Loss, Liberty and Love: My Journey from Essen to Auschwitz to the United States

By Horst Cahn

It wasn't until he returned to Essen's main synagogue, rebuilt after the war, that the tears, the one's he spent a lifetime trying to hide, finally began to stream down his cheeks. Cahn and his parents were taken to Auschwitz concentration camp where he labored for three years and saw hundreds of his fellow inmates tortured and killed. With humor and a matter of fact attitude rather than bitterness, Cahn recalls his unlikely survival, the slaughter of friends and family, and eventual freedom. Cahn wants to help others understand what happened in hopes of preventing a recurrence. Reluctantly, Cahn also reveals a more painful experience than the Nazis inflicted on him - the helplessness he felt when Parkinson's ravaged his wife's body and mind. Also available from Lulu.com as a paperback.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Lulu.com
• Release date: Mar 30, 2011
• ISBN: 9781257289387

Book preview

LOSS, LIBERTY AND LOVE

My Journey from Essen to Auschwitz to the United States

by

HORST CAHN

Cover Photo: Horst Cahn, Liberation photo, 1945

Copyright © 2001 by Horst Cahn

All rights reserved. For information or for permission to reproduce selections from this book, contact Eric Cahn, 2200 Port Lerwick, Newport Beach, Ca 92660, 949-760-8025.

Grateful acknowledgment is made to the following for permission to reprint previously published photographs and graphics: Newsweek, January 16 , 1995: The Last Days of Auschwitz: A Tortured Legacy, and Stay Together, Always.

Photo of the gate to Auschwitz is from The Holocaust Overview by Ann Byers, 1998, Enslow Publishers Inc., Springfield, NJ.

Manufactured in the United States of America

Book design by Beverly Brown

The text of this book is set in Galant.

Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Cahn, Horst.

Loss, Liberty and Love: my journey from Essen to Auschwitz to the United States / by Horst Cahn.

1. Holocaust, Jewish (1939-1945)–Personal narratives. 2. Holocaust survivors--Autobiography. 3. Jews--Europe.

eISBN: 978-1-25728-938-7

Family of Horst Cahn

Parents:   David and Hedwig Cahn

Sister:   Helene (Lenie)

Cousins on Mother’s Side:

      Kurt, Jerry (Kurt’s wife), Hans, Arnulf (Arnie), Rudi, Gert, Hannelore (Gert’s sister), Hella, and Helen

Only Cousin on Father’s side:   Fred

Aunts and Uncles on Mother’s Side:

      Alfred - mother’s brother married to Helen; Clara (Claire) – mother’s sister married to Max, mother of Hans and Arnulf; Jenny (Kurt’s mother)

Wife:     Elizabeth (Liesl)

Children:   David (Klaus), Eric (Bernd), Ruth, and Lorraine

Camp Survivors

           Zelman Judelbaum and his wife Sara; Max, his eventual wife Helga and their son Aviv

Friend and Boss

           Genzel Kleinot and wife

This book is dedicated to my parents,

Hedwig and David Cahn,

and my sister,

Lenie

Introduction

Courtesy of:

The San Diego Union-Tribune

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A time to cry, a time to heal for survivor

By Nina Garin

STAFF WRITER

February 9, 2003

Nothing in Essen, Germany, was the way Horst Cahn remembered.

The toy store his father owned – the one that carried lifelike dolls and motorized cars – wasn't there anymore. The all-Jewish school Cahn had attended was also gone.

It was a lot like visiting Riverside, says Cahn about his trip back to his hometown last summer. It was a nice place, but it felt like just any other town. I didn't recognize anything.

It wasn't until Cahn returned to Essen's main synagogue, rebuilt after the war, that the tears, the ones he's spent a lifetime trying to hide, finally began to stream down his cheeks.

He remembered his bar mitzvah in 1938. On that day, as everyone drank the sweet rum pot liqueur his mother made, he didn't realize it would be the last time his family would all be together.

The Alte Synagogue was destroyed a few months later during Crystal Night, when the Nazis demolished Jewish synagogues and businesses. Four years after the destruction, Cahn and his parents were taken to Auschwitz concentration camp.

I could have hidden and lived with some people we knew, says Cahn from his Encinitas home. But I wanted to be with my parents so that I could help them.

But as soon as they stepped off the cattle cars, Cahn's parents were taken to the gas chambers.

I'm glad they didn't have to suffer, he says. Because I knew they wouldn't have survived in Auschwitz.

Cahn labored at the camp for three years and saw hundreds of his fellow inmates tortured and killed. His experiences are documented in a book, Loss, Liberty and Love: My Journey from Essen to Auschwitz to the United States, originally published by Lois Sunrich's Leucadia-based company, Story Arts/Storymakers.

The book, released in 2001, also documents the infamous Death March. In 1945, as the Russians were close to liberating Auschwitz, the healthier inmates were told to clear out of camp.

About 6,000 prisoners walked from Poland to what was then Czechoslovakia in the middle of winter. When they were finally set free four months later, there were fewer than 100 people still alive.

People from the Holocaust Museum in Washington, D.C., told me they'd heard about the Death March but had never met anyone who went through it, Cahn says. They said, 'You are the first person who has contacted us. You may be the only person who is still alive.'

Eventually, Cahn met his wife, Elizabeth (Liesel), and they raised four children. The couple, married for almost 50 years, ran a deli in Encinitas.

It was while Liesel was sick that Cahn decided to write his memoirs. After she died, he felt ready to go back to his hometown. And while the sights were now unfamiliar, Cahn did make an important connection on a train ride.

