way
- for observant Jews.
- Until that time, we had just strictly kosher everything.
- After this, we still had kosher, but we also
- had to handle other meats.
- The hindquarters, I don't know if people are familiar,
- the hindquarters are not usable for kosher.
- And we had a well-going business.
- We specialized in cold cuts like you get at the delicatessen
- stores here.
- We made everything ourselves.
- We had, like, a small factory on the first floor of our building.
- Our building was three stories high.
- We lived on the second floor.
- My uncle lived on the third floor.
- And then we had a basement.
- And it was all very modern and, of course,
- supervised by the rabbi and also by the city.
- Was there many Jewish people in this city?
- This was a very unique city.
- I would say during the summertime,
- I would say anywhere from spring until the high holidays,
- there were a lot of Jews there.
- Because this was a resort city where they had
- many of those mineral springs.
- We had nine different mineral springs.
- Sometimes when you walked by there,
- it just smelled like rotten apples.
- And a lot of prominent Jews from Frankfurt
- used to come to Bad Homburg, such names as Horowitz.
- I mean, people that know something about Frankfurt Jewry
- know who the Horowitz family is.
- They were rabbis, Orthodox rabbis.
- And then their wife's family was the Feist family,
- that's F-E-I-S-T, who were all attorneys.
- They had, I think, a dozen children.
- And our synagogue was an Orthodox synagogue.
- In addition to this, we had a place called,
- I have to say this in German, sanatorium Dr. Goldschmidt,
- that's G-O-L-D-S-C-H-M-I-D-T. Now,
- this was for people that had just gotten over a sickness,
- or some elder people that just could convalesce,
- and they had their own synagogue there.
- My father and my uncle, they took turns.
- One Saturday one helped out, the other one, the other
- helped out in conducting their services.
- They had a doctor whose name was Dr. Leibowitz, Yehoshua
- Leibowitz.
- And he became to be very well-known in Israel.
- He did research on medicine, and he wrote quite a few books.
- I have some of his books.
- In this city, we had one other kosher butcher.
- But we sort of got about 80 or 90% of that business.
- Now, the ladies, my mother and my aunt,
- they had the grocery part, which was also kosher.
- And there were two stores right next to each other.
- In 1935, my father saw business going down.
- And he decided to go to the United States.
- We had some second or third cousins here
- that we always were in touch with.
- And my father went to Auburn, New York,
- where his cousins were living, and he got some information
- of what he would have to do in order
- to move to the United States.
- He also looked around in New York how the meat business was
- or how things are handled.
- And after three months, he came back.
- And he said I don't think we're going
- to go to the United States.
- The work is too hard.
- And I'm too old.
- He was 48 at that time, and I don't think we can adjust.
- And my uncle at that time replied by saying,
- after you're going to be home for about a week,
- I think you're going to change your mind.
- Because business has gone down to nothing.
- There was a boycott.
- The Nazis were marching up and down
- in front of the stores with signs,
- Jews do not buy in this store.
- And business has almost come to a standstill.
- My father was hard to convince at the time.
- But after he was back for a couple of weeks,
- he got things going, writing letters to my second
- or third cousins to get him a--
- what is it called, a visa, I think.
- Yes, a visa.
- Documents.
- Right.
- Which would make them responsible if we ever
- are in need of any money.
- Or an affidavit?
- Affidavit, right, right, right.
- I don't know what made me think of visa.
- That's a German word for it.
- Yeah.
- Can we go back before we get to the United States
- and tell me a little bit more about the city?
- It sounds like a charming place that you lived.
- Yes, it was a very charming place.
- Even at those times, they had gambling already,
- not like in Las Vegas, but in a smaller way.
- They had a place which was called Kurhaus.
- That's K-U-H-R-H-A-U-S.
- This was a place where you could go every afternoon.
- And there was a band there, a four or five-piece band
- where you could dance.
- And also you could go into the Casino and gamble.
- And out in the gardens, they had an orchestra that was playing
- every afternoon from 2:00 to 4 o'clock.
- This was like a pop concert.
- Was this only in the summertime or year round?
- In this place, it was year round.
- But in the summertime, it was in the gardens.
- And during the daytime--
- I mean, during the winter time, it was inside.
- Also now, in the morning, if you go back there,
- and I told you they had a lot of these springs there,
- in the morning from 7:00 to 8:30, they had a concert.
