Renate Kahn
Renate Kahn was born in 1926 in Kassel, Germany, and grew up in a large house owned by her grandfather, in a family that ran a coffee processing plant and a retail store selling coffee, chocolate, and delicatessen items. Her father became a partner in the business after marrying her mother. The family was very secular, and Renate has said she barely knew where the synagogue was. As Hitler came to power, life changed dramatically. A teacher spat at her and ordered her to the back of a line because she was Jewish, her Christian friends were forbidden to associate with her, and she was eventually thrown out of school. Both of her grandfathers perished, one beaten to death by a guard in a concentration camp, as a survivor later told her grandmother.
On Kristallnacht in November 1938, Renate, then twelve, watched from behind a curtain as a mob smashed the plate glass windows of the family store and looted its contents. Her father was taken to Buchenwald and returned weeks later gaunt and ghostlike, suffering lifelong intestinal problems. With their assets confiscated, the family was allowed only to prepay their voyage and carry ten German marks per person, arriving in New York with just ten dollars in 1939. Jewish committees arranged temporary housing, and a distant wealthy relative loaned her father money, repayable with interest, to travel by Greyhound bus to Dallas, where close family friends had already settled.
In Dallas, organizations including the Federation, the Council of Jewish Women, and the temple sisterhood helped the family find housing and work. Renate and her father both earned bachelor's degrees from SMU at the same time, and she became a CPA after being turned away by firms that would not hire women, eventually landing a job at Page Boy through a connection to her SMU professor. She married Carl Kahn, whom she met through their German Jewish refugee families' Sunday musical gatherings, and they had three daughters. A lifelong member of the National Council of Jewish Women and Temple Emanu-El sisterhood, she reflected on losing her oldest daughter to cancer and on her nephew's narrow escape from the second tower on September 11.
Full Transcript
alright ranade let's go back 1926 kassel germany let's go back when you were little girl what can you tell us what do you remember the very first thing that I remember is living in this great big huge monstrous house and I was told that the reason we were living there we lived in a much smaller one before but Hitler had something to do with our not being allowed to live in that house anymore because it was owned by Gentiles and Jews were not allowed that's the first thing I remember from that time period because Hitler came to power when I was like six or something
like that what did you folks tell you about that you remember well session or anything they didn't want they tried to forget about it which of course became impossible later on but way back in the early 1930s they're like 33 or 34 they didn't talk about it at least not to me I was a small child we should dad do for a living he was a partner in my grandfather's business which was a basically a coffee processing plant and they had a retail store for coffee products and chocolates and things like that and other delicatessen type items and lived on pretty near the center of
town and people of course in Germany in those days all walked I think they still do and and you could smell the coffee because they from blocks away depending on the wind and I got addicted to coffee at a very young age it was a good thing it was the family business yeah yeah and my father had become a partner after you married my mother yeah yeah what about your grandparents and your other well the grandparents were a big part of my life the grandfather unfortunately perished in a concentration camp but the grandmother very circuitously ended up in dallas in 1943 just as i was
finishing high school this was your mom's my mother's mother here they want about your dad's mom my dad's mother also perished in terror scene but I did not know her that well she came to visit several times a year she lived in a different city and so she was a very prim and proper old lady old in my viewpoint and I had to be on my best behavior with my best manners you had one sibling a brother yes older younger younger talking about grammar school chemistry I don't remember that much I was always a good student and the only thing i do remember at the
only state in graham grammar school until age 10 but their school system being totally different from this and all i remember is one time after a recess for whatever it was we had to get in line to get back into the building and the woman who was a teacher spat at me she says Jews cannot be first in this line you have to go to the end of the line and that hurt really I'd never no one had ever spent on me before never has said she either and that was sort of like a clue as to what was going on oh yeah oh yeah
what it went when Hitler took power what was your family saying obviously they had to know something terrible was happening they did and as soon as they realized that it was time to leave or go to another place they started applying for affidavit to come to the United States and all that so thankfully we got here in 1939 and you remember at all how hard it was to get out of Germany well I remember being thrown out of school because Jews were not allowed in schools unless there were Jewish schools and we were very secular I didn't even know where the synagogue was and I
mean I knew what it was and I know my grandfather passed it on Yom Kippur and I could never understand why anyone wouldn't want to eat all day so anyway I do remember all of that very clearly and I started losing all of my friends because they were not their parents did not allow them to be friendly with a Jewish kid was it because you were Jewish or because they were afraid no we were Jewish so night not very obviously so because we didn't yeah we didn't go to synagogue anything like it was because you were Jewish not because they were afraid that he wanted
