Eugen Kogon

Eugen Kogon (2 February 1903 – 24 December 1987) was a historian and a survivor of the Holocaust. A well-known Christian opponent of the Nazi Party, he was arrested more than once and spent six years at Buchenwald concentration camp. Kogon was known in Germany as a journalist, sociologist, political scientist, author, and politician. He was considered one of the "intellectual fathers" of both West Germany and European integration.

Kogon was born in Munich, the son of an unmarried Russian-Jewish mother from Mykolaiv, then Russia now Ukraine. Kogon was given into a foster family shortly after his birth. He spent the larger portion of his youth in Catholic cloisters. After studying national economy and sociology at university in Munich, Florence, and Vienna, Kogon received his doctorate in 1927 in Vienna with a dissertation on the Faschismus und Korporativstaat ("Corporate State of Fascism"). That same year, Kogon got a job as editor of the Catholic magazine Schönere Zukunft ("Brighter Future") and stayed there till 1937. Through his work, he made the acquaintance of sociologist Othmar Spann, who recommended him for the Zentralkommission der christlichen Gewerkschaften ("Central Committee of Christian Unions"). Kogon was an advisor there several years later. In 1934, after the July Putsch, Kogon took over the asset management of the House of Saxe-Coburg-Koháry for Prince Prince Philipp of Saxe-Coburg.

An avowed opponent of Nazism, Kogon was arrested by the Gestapo in 1936 and again in March 1937, charged with, among other things, "work[ing] for anti-national socialist forces outside the territory of the Reich". In March 1938, he was arrested a third time and, in September 1939, was deported to Buchenwald, where he spent the next six years as "prisoner number 9093".

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