- And people bring in that mineral water there.
- They sit around, listen to the concert.
- It's like listening to the Boston Pop concert.
- Beautiful.
- And yes, it was an unusual city.
- Like, on Sundays there was a streetcar coming from Frankfurt
- through to Bad Homburg, which then went to the Taunus.
- Taunus is the hills that I was telling you
- about in the beginning.
- Could you spell that?
- T-A-U-N-U-S. And I really didn't tell you anything about myself.
- But I want to finish first about my father.
- He changed his mind.
- We got our affidavit.
- And just three months before we were supposed to leave,
- he got critically ill.
- He had terrible nosebleeds.
- And we still, to this day, don't know what happened.
- I guess it was excitement.
- But he pulled through it, and we made it to the United States.
- Who came with you, Mr. Kahn?
- I came with my parents, my father and my mother.
- I'm their only child, spoiled.
- And I do want to say that we were always a very close family,
- and also with my uncle.
- My uncle, he went to Rochester, New York.
- And Rochester, New York, had no place like [INAUDIBLE]
- here in town where you could go to a delicatessen.
- So he bought a house with the help of his relatives.
- And in the basement, he had, like,
- a workshop, and he made corned beef and tongue.
- He went to the slaughterhouse every second or third day
- and bought the fresh tongues and the fresh briskets to make this.
- And he was known in Rochester for having the best corned beef
- and tongue business.
- Wonderful.
- And when we came over here, we made our first stop
- in Auburn, New York.
- That's where we got our affidavits.
- And then we stayed with my uncle for a week in Rochester.
- And then a cousin here in Cincinnati,
- a second cousin of my father called.
- And he said, I think I can get you a job in Cincinnati.
- So my father went to Cincinnati in April.
- And my mother and I, we followed in May.
- Is this 1937?
- That was 1937.
- But before I go into this, I'd like to tell you
- a little bit about my youth.
- I was always very active in synagogue.
- This was an Orthodox synagogue, this was?
- Yes.
- And we had a nice group of youngsters.
- And some of them I am still in touch with.
- We had an Oneg Shabbat every Saturday.
- And we were only 14 years old, so we had dancing lessons.
- Because one of the young men of our congregation,
- he won all kind of prizes dancing.
- So we had lots of fun.
- But later on when Hitler came, it
- was no pleasure anymore to go to school.
- Because every day, the Gentile kids start beating up on you.
- And you really had to be afraid to go to school.
- Mr. Kahn, what year do you first remember these incidents?
- I guess it was '34, 1934, it started.
- It first started in this village?
- Right.
- And there were times when you couldn't even go to school.
- Were these previous people--
- were they friends that changed?
- Oh, yes.
- They were our friends.
- They were friends.
- And we didn't have that many Jewish kids there.
- But at one time I remember our rabbi was still
- giving a Hebrew school lesson in the realschule.
- Realschule is something like--
- OK.
- Realschule is like high school.
- And one hour a day we had Hebrew school.
- But then they made things so miserable for the rabbi
- that we had to stop it.
- There's one thing about my upbringing.
- I was always very interested in the melodies that
- were recited in our synagogue.
- We had a very good cantor.
- And still, at age 61, I think I remember all of them.
- And one of these days when I retire, I will record them.
- Because I have many requests from people
- that have heard these melodies when
- I helped conduct services during the high holiday season
- here in Cincinnati.
- And someday I'm going to do this.
- And we had lots of things that are really unheard of here.
- When there was a special Saturday,
- like the beginning of the month, Rosh Chodesh,
- or if there was a Pesach, the three minor holidays, Pesach,
- Sukkahs, and Shavuos, and then the high holy days, every one
- of these holidays, we had a different curtain
- in front of the Ark.
- And for some reason a friend of mine and myself,
- we took pictures.
- I have every one of these pictures in my hands yet.
- And I guess we must have known at the time
- that someday nobody is going to know about these things,
- and even some of the writing can be read.
- And I have never seen anything like this
- anymore since I left Germany.
- I mean, here in the States or anyplace else I have been.
- I think it's pretty standard with the [NON-ENGLISH SPEECH],
- except for Israel, maybe, I have seen something like we had
- in Germany.
- But this was a very wealthy congregation.
- After I couldn't stand it anymore in school,
- I asked a friend of our family if he wouldn't
- let me work in his factory.
- This happened when my grandfather died.
