Stumbling Stones in Chemnitz
Josef Kahn
Josef Kahn
Born: 01.06.1881
Died: 13.01.1954
Installation location:
Weststraße 65Stumbling stone laying on:
17 May 2022
Life path
The factory owner Josef Kahn has the lasting merit of having led the Jewish religious community in Chemnitz during its most difficult period and ensured its continued existence during the National Socialist era with foresight and caution.
Josef Kahn was born in Wiesenfeld in Lower Franconia, the youngest son of a merchant. He had three siblings: Sara, Berthold and Adolf.
The family later moved to Lohr. The sons learnt the commercial trade there. In January 1900, brother Adolf moved to Chemnitz. Josef Kahn followed him in April 1906, and in the same month the brothers founded a hosiery and glove factory at Fritz-Reuter-Straße 12, which they entered in the commercial register as Gebrüder Kahn and developed into a major company in Chemnitz in the years that followed.
They advertised to the public as a "factory of fine hosiery". After the suicide of his brother, Josef Kahn, who had fought in the Second World War, took over the management of the company at the beginning of 1919. However, he was not only a successful entrepreneur: from 1924, he served as second chairman of the board of the Jewish community. After Georg Mecklenburg's resignation, he became his successor as First Chairman of the Board on 18 August 1927. Thanks to his neutral demeanour, the new chairman was able to break down the existing prejudices between the German Jews and the foreign Jews, most of whom came from Eastern Europe, within the religious community.
Immediately after the November pogrom of 1938, Kahn was arrested and deported to the "protective custody camp" in Buchenwald.
After his release, on 6 January 1939, he had to agree to pay the costs for the demolition of the destroyed synagogue that the town had incurred.
synagogue that the town had incurred. In March 1939, he was able to emigrate to Palestine via Amsterdam and settled in Tel Aviv. From 1949, Josef Kahn lived in Montreal (Canada), where he married the widowed Rosel Sigler from Chemnitz. Until his death, the former chairman remained in contact with his community in the city, which was now called Karl-Marx-Stadt. An obituary emphasised that the Jewish cause had lost "a tireless champion" in the deceased.
Josef Kahn was buried in the Jewish cemetery in Montreal.
Stumbling stones in Chemnitz
It is a project against forgetting: stumbling stones have been laid in Chemnitz every year since 2007.
Embedded in the pavement, the memorial stones commemorate the tragic fates of fellow citizens who were persecuted, deported, murdered or driven to their deaths during the National Socialist regime.
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