would be associated with you it was because you were Jewish well a Hitler put down all sorts of laws and part of a lot probably included something like that I don't know do you remember was your family afraid at all because if she remember they were afraid of anything except when the crystal night came in 1938 in november i know i came home from school i was still at school at that time and there was a more advanced school than the elementary school obviously it was a call to lit salem and i came home and all my my modus operandi was to first of all
go into their office which was on the ground floor next to the store and say hello I'm back and we ate lunch of course in the middle of the day which is their big meal and then I'm supposed to go back to school after that meanwhile the school sent a message do not come back to school you were here about by now stood and I couldn't imagine why they would do a thing like that so that was the end of my schooling in Germany whoa yeah talk about how getting the country well that involved all sorts of bureaucracy and paperwork and I have no idea
what all are you surprised you were allowed to go but they let you out at that time Hitler was more interested in getting rid of the Jews that having them do what we did and many others to emigrate and to wherever a lot of went to Israel but anyway if it was a law so that is your father and your grandfather they just shut the business down well crystal night they can they demolished it I was upstairs in the living quarters and I heard this huge commotion in the street so very quietly behind a big curtain peeked out what was happening and I saw them
I'm an eyewitness to all this so the mob of people with his great big long two by fours or whatever they were I'd say the the length of a table at least maybe longer I don't remember for sure and they bashed in the plate glass windows of the retail store and there were two coffee roasting machines in the window and in the daytime they had a little man at each one operating the roasting machine and that was part of their advertisement I guess for the coffee so I remember them doing that and looting everything mutable out of the store there was nothing left at the
next day I went down into the store and look meanwhile it was boarded up so that at least no other people could come into the house that way and it was something I will never ever forget and at that time I was 12 years old so you know I have a pretty good memory of that did any of the German people that you knew did any of them show any compassion toward you that the house is a huge huge house parts of it were rented to render they belonged to my grandfather and so there were tenants that had been in the house for many years
and especially one couple was very very helpful and said look whatever we can do for you will and i'm sure they helped in some way i wouldn't know what though and those were the people are remember and i do remember that during the big bombing during world war two the city was eighty-five percent ruined and they were killed in the bombing and i felt so bad that these lovely people died all on account of Hitler so now your family this really is that eventually we got out and see all our assets were confiscated at that point we had to turn over everything any jewelry gold
or silver all accounts bank accounts absolutely everything but we were allowed to prepay our voyage to America and we were allowed to use money to buy the steamship ship tickets for as far as New York the only thing is once each person was allowed at that time ten German to take out ten German mark which is that time equated to two and a half dollars and so between the four of us we arrived in New York with ten dollars when you're on that boat and you're leaving was it like relief is it shock of what happened what were you guys thinking well all I can
say we breathe the sigh of relief because my father had been in buben blood for too much and only because my mother was able to prove that we had all the necessary exit papers and a passage book to leave they did let him out do you remember when they came and got him Padma do you remember when they came in took them away yeah on cristiano crystal night and when he came back after two much here it was a 6-footer nice size not fat or any like that but normal-sized person and and he came home I don't know how much weight he had lyst he
looked like a ghost it took him a long time to recover and as the rest of his life he had intestinal problems no doubt caused by all that now you say that you lost a couple of grandparents to the whole class you lost a couple of your grandpa yes my my grandmother my other grand well the one ended up in Dallas afraid of water were they all take another crystal I also know they didn't go after women they only went after men so it it was scurrying and of course my grandfather also he was released from the concentration camp at that time because of his
age only to be re retaken I guess is the word later on that about a year or so later and he died he they killed him they killed him in that concentration camp a guard or somebody took the butt of his gun and beat him in the head until he dropped it and a survivor told that to my grandmother so that's how you found out there was no other notification no no no it's pretty tough when when a kid that age loses all their friends all their other Christian friends I did have a few Jewish friends of course but they had left one by one
and I was the last one know there was one more besides me that was there but she perished later night you see who lost your Christian friends one by one the parents would not allow them to speak to you anymore shot never in contact with them after the war anyone only one what was that and she was she was my best friend actually and I don't know she she have occasionally during that time in between our Kristallnacht and our immigration she came to visit several times had to sneak into the house and the sort of in the back door to come and visit but that