- And this man, who was a manufacturer of ladies shoes,
- came to minyan.
- And I asked my mother's older brother,
- who was very friendly with him, I said, couldn't you
- get me a job there.
- Well, I was 14 years old.
- And my uncle said to me, why don't you ask him.
- You're bar mitzvahed.
- You're a man now.
- You can ask him.
- So I asked this man for a job.
- And he said, what do you want to do.
- And I said, I don't care.
- I'm just interested in the shoe business.
- And he took me on, and I learned it from the bottom up.
- With other words, I learned how to buy leather,
- how they cut the leather and make shoes out of it,
- and did the calculating, how much leather there's needed
- for a pair of shoes, and I learned how to sell,
- all of this in about 2 and 1/2 years.
- And when I came to the United States,
- I thought it would be helpful.
- Well, it wasn't.
- But when I came here, and my father was in Cincinnati,
- he called one day.
- And he said, I think I can get you
- a job with one of the big companies, United States Shoe
- Corporation.
- And my boss, which was E. Kahn's Sons,
- it was Albert and Louis Kahn, Cincinnati,
- they are friendly with the Sterns and Cohns.
- So he said he can get you a job.
- OK.
- So that's the time we packed up in the east
- and came to Cincinnati.
- Well, I went there for an interview.
- And we didn't get along so well.
- This was Joe Stern, Sr. and myself.
- He said to me, why don't you go to school first and learn
- English?
- Could you speak English?
- Very, very little.
- So, well, this didn't work.
- So I never held it against him because I really saw myself
- that I could just do some work that anybody can do, like sort
- out sizes and stuff like that.
- But a week later, we tried the other half
- of the partnership, Aby Cohen.
- And I came there.
- And Aby Cohen said, I got a job in the shipping room.
- If you want it, you can have it.
- And I was thrilled.
- That same day I get a call.
- My father gets called into the office of one of the Kahns.
- I think it was Albert Kahn at the time.
- And he said, does your son have work clothes that he can work?
- If not, go out and buy him some.
- Well, fortunately, we brought enough clothing along.
- Because we were not allowed to take any money out of Germany,
- we brought all our furniture along and clothing
- that I had enough clothing for the next 10 years.
- And this was my beginning at US Shoe.
- And in the early years here in Cincinnati,
- many of the people that came here in the '20s, early
- '20s, they had parties for us.
- So all the German immigrants, they got to know each other.
- But I never felt real comfortable.
- And to the day, I must say, even so,
- I didn't get started out on the right foot
- with Mr. Joe Stern, Sr., I think he was the best friend
- that I've ever had.
- Did you stay with US Shoe?
- Are you still working--
- I'm still with US Shoe.
- Yeah, my 44th year.
- With the same company?
- When you were born.
- Isn't that something?
- Did your father also work for US Shoe?
- No, he worked for Kahn, the meatpacking place.
- Yes.
- That was his first job.
- And then after he was here a year, he got hit by a car
- on Spring Grove Avenue.
- And he broke his leg.
- He was in a hospital for three months.
- He had a double break in one of his legs.
- And when that was healed up, the doctor
- would not allow him to work at Kahn's anymore because he
- had to work in a freezer all day and that
- wasn't good for his leg.
- At that time, he changed over to Manischewitz,
- from a butcher to a matso maker.
- And the hours were terrible, because it was, like,
- from 11:00 at night to 7:00 in the morning.
- But he stayed there about five years until,
- I think it was around his 60th birthday when he also came to US
- Shoe.
- And he worked for me, then, in the office.
- Did clerical work.
- And he was working for me for 10 years and did a very good job.
- And he actually worked till a Friday,
- Friday the 8th of November, 1957.
- And on the 11th of November, he died while he was conducting
- services.
- This was a memorial service of all the victims.
- From the Holocaust?
- From the Holocaust, yeah.
- And he died in our synagogue.
- while saying the Shema.
- He collapsed.
- And I wasn't there.
- I was at a shoe show in Columbus on that day.
- But my mother, after my father passed away, my mother worked.
- She worked for 10 years, no, 15 years, 15 years.
- She took the job over, what my father did.
- And she actually worked till her 80th birthday.
- And she's now 87.
- And thanks God, in good shape.
- Mr. Kahn, can we go back a little bit?
- Because we already have you here in Cincinnati.
- I'd like to hear a little bit about the trip here.
- You were a young man of 16 years old.
