Ida Kahn, née Kugelmann came from a long-established Kissingen art dealers’ family whose roots reach back to the 17^thcentury. She was born in Bad Kissingen on May 2, 1890 as the youngest child of David Kugelmann and Johanna, née Wormser and had five older siblings. Her father was an internationally renowned art and antiquities dealer who had a shop for old paintings, furniture and objects of art at Rosengarten.

Ida Kahn married the wine and spirits businessman Sali Kahn from Frankenthal/ Palatinate and moved (presumably after their marriage in 1913) to Mannheim. After 1910, her husband became a co-founder of the wholesale business for wine and distillery “Salli Kahn & Sally Wolf”. During World War I when her husband was in the war, Ida Kahn temporarily lived in Bad Kissingen with her parents. Her two daughters Helene and Ina were born in Mannheim in 1915 and 1919. 

Sali Kahn had a flourishing business with his wine and brandy company even in the difficult early years of the Weimar Republic, and his French-style home-distilled spirits in particular had an excellent reputation. The family was therefore quite wealthy and the two daughters enjoyed a sound school education. They were initially taught privately before attending the Lieselotte Gymnasium. During the summer vacations, they went to the North Sea, and winter vacations were spent in St. Moritz, Switzerland. Ida Kahn also kept in touch with the town of her birth, Bad Kissingen, and even after the death of her parents, she and her children visited the spa town where the Kugelmann relatives lived.
The family spent a happy time in Mannheim, was well integrated and respected until the National Socialists came to power.

The younger daughter Ina remembers the situation in the 1930s after the Nazi’s seizure of power. As a student of Lieselotte-Gymnasium, then a private secondary school for girls, her experiences with her non-Jewish classmates had still been mostly positive in 1934. When Ina thought about going to a school hostel in the country (Landschulheim) in October 1934, three of her non-Jewish friends insisted on her taking part (“either you go – or the class doesn’t go”), and she had a “wonderful time” (Ina Schwabe, Letter from November 15, 1989). But she had also negative experiences with anti-Semitic bullying: When she went to Rheinschwimmbad (Rhine swimming pool) Herweck with her mother, a horde of SS men rushed in in order to throw out the Jews. Ida Kahn’s reaction showed a lot of presence of mind as she ordered her daughter to remain sitting in the corner calmly and turn her face to the wall and pretend to be sunbathing. The other Jewish children panicked and raced away – barefooted and only in their bathing suits – home through Schlossgarten (palace park). “We waited till everything was over, dressed calmly and went home” (Ibid).

Ida Kahn and her husband sent their younger daughter to Switzerland in April 1936 and met her in Belgium during the summer holidays of 1938. In view of the increasingly threatening situation in Germany, it became more and more clear that the family no longer had a future in Germany. Ida Kahn therefore first traveled to Palestine to see if she and her husband could emigrate there. Another consideration was Bogota in Colombia, where they had German friends. The choice of coming to the United States was influenced by the fact that Ida's older sister Regina m. Marx lived in New York. (information Pamela Ruth Landau Lessing, Ida Kahn's granddaughter).Pamela Lessing's understanding is that they actually visited this sister in the 1930s to see what New York might be like for them.  In 1938, Sali Kahn was forced to sell the building of his wine wholesaler and distillery and then left Germany. How rigorously the Nazi state enriched itself with the assets of Jewish citizens is also shown by the example of the Gestapo, which made inquiries in Bad Kissingen and learned from the local land registry that Ida Kahn was entitled to one-sixth of the Kugelmann property at Theresienstraße 3. Thereupon, the Gestapo arranged for the seizure of the property share after depriving Ida of her German citizenship.
As far as Pamela Lessing - knows from family stories, Ida and Sali Kahn lived with their daughter Ina in Belgium in 1938. There Sali Kahn, whose negotiating skills were legendary according to his granddaughter, approached the American ambassador and obtained a visa for Ida, Ina and himself. In October 1938, they left Belgium and arrived in New York on the ship "Nieuw Amsterdam." The Kahns even managed to ship all their furniture from the Brussels apartment to New York. Pamela Lessing remembers:

"However, I do know that Ida purchased new furniture for their apartment in Brussels. She specially got a couch that could be converted into a bed. All of the Brussels furniture was shipped to New York, and later several pieces were in my parents home in Scarsdale, including the couch/bed.! (this was then my mothers couch in her apartment in NYC for 13 years. As an aside, I almost kept that couch, because it had many memories and I loved it."

The elder daughter Helene moved to England in the mid-1930s to work there for a few years. She had managed to obtain a work permit, which was unusual. It was not until 1938, when her parents were forced to leave Germany after 90% of their assets were confiscated, that she realized she could not return to Germany. In 1940, she emigrated from Great Britain to the United States. At that time, she was already engaged to Fred Lessing, a native of Bamberg, Germany (information provided by Pamela Lessing ). It was clear that Fred would join her in the USA as soon as possible. In May 1940, however, he was first detained as an "enemy alien" in an internment camp. After his release six months later, he worked for a year to pay for his visa and passage. In January 1942 he reached New York and a few months later in August they were married.

The older daughter Helen had obviously emigrated to England (information obtained from Ida Kahn, 1938). Ida’s husband who called himself Henry S. Kahn in the USA and worked as an entrepreneur died in New York in 1959. Ida outlived her husband by 23 years and died in October 1982 in Scarsdale/ New York State.

Ida Kahn's grandchildren and great-grandchildren now live in the United States. Through contact with Pamela Lessing (one of Ida's two granddaughters), who lives in Colorado, we have received a lot of information about her grandmother and the beautiful photos from the family 

Look at the photo album