Helen and Sol Krawitz Holocaust Memorial Education Center

MANFRED GANS Obituary

GANS–Manfred, born April 27, 1922 in Borken Germany died peacefully at his home in New Jersey on September 11, 2010. He was our hero and the hero of many others. In response to the Nazi regime, his parents sent him to England at the age of 16. At 18 he was chosen to join the elite group of British Commandos, known as, X-troop. He landed with the allied armies on D-day and fought throughout the European campaign. He rose to the rank of captain and was among the troops who liberated his home town. After the armistice was signed, he and a driver drove to Czechoslovakia and were the first Allied soldiers to arrive at the Terezenstadt concentration camp where he found his parents alive. He then organized their return to Holland. Through much of the war he corresponded with his childhood sweetheart, the late Anita Lamm, whose family left Germany for New York City in 1938. They were married in New York in 1948. Manfred recorded this in his memoirs, Life Gave Me a Chance, published in 2009. After the war, Manfred studied Chemical Engineering at the University of Manchester and then went on to MIT where he completed a master’s of science. He joined the chemical engineering firm, Scientific Design, specializing in design and start-ups. His career took him all over the world and was part of the first wave of professionals to conduct business in China and East Germany in 1973. In 1976 he started consulting for the UN and went on many assignments that included Cuba, Turkey, Vietnam, and Pakistan. During his professional career, he was awarded patents and authored technical papers. He was a Fellow of the American Institute of Chemical Engineers and was the winner of the 1993 “Chemical Engineering Practice Award.” He has been an inspiration and will be sadly missed by his brother, Gershon Kaddar, in Israel, his son, Daniel Gans, his daughter Aviva Gans Rosenberg, their spouses Linda and David, his grandsons: Aaron, Jeremy, and Dylan, his sister-in-law Lilo Goldenberg Thurnauer, his close friend, Esther Okin, and an extended family and friends throughout the world.

The following excerpts and adaptations were prepared by Nancy Gorrell, editor, based on Manfred Gan’s memoir, Life Gave Me a Chance.

THE WEINMAR REPUBLIC, JEWISH STRUCTURE:

Manfred grew up in a “picturesque” one thousand year old German town, Borken, in Wesfalia, near the Dutch frontier “a town with walls and moats.” Manfred says according to the town’s records his grandmother’s ancestors had moved within the walled city in 1610. He notes this was an unusual privilege for Jews. “We regarded ourselves as Germans first and foremost–our father had lost a leg in WWI fighting in the German Army. Manfred lived in a “large, luxurious house just outside the town (Bocholterstrasse); “we had two maids and a chauffeur and employed people to look after the flower and vegetable gardens.” Manfred’s father sold textile fabrics to custom tailors on the other side of town. He was on the road driven by his chauffeur regularly. Manfred says that although Borken was a rural town and the trade and industrial center of a highly mechanized textile industry, there was plenty of poverty and misery around us. The trauma and defeat of WWI, huge causalties, runaway inflation, the economic crisis of 1928/29 with its vast unemployment created a bleak public mood as well a crime and a search for radical solutions. Manfred says “my parents were decidedly opposed to the prevailing public mood. They were democrats and socialists. They strongly believed that a nation should be ruled by its elected representatives.His father became president of the local branch of the League for War Injured. “As a result, he was very popular and became the Chairman of the local branch of the Social Democratic Party.Although Jews lived in Borken for 700 years, he was the only Jew who was ever elected to the Town Council.”

When Manfred was growing up, Borken had 8,000 inhabitants, including 25 Jewish families. There were Jewish families  in nearby villages, but all the Jewish children went to school in Borken. Manfred says “we were brought in accordance with orthodox Jewish tradition. We ate only Kosher food, observed sabbath, and attended services every Friday night and Saturday morning, afternoon and evening. At the age of six, Manfred attended the Jewish Elementary School consisting of one classroom and eight grades. Apart from secular education and prayers, he learned to read and write Biblical Hebrew. Manfred recalls with great fondness his brilliant and kind teacher, Gruensberg, who emigrated to Israel before WWII. At age 10 Manfred graduated to the Public High School, “which like the whole region, was predominantly Catholic.” Manfred now had to attend classes on Saturday morning without being able to write on Saturdays or carry books to school on Saturdays. 