- Yes.
- What were your impressions of leaving Germany?
- Were you happy to leave?
- I was very happy.
- Why?
- I was very happy.
- Because I knew things couldn't go on like this.
- I thought we waited too long.
- But, you know, to give up a business and I mean,
- there's a lot of things to do when you have to sell a house
- and sell a business.
- And you weren't allowed to take any valuables?
- No, we took all our furniture.
- If you can picture this, living room
- here was about the size of the living room, a wooden box,
- and maybe a little bit higher.
- And all our furniture came over here.
- I think we took two bedrooms, living room, dining room,
- and kitchenette, I mean, everything.
- And we were allowed to take over, but no money.
- I mean, a lot of people at these times, they took chances.
- I mean, they stuck money in these boxes.
- But we wouldn't take a chance.
- When I was most of the Jewish people from this community
- leave at that time, also?
- Were you one of the first?
- No, I was not one of the first.
- I would say that about half of them
- had left already, one way or the other.
- Were the Jewish organizations encouraging you to leave?
- No, there were not.
- I mean, maybe I shouldn't say this.
- Some of them were.
- But some people were selfish Jews.
- And others, they said, listen, it's not going to stay that way.
- It's going to get better.
- But the biggest problem was, really,
- to get papers for these people to come out.
- Now, I know lots of my friends and relatives,
- they never made it to the United States
- because they couldn't get the paper.
- And I'm still saying if my father wouldn't have come over
- here in the early '30s, these cousins, I mean,
- they just knew of us by name.
- But we wouldn't have been able to come over here.
- That was the biggest problem.
- Lots of my relatives had to go by the way of--
- oh, what country?
- They had to go through China to come here.
- And some of them got sick.
- They never made it over here.
- What were your thoughts on the trip?
- On the trip?
- Well, I'll tell you.
- On the trip, my mother and I, we remember we ate dinner
- on the boat the first evening.
- And we never made it up the steps.
- We got sick until we saw the United States.
- And then when we got into New York,
- we were very, very much impressed.
- We couldn't figure out 3 pounds of apples for $0.10.
- That's unheard of.
- Was it reasonable?
- Oh, yes.
- Everything was reasonable at that time.
- Of course, the salaries were so low.
- I started out with $13.75 a week when I started here in 1937.
- What is your standard of living higher in Germany
- compared to Cincinnati?
- Oh, of course, in the beginning it was much higher.
- Because we had no worries over there,
- you know, to make ends meet.
- But me living with my parents helped us make ends meet,
- really.
- And did you have family in Cincinnati to help you?
- No.
- We had no family here.
- Like I said, a second or third cousin of mine,
- he helped us to get over here.
- But I mean, he was an immigrant himself.
- He just got here a year before us.
- Were there any Jewish agencies that
- helped your family locate and acclimate to the city?
- No.
- Like I told you, there were some of the German-Jewish people that
- came here in the '20s that tried to help us socially.
- But financially, I don't think anybody really wanted.
- All people wanted to do, they want to have a job.
- I'll never forget-- maybe I shouldn't say this.
- But I'm going to say it anyway, because one of the most
- obnoxious things that ever happened
- is when my father, at one time after he had that accident,
- and he was hit by a car, somebody told him,
- why don't you go to Rabbi Silver and ask him
- if he can help you find a job.
- And Rabbi Silver said, [NON-ENGLISH SPEECH].
- You know what [NON-ENGLISH SPEECH] means?
- Yes.
- Take--
- Begging, you know.
- --begging.
- Because that really, the way my father was, I mean,
- he was very much hurt.
- And you asking me if people helped us,
- my father was willing to open up a butcher store again.
- But nobody really was interested in helping.
- Here on his own, he got the job at Manischewitz.
- And from there on, you know, he worked with me later on.
- There was no problem.
- And like I said to you, the Sterns and Aby Cohen,
- these people were extremely nice to me.
- I mean, yes, I had to work very hard.
- I worked myself from the lowest job into a job of an executive.
- And I think if I have anyone to thank
- here outside of my parents, it would be the Sterns and also,
- of course, Joe Stern Jr., whom I worked with very close
- when he was with US Shoe, and James Salinger.
- And now it's Phil Barach.
- Of course, this company has gotten
- so big, I don't get to see many of the executives, really,
- top executives.