was what have been totally illegal and had anyone caught her then imagine her parents would have gotten into big trouble but I don't know that for sure after the war because after the war she I wrote to her and somehow or other even though the city was all bummed out she got the letter and we started corresponding for a number of years and she ended up becoming a library and in another city and then I lost track of her after that she moved it she moved away from those letters did she have any thoughts about the war no I also remember that my father had
great trepidations arriving in New York with virtually no money and I found a letter recently in it a part of a letter only he was worried because he thought maybe we'd have to sleep on a park bench in Central Park that first night or two but there were Jewish committees in place in New York and all over the country already and they came and helped us and they they arranged for us to stay in a in a small apartment for a week so we spent a week in New York before we got enough money together to come to dallas and we came by Greyhound bus
and that was an ordeal in itself because you know no food yet that you had to stop at various bus stops and hop in and buy whatever meany or a hamburger or something but we had no money but there was a very very wealthy very distant relative who'd been in this country since the 1880s and made a fortune and even though he was remotely related he meant my father the money to get ourselves as far as Dallas but he was a businessman he made my father write a note payable to be repaid in installments starting at a greater day plus interest he didn't meet the
money yeah not that your dad was glad to do it oh he was delighted one time he was late in making a payment and I think I still have it a scathing letter that you have to learn to honor your debts yeah my father would have been the last person not the past because he ended up becoming in the CFO at the page for manufacturing company here in Dallas no why tell us why Dallas because my parents close friends were already here they came from a different city my father had been childhood friends with these people inseparable basically and the grandmothers were very close to
after they became widows thing and and things got tight in the Nazi period and they moved in together into an apartment and so they were roommates or number of years the only trouble as my grandmother did not survive their grandmother went to eventually ended up hiding in Holland so anyway she came to Dallas to the hiding so what was it like when you first came to Dallas what were you thinking well all I can really remember it sure was half course we didn't have the clothing for that sort of thing so we shred it a lot but there were several Jewish organizations in Dallas that
helped us tremendously the Federation the counselor Jewish women and the temple sisterhood and I believe there was a council of jewish women that arranged that we two kids and my brother six years younger than I am we're going to live with these people dr. wolf and his family here in dollars while a small little rental room room and board was provided to them at first in that same neighborhood where we were so they could see us every day and they also found them jobs right away my father who was an executive obviously in a grocery related business they got him a job in one of these little mama papa grocery stores I put him in charge of sweeping the store himself and taking care of the produce but he was able to get a job shortly after that and they fed eration did that for him any work for a few
years at the sink up and then later also where I was already working at page boy ultimately he got he had a business degree in in Germany but then he took night classes at smu's dallas college which was a downtown night school and he and i got our bachelor degrees from SMU at the same time good for you yes yeah so he I became a CPA but he didn't want to bother with that his off the degree was enough and he did all right for himself here in Dallas very good now where did you go to high school what girl Wells Woodrow Wilson okay so
after college where did you go to work yes I went to every CPA firm that work was in the yellow pages and showed him my degree or something like that and I said I would like to work for you all we don't hire women so then I started looking in the want ads in the dallas morning news and there was a paper an ad by page book cost accountant needed so i decided to go in those days he did their resumes or anything like that so i decided to take the bus and go there and an application in person and immediately the president of it
LC Frankfurt SAT me down at her desk and she says oh you've got to get an accounting degree from SMU I said yes and she says well did you know professor so and so as I said yes I knew him very well I spent the last year of my stay at SMU as his lab assistant you think of a lab being part of something scientific but they also had it in business school in Philly so day so she picked up the phone she says hi Larry this is LC she called this professor Larry they were dr. Lawrence flick he later became the dean of the school of business so I she she says do you know a girl by the name of her another fooled us and he obviously said yes I know her very well and would you be good for this job that she'd be perfect so I got the job immediately and started the next day which meets her husband met him in Dallas after the war my parents and his parents had been friendly all the german jewish refugees they all knew each other and they all became well most of them became friends and in those days Dallas was a different place than it is tonight Sunday afternoons whether you were Jewish or gentle or whatever you were was visiting time you would go to somebody had called first and say is it all right are you going to be home we would visit this afternoon every Sunday afternoon ritual and it turned out that the conne family and my family were all amateur musicians mrs.
