Kahan family papers
Extent and Medium
box
oversize box
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1
Creator(s)
- Kahan family
Biographical History
Kathlin Feuerstein was born Katalin Kahan, in Budapest, Hungary, on 3 February 1943, the daughter of Jenö (also known as Eugene, born 1908?) and Gizella (née Berkowicz, nee 1908) Kahan. Her father was originally from Munkacs, and owned a wholesale cutlery business in Budapest, and her mother and grandmother, Hannah Berkowicz, own a factory that produced paper goods. At the time when she was born, her father had been sent to a forced labor camp, after having hidden in Budapest. Although the family had received safe-conduct passes from Raoul Wallenberg’s office, they chose not to resettle in one of the “Jewish” houses, but lived in a number of different places around Budapest. During her infancy, Katalin was taken to the countryside, to live with one of the family’s housekeepers, and her half-sister, Mariana Racz, was hidden with a group of nuns. The family was reunited around December 1944. By 1948, Jenö and Gizella decided that they wanted to immigrate to the United States, initially obtaining visas for Paraguay, where they had hoped to stay while working on obtaining American visas. Instead, however, they travelled to the United States, where Gizella's brother, Leslie Berk, was living after having immigrated in the 1930s and married an American worman. The Kahans used visitor visas, which they overstayed illegally. Once that had happened, Leslie’s American wife, Lillian, contacted her brother in Rhode Island, who was friends with the United States Senator from that state, Theodore Green, who in turn sponsored legislation in the Senate that would allow the Kahans to stay in the United States, which they were ultimately successful in doing, with Jenö and Gizella becoming citizens in 1960. The family, after initially living in Cleveland near Leslie’s family, moved to Los Angeles, where Jenö worked as a salesman, while Gizella worked as a baker and caterer.
Archival History
United States Holocaust Memorial Museum
Acquisition
United States Holocaust Memorial Museum Collection, Gift of Kathlin Feuerstein
Kathlin Feuerstein donated the Kahan family papers to the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum in 2016.
Scope and Content
Correspondence, documents, certificates, and related materials, concerning the immigration of the family of Eugene (Jenö) Kahan, originally of Munkacs, Hungary (Mukachevo, Ukraine), and his wife, Gizella, and their daughters, to the United States via Paraguay, after World War II. Documents include identification and marriage documents issued in Hungary following the war, documents issued by the consulate of Paraguay in Czechoslovakia, and correspondence between American agencies, including the Immigration and Naturalization Service, and the office of U.S. Senator Theodore Green of Rhode Island, who sought to help the family stay legally in the United States through legislation he introduced on their behalf in Congress. Also included are copied war-time documents (the originals of which were donated to the Simon Wiesenthal Center in Los Angeles in 1985), and a copy of a letter from Kathlin Feuerstein’s half-sister, Marianna, describing the family’s wartime experiences in Hungary. Furthermore, the file pertaining to the Sisters of Social Service in Buffalo, New York, relate to funds that the Kahan family were only able to transfer out of Hungary when they immigrated, by depositing them with an affiliate of this religious order in Hungary, since they were unable to bring this money them.
System of Arrangement
The Kahan family papers are arranged as one series, in alphabetic order by folder title.
People
- Green, Theodore Francis, 1867-1966.
- Racz, Marianna.
- Kahan, Eugene.
- Kahan, Katalin.
- Kahan, Gizella.
Subjects
- Hungary--Emigration and immigration.
- Holocaust survivors--California--Los Angeles.
- Jews--Hungary--Budapest.
- Budapest (Hungary)
- Hungary.
- Los Angeles (Calif.)
- Jewish refugees--United States.
- United States--Emigration and immigration.
- Cleveland (Ohio)
Genre
- Immigration documents.
- Certificates.
- Photographs.
- Correspondence.
- Document