- But the time that I'm talking about,
- where I really made a lot of progress in my job,
- I would say it was in the 1950s, really,
- when things started clicking.
- Were these other German-Jewish immigrants,
- did you have a special social relationship more with these
- people than the so-called native--
- Yes, I did.
- Because one of the things, we had to go to night school
- to learn English.
- And also at this time, I should say,
- there were quite a few young men going to the Hebrew Union
- College.
- And they all became prominent rabbis.
- And these fellows were just great.
- Before we had our own congregation here,
- we have a congregation, New Hope, that started in 1939.
- But before that, we had services at the old Rockdale Temple.
- And between my father and myself,
- maybe a couple other people, for the first two years,
- we moved around.
- We moved to Knott Street, across the street
- from the old Jewish Orthodox home.
- We had our synagogue on Wyndham Place.
- We had it on across the street from Fleischmann's Garden.
- We moved from one place to another
- until we ended up on Prospect Place.
- This was our first real synagogue.
- We converted a two story home into a synagogue.
- And then, now, we're out here on Crest Hill.
- And I've always been active in the synagogue, and I still am.
- And really, I think most of the friends
- we made through the synagogue.
- And in the beginning, it was these fellows
- from the Hebrew Union College.
- There's some very well-known rabbis.
- There was Rabbi Plaut, Gunther Plaut, and his brother,
- I've forgotten his first name.
- Then there was Wolfgang Kelder, [? Loggie, ?]
- and Haberman, and Shulman, I know he's still
- officiating in Chicago.
- And Leo Lichtenberg, unfortunately, passed away.
- But these are the people that we went around with.
- OK.
- Mr. Kahn, is there anything special
- you'd like to tell us about New Hope Synagogue?
- I guess the melodies are uniquely German?
- Yes.
- Until about four years ago, I would
- say it was just all the old melodies.
- But now, as some of the elderly people have gone,
- we knew we had to make a change.
- And for two straight years, we had a young man here
- who could read music.
- And he learned some of our melodies,
- we learned some of his.
- So we compromised.
- This year, we have a young man from the conservatory of music
- who helps us out every Saturday.
- And unfortunately, he's only going to be here till August,
- then we have to start worrying again.
- To make a long story short, really, we
- compromised because we have a lot--
- I shouldn't say a lot, but we have maybe six or seven
- young couples here.
- Most of them teach at the University of Cincinnati.
- They are Orthodox.
- They like our services, but they still
- like to hear some of the melodies that they are used to.
- So we compromise.
- Now, it's not strictly the German melodies.
- Actually, they shouldn't be called German melodies.
- I think all the music, or most of it, is by Lewandowski.
- And Lewandowski, not maybe now, but if you
- used to go to Rockdale Temple 30 or 35 years ago,
- that's all they had, melodies.
- Could you chant something that would be unique to--
- I belong to [INAUDIBLE].
- So what would be the difference, the Shema,
- sung the same way or no?
- Yes, it is.
- But see, there's something very unique about our synagogue.
- I don't necessarily like it.
- In fact, I think outside of our spiritual leader, Rabbi
- Rabenstein, nobody really cares.
- But we still do it.
- We have these extra piyyutim.
- I don't know if you know what piyyutims are.
- But before Pesach, there are four Shabbos songs
- where there's something special.
- On one Shabbos, you read about the Parshat Shekalim.
- Then there is Parshat Parah.
- Parah was last week.
- That's about the golden calf.
- And then there is a Parshat Hachodesh.
- This is the time when they take two Torahs out.
- Hachodesh means out of the second Torah,
- there's a sentence that starts this
- is the month, the first month of the year.
- I don't know whether you're familiar--
- Rosh Chodesh?
- No.
- It's Parshat Hachodesh.
- Now Rosh Chodesh means beginning of the month.
- Now Rosh Hashanah usually is known to us
- as the beginning of the year.
- But some people take the month of Nisan
- as the first of the year because it says so in the Torah.
- Yes, that's right.
- But could you give us just the difference
- in the melody between New Hope and another?
- Well, my favorite services are, like, on Friday evening,
- for example.
- Can you turn it off?
- Yes.
- I like to talk about the Friday evening service
- because it's actually my favorite.
- We start out with the [HEBREW] and have
- responsive reading in Hebrew.
- It goes something like this.
- The cantor sings [HEBREW SINGING]
- Then the congregation comes back, like
- [HEBREW SINGING] and so on.
