Erwin Kahn is forgotten. He is the first Munich victim of the National Socialists. There is no photograph of him and false information about his death has been circulating to this day. He was murdered on April 16, 1933 – in the surgical university clinic in Nußbaumstraße. A memorial was placed at his last place of residence on Sunday.
It is thanks to Björn Mensing that Erwin Kahn was remembered at an event in the university hospital on the 90th anniversary of his death. The pastor of the Church of Reconciliation in the Dachau concentration camp memorial has a doctorate in history, has researched in archives and supplemented and corrected the previously known biography of Kahn.
Erwin Kahn was born in Munich on September 12, 1900 to Jewish parents. He later worked as a businessman and insurance agent. In 1928 he married Euphrosina Vessar, she was called Eva. They changed apartments in Munich several times before moving to Hans-Sachs-Strasse 18, on the third floor, in November 1932.
On March 11, 1933, a few weeks after Hitler came to power, an SA man arrested Kahn on the street, presumably simply because he was Jewish. He was taken to Ettstrasse, three days later to Stadelheim, to the “protective custody camp”. On March 22, Kahn was transferred to Dachau, the first day of the concentration camp.
Three of Kahn’s letters have been preserved from there, and they are read out at the university clinic to commemorate him. “I only have one wish, that I’ll finally be interrogated,” he writes to his wife. He hopes to explain that his arrest was a mistake. “I beg you,” writes Kahn, “don’t worry too much about me.”
A policeman in the camp prevents the “mercy shot”
On April 11, 1933, SS men took over the task of guarding the concentration camp prisoners. What happened one day later has been handed down thanks to the statements of a fellow prisoner and Kahn’s wife: an SS man calls out the names of three prisoners, actual or alleged communists of Jewish origin. The name Kahn is also called out. A man answers, and a little later a second – Erwin Kahn. He’s not a communist and obviously doesn’t mean it at all, but the SS man says: “You’ll come with me.” A few minutes later, SS men shoot at the four men. Three are killed instantly, Erwin Kahn is hit by two bullets in the head, but survives. A policeman who remained in the camp prevents Kahn from being given the “mercy shot”. The seriously injured man is taken to the surgical clinic at Nußbaumstrasse 20.
At that time there was an infirmary for the Dachau concentration camp there. Kahn survives the operation. On April 15, his wife comes to the clinic. Two security guards don’t want to let her see her husband, but a doctor makes it possible for her to visit him. He is quite optimistic about Erwin Kahn’s condition. He is lying in a barred single room on the first floor, is conscious and tells his wife what happened. She sat alone at her husband’s bed for several hours, as she recalled in a 1953 witness hearing before the Munich district court.
On April 16th, it is Easter Sunday, she is informed that her husband died during the night. The cause is not the consequences of the shots, as an autopsy shows, but “blunt force against the larynx”. Pastor Mensing says he had the autopsy report analyzed by a coroner. Apparently the SA or SS guards strangled the unwelcome witness Kahn.
His wife goes to a prosecutor and reports to him. He was “very nice” and definitely “not a Nazi,” she says. But he advised her not to do anything else, otherwise she too might be arrested. The murders of April 12 and 16, 1933 remain unpunished, even after 1945. The only perpetrator who was definitely identified died in the war.
Pastor Björn Mensing and City Councilor Beppo Brem (right) attach the memorial to the residential building on Hans-Sachs-Strasse.
(Photo: Florian Peljak)
Although years ago a scientist from the University of Siegen published details about Erwin Kahn, Mensing says that the erroneous statement that Kahn died from the gunshot wounds still holds true today. Even his tombstone in the old Israelite cemetery on Thalkirchner Strasse reads “perished in Dachau”. In fact, the city’s cultural department found that Kahn was the first Munich victim to be murdered by the Nazis. Björn Mensing says he feels obliged to remember forgotten Nazi victims and to show solidarity with them, at least in retrospect. He does this as a pastor of the Evangelical Church, whose leadership remained silent about the crimes in the early Nazi phase or even justified them.
Little is known about the Kahn family. The father died in Theresienstadt, the mother and a sister were murdered in Auschwitz. The brother emigrated to the USA. Eva Kahn married a second time in 1936. Pastor Mensing hopes that relatives will get in touch in order to be able to reconstruct even more about the life of the family.