Page 33 - Kol Bogrei Habonim - Winter 20
P. 33
FREDDY KAHANA, THE gentiles studied, and I didn’t make a
distinction between my friends. At that time,
ARCHITECT, PARTED FROM Czechoslovakia was already at boiling point
HIS PARENTS AT THE TRAIN due to the German minority, but I didn’t feel
it and wasn’t harmed by it.”
STATION, WHEN HE WAS 12
Occasionally he used to help his parents,
YEARS OLD, NEVER TO SEE Katerina (née Weiss) and Ludwig Kahn, who
THEM AGAIN. owned a store for office equipment and an art
print shop. The store provided them with a
BY MICHAEL JACOBSON, 20TH APRIL good income, and the family lived in a large
2020 XNET, TRANSLATED BY ILAN apartment in the north of the town. They were
ISRAEL AND FURTHER UPDATED AND a secular family, though the grandmothers on
both sides were religious and insisted that
EXPANDED BY FREDDY KAHANA. THE
their grandson attend synagogue on the
PHOTOS APPEAR WITHIN THE HEBREW
TEXT. Jewish holidays and also learn Hebrew, in
addition to the Czech and German languages
H that everyone spoke. with his aunt:
e was saved from the inferno, when
he escaped to London as a child as
travels
Cultural
part of the Kindertransport. For his
family, who had planted a love of culture While his parents were absorbed in their
business, Fritz found an ally – his aunt
in him, there was no such luck. “I thought Gertrude, his mother’s sister, who was an
I was travelling to an uncle in London.”
aging spinster. “She would take me on trips,
The panic, which followed Kristallnacht in in Brno, a beautiful baroque city with roots in
November 1938, caused many Jewish parents the Middle Ages. She would explain the
in Europe to remove their children from the architecture and art to me, take me to concerts
impending danger, in whichever way and museums, and her education influenced
possible. Fritz Kahn, from the Czech town of me greatly,” he says.
Brno, was one of 10,000 children, who were One time, he travelled with his parents to a
placed on the Kindertransport to England. He social event in the home of their friends, who
stayed alive, unlike his parents, who parted were among the rich of Czechoslovakia. The
from him one morning at the Prague train venue was one of the most famous villas that
station, never to see him again.
was built in their period – the Vila
Fritz Kahn is Freddy Kahana, now 92 years Tugendhat, which has since been designated
old, and has been for many years a central by UNESCO as a World Cultural Heritage
architect and influence in the Kibbutz Site. The villa was designed by the acclaimed
Movement. In his small apartment at Kibbutz German architect, Mies van der Rohe, among
Bet HaEmek, he recalls: the leaders of the Bauhaus school. Kahana
“I never encountered antisemitism before notes: “I remember the house that was
1938. I went to a school where both Jews and
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