- Then we come to the [HEBREW SPEECH].
- Now in the [HEBREW SPEECH], there are so many melodies.
- [HEBREW SINGING]
- Well, this happens to be Lewandowski.
- And this happens to be my favorite.
- OK.
- Yes.
- And there is so many melodies.
- And people coming from different parts of Germany,
- they have different melodies, especially on this [HEBREW].
- Now, you mentioned this one, because that's really
- very beautiful.
- And this can even be sung two different ways.
- I learned this just a couple of years ago.
- When we come to the sentence, [HEBREW], they don't sing it now
- the same way then we sing from the beginning.
- In the beginning, we sing like this--
- [HEBREW SINGING]
- Then the first sentence--
- [HEBREW SINGING]
- Then we go on till we come to his [HEBREW].
- Then some people sing it this way.
- I prefer to go all the way through the way I started.
- But some people say the other way is the right way.
- [HEBREW SINGING]
- No, wait a minute.
- That's wrong.
- [LAUGHS]
- Better turn it off.
- And after [HEBREW SPEECH], they sing it like this.
- [HEBREW SINGING]
- And I like this melody, too.
- Is that a German melody?
- No, this is Lewandowski.
- Oh, I see.
- I have a book where all the important melodies
- from throughout the years are in.
- And I would say that any congregation
- with German background uses it a lot.
- However, the little towns sometimes
- had their own melodies.
- Dialects, as you would--
- Yeah.
- We sing the hora de so many different ways
- during the Omer time, which is after Pesach.
- [HEBREW SINGING]
- And on Tisha B'Av, the Saturday before Tisha B'Av--
- [HEBREW SINGING]
- And gosh, I can't just think of all of them.
- But there are so many different variations.
- [HEBREW SINGING]
- And so on, then, when it comes to the [HEBREW],
- if you're familiar with the Friday evening services,
- [HEBREW] is just usually said in most of the synagogues.
- But we sing it like this.
- [HEBREW SINGING]
- And then, as it goes on,
- [HEBREW SINGING]
- And then later on, the [HEBREW SPEECH], this
- is another one that can be sung all different ways.
- I'll give you one of my favorites.
- [HEBREW SINGING]
- And then later on, after the [HEBREW], the reader recites,
- the cantor recites--
- [HEBREW SINGING]
- Then the congregation sings along
- till we come to the [HEBREW] that the cantor sings again,
- very similar melody.
- The kiddush, I think it's pretty much the same.
- When we come to the morning services, rather than--
- I can give you actually both.
- I'll give you one for Saturday.
- You start with [HEBREW].
- [HEBREW SINGING]
- Now I will give you the same melody for one
- of the three festivals.
- [HEBREW SINGING]
- A honorary cantor, and I call myself a baal tefillah.
- What does baal tefillah mean?
- Baal tefillah, it's not a cantor.
- A cantor is more trained as far as words go.
- But I can conduct any services.
- For several years, I think it was probably in the late
- '40s or early '50s, I helped out the late Reverend Selig
- at the Jewish Orthodox home on the high holidays.
- But like my father, I would never take any compensation.
- Because it was a pleasure for me to do it.
- And also, I have to confess, I'm not an Orthodox Jew
- because my job did not permit me not to work on Saturday.
- And I remember when the late Rabbi Goldfeder
- asked me once to help him out.
- I said, I want you to know I'm not Shomer Shabbos.
- And he said, I didn't ask you.
- So I said, but there's one thing,
- I will not take any kind of a pay for whatever I
- do for the synagogue.
- And that's the way my father has done it also.
- Now, the last thing I chanted for you,
- I would like to give you a little continuation.
- Because maybe I'm prejudiced, but I
- think it's a beautiful melody.
- And this is something that you will not find in a book,
- in no book.
- Because this is just some little town, maybe in Germany,
- has accepted this melody, and some people know it.
- It's not written down?
- No.
- This melody is not written down anyplace.
- I guarantee you that.
- I sang you [HEBREW].
- So let's go a little bit to [HEBREW].
- And I want to get back to you and also tell you
- about the [HEBREW], the same melody that would
- be used on the high holy days.
- Because, again, you will not find
- these anyplace written down.
- For the festivals, you start--
- [HEBREW SINGING]
- And so on, the same melody.
- Now I want to give you the same one for the high holy days.
- [HEBREW SINGING]
- And so on.
