Paul Egon Cahn Collection

Paul Egon Cahn was born in Andernach, Germany, on September 22, 1918 to Sigfried Simon Cahn (born 1888) and Regina Cahn (born Levy, 1893). He had two sisters, Inge and Erika. In the 1930s Paul Egon Cahn learned the auto mechanic trade in Andernach and subsequently worked as a car driver in Cologne, where the family moved in 1937. In 1938/1939 the three children were able to escape Germany; Erika immigrated to England, Inge immigrated to Australia and Paul Egon immigrated to Kenya. Shortly after arriving in Africa, Paul Egon attempted to help his parents leave Germany. Unfortunately, his effort to secure visas for his parents was unsuccessful. His parents were deported to Riga on December 6, 1941. In 1942 his father died. His mother was deported to Auschwitz, where she most likely died shortly after the liberation in 1945. Paul Egon remained in Kenya, living and working until he immigrated to the US in 1951.

In the U.S. Paul Egon Cahn met Senta Ilse (born December 8, 1913), daughter of Julius (born 1890) and Maria Magdalena Wassermann (born 1891). Julius (a Jew) and Maria (a Catholic) married in 1913 in Hamburg, Germany. Being married to a non-Jew protected Julius from being deported until February 1945. Then the Gestapo sent him to Theresienstadt and he was kept in captivity until May 3, 1945. Julius Wassermann survived the concentration camp. Together with his wife, now calling herself Lina Mary Wassermann, he immigrated to the US after the war and died in New York City in 1965. Lina Mary passed away in 1976.

Senta Ilse was in the U.K. during the Second World War, but in 1946 and 1947 she worked for the U.S. Army in Germany. She immigrated to the US in the late 1940s, where she married Joseph Gottschalk in 1949, got divorced in 1962 and married again to Paul Egon Cahn in 1964.

Senta Ilse Cahn died on May 30, 2006. Her husband Paul Egon passed away on September 10, 2010.