Jan Kahan

This is my brother Jan Kahan. I don't know who he's with, maybe a girlfriend or a friend. In any case, it's not his wife. This photo is from the 1940s, but I don't know where it was taken.

Jan was my second-oldest brother; he was born in Mukachevo, in 1905. He lived in Mukachevo, survived the concentration camp, returned to Mukachevo and died there. During the war he was in several concentration camps, because he fought in Spain. He went there in 1938 as a volunteer. He was in a prison in France, there they helped him get home illegally to Mukachevo. It was like a miracle, you know, there was an underground movement there, too. He got home, but he wasn't there for even an hour or two, and right away they came for him. They took him away to a concentration camp in Hungary. From there he went to Auschwitz. So he went through a lot, but returned and stayed in Mukachevo, where he died sometime in the 1980s. After the war he was in charge of some quilted blanket factory, or something like that, as in Spain he'd been on the side of the Communists, and then the Russians were in Mukachevo, so they let him run the factory. Jan was married, but had no children. His wife was named Moni.