- That's a different melody for [HEBREW].
- Yeah, well, now I want to give you one that--
- what we call what I translated.
- It's the end Kaddish.
- With other words, when you finish with your [HEBREW].
- service, you say the full Kaddish.
- And this, again, you will not find this anywhere.
- Is this a melody you sang in Germany?
- Yes, we sang it in Germany.
- And I have taught these several people that helped us out
- in our synagogue.
- Plus Reverend Rabenstein will sing it, too, sometimes.
- That's one thing I have on tape.
- [HEBREW SINGING]
- And then just [INAUDIBLE].
- Then from this [INAUDIBLE] I'll continue there.
- [HEBREW SINGING]
- I think that's enough melodies for you for tonight.
- Oh, that's beautiful!
- Synagogue.
- The whole congregation will sing along.
- Actually, this is just something for the baal tefillah to sing.
- But the congregation has adopted that and they sing along.
- But they enjoy it.
- If we went to other German congregations,
- would they be singing--
- Not this one, not this one.
- No, this is strictly from Bad Homburg.
- I see.
- My father even knew exactly what cantor
- used to sing that in Germany.
- And now there's one other thing, then I leave the singing alone.
- Maybe someday we can get together
- and I can give you some really beautiful melodies
- that are, like some of these here, not written down in music.
- And I think the other synagogue, I
- mean, they all have their own melodies that they brought along
- from Germany.
- And this is probably the same thing that I told you.
- They will tell you, well, they don't know where they come from,
- but that's the way they used to sing them.
- Mr. Kahn, have you ever been back to Germany
- since you left there?
- Yes, I was once in the city that I was born.
- On our way home from Israel, we took our children along
- to Israel.
- And they wanted to know.
- They wanted to see where we were born.
- We went to the place my wife was born and the place I was born.
- And when we landed in Frankfurt, every time
- my wife saw some American soldiers, she was happy.
- But any other time, she just couldn't see the German people.
- And I had a terrible feeling when I came back to my hometown
- and went to the place where the synagogue was standing.
- And there was just a little sign here,
- this is a children's home now.
- And nothing there about here used
- to be a synagogue or anything.
- But that has changed.
- In fact, about a year ago, I was approached
- by the community of Bad Homburg to give them
- some material, some pictures that I had of some Jews,
- some old Jews living in Germany.
- They found out from some friends that I
- have that I had some pictures, and I had
- some pictures of the synagogue.
- They wanted these because one of the sons of our former cantor
- lives now in Israel.
- And he was approached by the community of Bad Homburg
- to come to Bad Homburg and give a memorial service.
- That was in 1979, if I recall it right.
- Are there any Jewish people living in Bad Homburg?
- No.
- But he went to the children's home
- where the synagogue used to be.
- Because the children's home, that house
- actually used to be the place where
- we used to daven every day.
- It was maybe room for 100 people on the second floor.
- And well, he gave a speech there he
- gave in the Catholic Church and the Protestant church.
- And he had a tremendous following over there.
- Now, this man, he was advised by his son, who is studying
- to be a rabbi, not to go over.
- But he wanted to go.
- He's about 67 or 68 years old.
- And I have never heard from him.
- I send all my material in and the city of Bad Homburg
- sent it all back to me, and they thanked me.
- And they told me what a beautiful affair that was.
- But in my eyes, I can't see anything beautiful about it.
- The only thing, I read the speech that he gave,
- or the speeches that he gave.
- The speeches were all fine.
- But it won't bring the people back.
- It won't bring the synagogue back.
- I guess it was an education, maybe, for the German people.
- But I just couldn't trust anybody over in Germany,
- knowing what they have done to the Jews
- all over Germany and some of the other European countries.
- And my wife, she was taken away from her parents
- when she was 14 years old.
- And she was hidden in France by a priest for two years, she
- and her sister.
- And they finally ended up in Marseille,
- where they had an uncle.
- He was a brother of her father.
- And that's how she eventually got to the United States.
- And if I think back of all these things,
- I really have no desire to go to Europe.
- Because at that time, I shouldn't say at that time.
- Even now, as you all know, in France,
- you know what goes on there.
- When I went to Israel, we stopped in France
- because this is where my uncle went for Marseille.
- He spent the rest of his years in Marseille, France.
- And he was over here once, but he was very ill.
- And we visited him on the way to Israel.
- But I just had no love for Europe.