A young man noticed the numbers tattooed on Cahn's arm and said, My grandfather was a Nazi and I feel very bad. What can I do?

As the train rolled past the European mountains Cahn had suffered in, the elderly Jewish man and the young German spoke about hope, love and understanding.

Just remember what we talked about, said Cahn to his new friend, so that this doesn't happen again.

Passages runs weekly in Currents. If you have a significant, life-changing event you'd like to share, e-mail Nina Garin at [e-mail]

Copyright 2003 Union-Tribune Publishing Co.

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Me, 1946

HORST

I am sitting here to write my memoirs.

Hi. I am sitting here to write my memoirs. Friends, strangers and most of all my family — children, cousins, etc. — have urged me to put on paper the events of my life. At this time it is not easy to think of myself and my past because my wife is very ill. She has had Parkinson’s for the last 15 years, and it has taken its toll. It is very difficult to see a loved one with whom you have lived for 48 years be helpless like a baby and in need of care and more love than you ever thought you could possibly give.

I now understand the frustration some women have when they spend all day alone with a baby. The friends you have don’t know how to act — they don’t come because it hurts, and they feel awkward. They don’t know that this is the time they are needed the most. The patient needs to see that people care. And the caregiver and family need to have people talk to them and keep their mind on other things, as well as show they are there when needed. The old saying, A friend in need is a friend indeed, holds true.

I write this down not for anybody to feel sorry for me, but I’d like you to remember that friendship is not just to be there when fun and pleasure and good times are around, but especially when hardship, sadness or other difficulties have befallen your friends. Please be there for them — it makes you and your friends feel good. But I don’t want to preach.

I like to explain that this is punishment for procrastinating. I should have done this years ago. It is a lot harder now, so please be patient if my concentration is not always what it should be. I don’t want to bore you with some episodes which are familiar to you, but tell you things which are different than most people have experienced — and there are lots of them.

***

I remember we had to live in an apartment in the middle of the city just around the corner from the city hall. So when dignitaries came to Essen we always had the opportunity to see them. At one time my parents told me they pulled me out of a lot of people who wanted to see Hitler. I just stood there — it had to be Passover — with a package of matzo under my arm. I did see most of the Nazi big shots in person from a few feet away. My father told me to avoid the crowds, but curiosity always got the best of me.

We also lived near the temple, which on November 10, 1938 — along with all Jewish stores and temples in all of Germany — was set on fire and destroyed. Most Jewish men and older boys were incarcerated the next day. That was the first, but not the last time, I was arrested.

But backing up a little bit, the temple also was the place of my bar mitzvah a couple of months before. It was a very happy occasion. All my relatives as well as friends were there. The festivities brought all the relatives together, which to my recollection, was the last time. I remember my mother made a rum pot — one liter of a good rum and an equal amount of fruit and sugar which is left to ferment at least six months. My sister, who was four years older than I, liked it and — it takes only a small amount to get intoxicated — got a little tipsy and quite silly. Everybody got a kick out of it.

The day after my bar mitzvah, I participated in a boxing tournament. I won the match but came home with my left eye black and closed, my lips swollen and my nose bloody. My parents and relatives were not too happy.

School was another adventure. We went to an all-Jewish school which was a long way from home in a suburb, and we had to use the trolley or streetcars to get there. We had a monthly pass which was punched every time it was used. So a few of us made a game of jumping off when the conductor came and then back on, and whoever had the least holes punched was the winner. It was dangerous, but fortunately nobody got seriously hurt.

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My class photo, 1936-1937

Of course, thinking back I was no angel. We had a wooden floor in the classroom, and one teacher who would not tolerate any noise. So we took a stone and kicked it over the floor. When it came under my seat, the teacher noticed it and, in spite of my insisting that I was innocent, he hit my fingers with a cane until they were red and swollen. After school was out, I went to him and explained that he found the stone under my seat, so I could not have kicked it there and made the noise — it had to be somebody else. He admitted that he was wrong but said, That’s for all the times you did something and didn’t get punished.

All in all we Jewish children, because of necessity, were very close and helped each other out. When one was in trouble with some German kids, the others always helped out.

***

In retrospect, during the famous, or infamous, Crystal Night (Kristallnacht) — the night all synagogues were destroyed and Jewish businesses demolished — it was a strange feeling to see a house of worship set on fire. Expensive glass windows as well as silver and gold ornaments were destroyed; goblets and holy scripture, the Torah scrolls with ornate accessories, were burned and demolished — not robbed, not stolen or saved — just burned into rubble. And as I watched, I noticed no hatred or anger, just a business-like activity of destruction without any signs of remorse or emotion — not like humans. I noticed, as a 13-year-old, the cold, heartless terror of blind obedience.

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Alte Synagogue before Kristallnacht,

November 9-10, 1938

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Interior of Alte Synagogue before Kristallnacht

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Interior of synagogue after Kristallnacht

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Witnessing the destruction of Alte Synagogue in Essen, November 9-10, 1938

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Alte Synagogue amid the rubble after Kristallnacht, 1938

There is something scary about seeing people abide by insane, cruel and inhumane orders. There is no explanation, no excuse and, least of all, no understanding of what has become of humanity. I will touch that subject some more at a later time.

I asked my father, Why? Why this? Why us? My father said that in all of history, people have looked for a scapegoat for their own shortcomings.

We always stressed education, knowledge, wisdom in our family — like the song from Fiddler on the Roof, If I Were a Rich Man, says: And I like people to