Dayton-area Holocaust survivor Robert Kahn died Tuesday at the age of 100. Museum visitors can see the violin that he was forced to play “Happy German Songs” for the Nazis in WWII. #holocaustsurvivor #holocaust #violin
On Nov. 9, 1938, a teenager, 15 years old, experienced the most violent, barbaric display of anti-Semitic acts ever recorded in history. I was that teenager!
The day began by witnessing the purposeful destruction of the only Jewish vocational school in the area, while people cheered and applauded. It was my school.
Then, as I hurried home on my bike, I arrived to see a mob of Nazis in brown and black uniforms throwing our furniture and other belongings through windows which had been smashed and off the balcony. In the yard below, a huge bonfire consumed everything dear to us, while the Nazi hordes and mob of onlookers sang and shouted insults at us, the Jews.
While our apartment was being destroyed and ransacked, mother was locked up in one room, crying loudly. My father was being beaten up in the hallway, pleading for mercy. When I too asked them to stop, they took me into my room, threw my violin at me, took me to the balcony, and ordered me to play happy German songs.
I was scared, crying, in agony, but play I did to the amusement of the crowd. My father was taken to Dachau concentration camp. Our two beautiful synagogues were destroyed.
Before I fled Germany, and eventual freedom in America, I hid the violin in the attic of our apartment. When I returned from military service in the U.S. Army and the war was won over Hitler, I wrote to the janitor of our apartment at Mannheim, Germany. He found the hidden violin and sent it to me in America!
This is the violin which shares all the memories of the past with me. At one time it could vibrate to imitate the happy flight of song birds. Today it is only a reminder of a once dehumanized and terrified German boy.
Robert Kahn
Sept. 15, 1997
The story that we’re exploring today with the passing of Mr KH is his story as a young teenager in Germany in the city of Manheim his family was set upon by Nazi Thugs who ransacked his apartment he was aged 15 at the time they ransacked the apartment through all
The furniture out the window destroyed everything the family owned and took most of the family away leaving 15-year-old Robert as this was happening Robert was forced to play happy songs for the thugs on his violin well he managed to first of all survive the experience and second of all he hid
The violin in the Attic years later after the war after his service in the US Army he escaped Europe and the Nazis to serve in the US Army he found found that the violin still existed in the attic and he got it back and for him that violin
Symbolized the event the event where his family was brutalized and split up and where he had to witness that and throughout his long life Mr Khan realized that the violin was emblematic of not just his story but a wider story of of suffering and brutalization and it
Could help people to understand why the second world war was fought a personal story embedded in a simple object like a musical instrument can help all of us understand why we fight right versus wrong and why we did it then and what it means now that’s why a violin like this
Is an evocative Museum artifact