- And I really, deep down in my heart, I don't think
- the Germans are ever going to change.
- And if people in this country say, well,
- something like this will never happen in this country,
- I agree with them.
- But I would say be cautious.
- Even in America?
- Yes, because I've seen too many things.
- And one thing is I don't think the average American really
- understands, I'm especially talking about young people,
- what the German Jews went through in Germany.
- I remember talking to my children about it
- and talked to other youngsters about it.
- And I don't think they can really
- visualize what has happened with all the propaganda we make here
- about the Holocaust and all this,
- I don't think unless you really went through it,
- you don't understand it.
- What was it like before you came here in '37?
- What was the climate?
- You feared for your life?
- Yes.
- And I understand this was much better than it was in '38,
- because that's when all hell broke loose.
- But in '36 and '37, it was very uncomfortable.
- I told you in the beginning of our talk
- here that I went into the shoe business when I was a kid.
- And at that time, I just dropped out of school.
- But I went to a school where, I guess
- you can call it a trade school, like, every day you go there
- for two or three hours.
- Vocational school, yes.
- Yeah, that's similar.
- It's not the same.
- But the very strange part about that was I
- didn't last there very long either.
- [BELL RINGS]
- Yeah.
- What happened there was the same thing that
- happened in the other schools, the kids started getting nasty.
- And a very funny thing, our teacher
- was Jewish, because he was a German war veteran
- and he happened to be a first cousin to my grandfather.
- Of course, that didn't make any difference.
- They start beating up on him.
- And he eventually had to get out of the school
- because, at one time, they let World War veterans teach.
- But then later on, no Jews were allowed to teach anymore.
- And that's when I quit that school, too.
- And I worked really till we left Germany.
- I just was working in that shoe factory.
- And I remained friends with these people.
- As long as he lived, the man even visited me here
- in the United States.
- And I hear from his wife every once in a while.
- She now lives in England.
- Is there any final comment or special thing
- you might want to say, Mr. Kahn?
- Well, I do want to say that I'm grateful that I was able to come
- to the United States in 1937.
- And I'm grateful to God that He has
- led me the right way, and also my parents, of course.
- And in the beginning, it was hard.
- But I worked myself into a good job.
- And people were extremely nice to me.
- And I can quote one of my bosses, who used to say,
- "There's no substitute for work."
- And I always lived by that.
- And I'm very grateful I did, because thanks God, I'm healthy.
- I can still work.
- And I hope to be able to keep my job, as a maybe till 70.
- I don't know.
- And you're a grandfather?
- You have a grandchild?
- Yes, I have a grandchild, five months old.
- And I've just seen him.
- He lives in California with my son and daughter-in-law.
- And my daughter is married to a Dr. Friedenberg, who
- is a professor at Miami University,
- also teaches part-time at UC and the Hebrew Union College.
- And I'm grateful to my family because they
- had to put up a lot with me because I work long hours.
- But I like it.
- And as long as everybody is healthy, I'm grateful.
- And what I said to you about Germany or Europe before,
- I really mean this.
- And I do want to say this.
- I hope I can remain the rest of my life in the United States,
- because I think the United States has been good to me.
- Thank you very much.
Overview
- Interviewee
- Ernst Kahn
- Date
-
interview:
1981 March 31
Physical Details
- Language
- English
- Extent
-
1 sound cassette (90 min.).
Rights & Restrictions
- Conditions on Access
- There are no known restrictions on access to this material.
- Conditions on Use
- No restrictions on use
Keywords & Subjects
- Topical Term
- Holocaust, Jewish (1939-1945)--Personal narratives. Holocaust survivors--United States.
- Personal Name
- Kahn, Ernst.
Administrative Notes
- Holder of Originals
-
American Jewish Archives
- Legal Status
- Permanent Collection
- Provenance
- The interview with Ernst Kahn was conducted on March 31, 1981, for a joint project with the National Council of Jewish Women, Cincinnati Section and the American Jewish Archives of the Hebrew Union College - Jewish Institute of Religion entitled "Survivors of Hitler's Germany in Cincinnati: An Oral History." The United States Holocaust Memorial Museum acquired a copy of the interview in June 1990.
- Special Collection
-
The Jeff and Toby Herr Oral History Archive
- Record last modified:
- 2023-11-16 08:19:07
- This page:
- http://collections.ushmm.org/search/catalog/irn511400
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