Of all the more than thirty heroes I researched for my new historical novel, The Rabbi’s Holocaust Heroes Museum, I was particularly intrigued by David Kaufmann and Feodora Kahn of Grand Island, Nebraska. These two cousins, born more than three decades apart, saved approximately eighty families from the madness of Nazi Germany without ever leaving Nebraska.
Their story begins in 1903 when twenty-six year old Kaufmann emigrated from his native Germany with dreams of developing a retailing career in America. A few months after arriving in New York he was hired as a clerk and window dresser at the Abraham and Strauss (A&S) department store on Fulton Street in Brooklyn. One day Kaufmann assisted a customer named Samuel Wolbach, the owner of a small two-story department store in Grand Island who was in New York City ordering merchandise for sale back home. Wolbach was so impressed with David Kaufmann that he offered him a job in Grand Island, and convinced Kaufmann that there was a quite a good future to be had in the Mid-West.
By the early 1930s David Kaufmann owned not only a chain of these five and dime stores, but also movie theatres and a bank. Throughout his years in America David Kaufmann kept up his connections with family and friends in Germany via letters and periodic visits. Feodora Levy Kahn, born in 1910, was one of the many relatives that Kaufmann visited and stayed in touch with.
By 1936 Feodora was married and acutely aware of the deteriorating political situation in Germany. She wrote to Kaufmann and asked for his sponsorship so that she and her husband (Isidor) could leave Germany for America. Kaufmann, true to his word, responded by promptly filling out and signing an Affidavit of Support.
On September 7, 1936 the Kahns arrived at Ellis Island and shortly thereafter headed to Grand Island. For the next decade Kahn actively communicated with relatives and friends in Germany and arranged for Kaufmann to sponsor more than eighty families.
It is estimated that Feodora’s proactive behavior along with David Kaufmann’s generosity and willingness to put his hard-earned fortune on the line more than eighty times, directly saved the lives of two hundred and fifty people. Kaufmann’s generosity didn’t stop once the new immigrants arrived. He took a personal interest in each family sometimes arranging a job or even, in one instance, buying a farm in Iowa for a refugee family.
The central question raised by the story of David Kaufmann and Feodora Kahn is: How many of us would be willing to sign an Affidavit Of Support under section 213A of The Immigration and Naturalization Act that would obligate us, as the sponsor, to insure the support of the newly arrived immigrants at 125 percent of the Federal Poverty Guidelines? Remarkably, not one of the eighty families that Kaufmann brought to America ever applied for any type of public assistance.