Herman Kahan

Herman Kahan (born Chaim Hersh Kahan in 1926) is a Romanian-born Norwegian businessman, rabbi, author, and Holocaust survivor.

Kahan was born into an HasidicJewish family in Sighet, Romania. Elie Wiesel was among his childhood friends.

During World War II, when Northern Transylvania was administered by the Kingdom of Hungary (see Second Vienna Award), Kahan and two siblings were able to obtain "Aryan papers" in Budapest. After getting reports from his father in Sighet that Jews in the city were gathered into ghettos, he returned home to provide food.

In 1944, Kahan was deported to the Auschwitz concentration camp with his father, mother, and a sister. After arriving in the camp, his mother and sister were taken to the gas chambers, where they died. Kahan and his father were selected as workers. After a couple of weeks, they were transported to the Wolfsberg camp near Breslau, and later to the Mauthausen-Gusen concentration camp and Ebensee concentration camp. Kahan experienced torture in all three camps; his father was also tortured. At the end of his time at Ebensee, Kahan lost consciousness and was thrown into a pile of corpses. American forces liberated the camp the same day, and while transporting the corpses to a mass grave, one of the American soldiers saw Kahan's hand move and pulled him out of the pile. Kahan's father died 10 days after liberation.

After the war Kahan moved to Paris and planned to go to the United States. He supported himself by selling knitwear he produced with knitting machines.

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