A quiet hero — far-reaching impact
Published: January 29, 2005
Eighth-graders learn of how Grand Island businessman helped 80 Jewish families escape from Nazi Germany.
One hundred seventy trees are growing today in Israel in honor of Grand Island businessman David Kaufmann, who helped rescue Jewish families from Nazi Germany.
On Thursday, Walnut Middle School eighth-graders — most of whom had never heard of Kaufmann — heard authors William Ramsey and Betty Shrier discuss the book they are writing about the late Grand Island businessman.
If today’s eighth-graders had been growing up in Grand Island in the 1930s or 1940s, they almost certainly would have known Kaufmann.
They would have visited Kaufmann’s, a downtown store where they might have purchased candy. As owner and operator, Kaufmann might have greeted the students as they browsed. He might even have given some of them some free candy.
But at the same time Kaufmann was running his store, he also was helping Jewish families escape the Holocaust of Nazi Germany. That fact was not widely known at the time. It was almost a secret.
Ramsey and Shrier told students Kaufman save those immigrant families by signing “affidavits of support,” documents that provided the only way Jewish families could leave Germany and enter the United States in those days.
In addition, Kaufmann wrote out a $50 check for each family to help them get their start in the United States. Shrier said $50 would have been a lot of money back in the 1930s. She guessed that it might be the equivalent of giving a family $1,000 to get started in America today.
Bringing immigrants to the United States in the 1930s was not popular with many people. America, like the rest of the world, was going through the Great Depression. As a result, some people did not like the idea of people coming from other countries and competing for jobs.
Ramsey said the 80 families who escaped Nazi Germany because of Kaufmann’s help have descendants who probably number in the thousands today.
On the Walnut auditorium stage was a picture of twin boys, Joseph and Hugo Kahn, who were sitting in a doorway. They were among the people Kaufmann helped come to America. A second picture shows them as adults standing in a doorway.
After the presentation, Shrier told The Independent that Hugo Kahn now has three daughters: one a doctor, one with a Ph.D. and another who is a certified public accountant.
Also on the Walnut stage was a “tree of life” showing the names of people Kaufmann helped bring to America. Another display had a simple listing of names and where the people live.
Kaufmann, also a Jew, was born in Germany. He attended a German gymnasium or high school, then began learning the retail trade in Germany. He also did required service in the German armed services in the mid-1890s before resuming his retail career.
In 1903, the German-speaking Kaufmann came to the United States, where he intended to live with a New York City family so he could immerse himself in English and American customs.
While on a business trip to New York City, Grand Island businessman Samuel N. Wolbach noticed Kaufmann’s work. Wolbach, who owned a department store, convinced Kaufmann to come to Grand Island.
Kaufmann was not immediately enamored with the small town after New York City. He asked his brother to find him a job in Germany. But by the time his brother found that job, Kaufmann had grown to like the people here.
Eventually, Kaufmann started his own “5- and 10-cent” store in Grand Island, which eventually became a “5-, 10- and 25-cent” store.
During the course of their research, the authors discovered that Kaufmann left food and clothing for the homeless outside the back door of his business each night. Each Thanksgiving and Christmas, Kaufmann would tell the owners of various Grand Island restaurants to feed anybody who was homeless and he would pay for it the following day.
Still, it was the work Kaufmann did in saving Jewish families from Nazi Germany that inspired the book. Ramsey and Shrier learned of Kaufmann’s work from an Omaha dentist, Benjamin Nachman, who believes Kaufmann’s story deserves to be told to a wide audience.
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