Khan Gertrud Khan was a wonderful pianist my mother had started at the Frankfurt conservatory she was a pianist I mean all of course amateur not professional and my father was a wonderful cellist so they started playing music together really soon after after what accounts came a little later than we did so probably a year or so afterwards and so every Sunday afternoon they took turns at your house or at my house apartments of course not the houses and they took turns in that and one weekend this went on for years one weekend my my mother said Oh we'll see you on Sunday afternoon called her
on the phone and she said oh we're so sorry it's our son's birthday which is June the 28 and we can't come and and my mother said well why don't you bring him along and I've never met it so we met in about nineteen forty and 247 or forty nose in June obviously anyway we met well a year later we got married 64 years days from now the time we take exactly huh that's that's great yeah tell me about the Jewish community now for you well they really their outreach dish was excellent and like I said they help my parents find jobs my mother was
a wonderful seamstress she made all my all my clothes because she loved it she loved to sew and she had never used a power machine which is a different animal than a regular sewing machine that you use at home because they cause it could lose a few fingers if you didn't know how and so she went to a Gentile friend in Germany in a different city and said would you let me work for you for free for a few weeks so that I can learn this and he said of course it can and she went all the way to another city essen which is quite
a distance from where we lived and none of us look very Jewish any didn't matter otherwise it would have been a terrible catastrophe I'm sure so she spent six weeks in Essen learning how to use a factory machine like that and so when she got here she knew how and of course everybody in Dallas knows name wait'll Reba and Ernest will Reba was killed in a plane crash at Love Field anyway they befriended us and and so did a number of other prominent people here in Dallas like we kids were going to be going to sunday school at temple emanuel sunday school simple manual was
in South Dallas we lived in east dallas and we did not own a car so someone arranged that the Tobin family and the jacobus family who lived on swiss avenue and beautiful homes would take us to sunday school every week and I'm so good friends with enfolds who was one of the jacobus kids and so that in other parts of the of the Jewish community really stepped up and helped us in every way they could are there any organizations that you you've been involved in I'm Stella a life member of national council of jewish women and and I belong I've lost a sister tempranillo sisterhood
the Jewish community if you notice the Grove the last few years absolutely I know we're pretty observant and it comes to going to temple and I've noticed their membership has increased Oh unbelievable and I imagine other syndromes and girls have done the same I don't I don't know that because we only go to Temple now in your lifetime there's been so many momentous occasions on the national level after you've come to the states in a president here in Dallas assassinated something good a moon landing of course the tragedy of 911 is there something that really stood out that affected you yes because I have a
nephew might my brothers all the Sun he was involved in 911 he was working on the thirtysomething for of the second tower and he escaped unscathed because he had been a needle boy scout and he and he knew of an unused elevator very close by where his offices were located he was working for Lehman at that time and he made his escape and the only way he could get onto that steroid only had access exits and access every fifth floor and before he took this job for Lehman he scouted the building to see in case of emergency how to get out of here that's what
good book Boy Scouts learn I guess so he told the people in his office when this happened follow me up the stairs to get out they figure that made no sense in only two or three of them followed and the rest of them were killed and to this day he is so devastated about that and I don't see him very often I do talk to him on the phone they live in Connecticut so talk to him just a couple of days ago you and Carl had three children together never all cause all girls all three girls okay the oldest one died of cancer ten years
ago what advice would you want to leave to the next generation take it as it comes because you have no other choice and don't don't worry the little stuff yeah thanks for doing this today did a great job very good thank you