THE STORM:

Manfred says, “Even before 1933, as eight year old children, we were very much aware  of the Nazi movement.” His mother’s parents, Moritz and Bertha Franenkel lived in a small village, Voelkensean, near Hanover. They were the only Jews in that village and did not try to hide the fact. They did not believe in organized religion; literature, operas and music were their inspiration. Manfred says that by that time, everyone in that village which was predominantly  Prostestant, while Borken was overwhelmingly Catholic, “started to withdraw from us.” Manfred says his family heard while listening to the radio” that President Hindenburg had appointed Adolph Hitler, the leader of the National Socialist Party, as the Chancellor (Prime Minister) of the German government. It was January 31st, 1933. Manfred recalls his mother was stunned.  Manfred says by the reaction of his fellow students in the public high school, he realized “our lives would be changed fundamentally. In February and March 1933 in preparation of a new national election, every town was ordered to organize torch light parades and demonstrations to show the new spirit. At the time there was no Hitler Youth to lead the parades and songs. The High School had to substitute for the Hitler Youth and “we Jewish students just had to go along. It took two such events before my father got us out of this duty and just in time. The songs and parades became more aggressive and increasingly anti-Jewish, Nazi songs.” 

Manfred recalls that Saturday, April 1, 1933 was the watershed confirming our lives had changed drastically. Hitler proclaimed that “international Jewry” was organizing a boycott against German and in retaliation he ordered the boycotting of all Jewish businesses in Germany. Storm Troopers prevented shoppers from entering Jewish businesses.

RE-EDUCATION AND LIFE GOES ON:

Manfred recalls the  re-education beginning May 1, 1933 with the “revelation that our Biology teacher was a full member of the Nazi Party.   He notes that this PhD in Biology was charged with teaching the Science of Races, a ‘science’ which was to prove the racial superiority of the Germanic race and the inferiority of Blacks and Jews. As we reached the ripe age of 15 or 16, we Jewish students were exposed to this ‘wisdom.’ My brother, Gershon, was exposed to this reeducation as well. But Gershon carried to school two volumes of Arthur Ruppin’s Sociology of the Jews. “Whatever assertions were made by the Biology teacher, Gershon had the statistics to disprove them. Manfred concludes his High School years with the observation that “Life Must Go On.” The ramifications of having to live with the pervasive teaching of Nazi idelogy, the forced code of having to employ in public the outstretch arm known as the Hitler salute, the alienation of Jewish students from non-Jewish students did not stop Manfred from engaging in gymnastic sports, going on ‘glorious’ summer vacations with his uncle’s agricultural training farm and two weeks at a ski resort and a beach in Holland. “When German society was slammed shut, our Jewish community readily, eagerly, turned to Zionism, Hebrew and Jewish traditional learning. Under the guidance of the teacher from our elementary school, we became members of the Orthodox Zionist movement.

Manfred’s older brother left home for Palestine in 1936 at the age of 16. Manfred left his classmated for England in the summer of 1938, “relishing the thought of a free society where I would be able to talk to anybody and everybody. Only the prospect of never seeing again the beautiful fields, forests, flatlands, mountains, towns, and villages where I had grown up occasionally filled me with pangs of sadness: the Hitler Reich would last for generations and we would never be allowed to return.”

The Holocaust Memorial and Education Center gratefully acknowleges the donation of Manfred Gan’s memoir, Life Gave Me A Chance (2009) by his daughter, Aviva Ruth Gans Rosenberg with permission of electronic and digital photographs therein.