Moses Moritz Kahn

Since 2014, ten books and one bundle of notes by Moses Moritz Kahn have been returned.

Moses Moritz Kahn was born in Baisingen / Wuerttemberg in 1871. He studied at the Berlin Rabbinical Seminary and was ordained in 1910. From then on he worked as an orthodox municipal Rabbi in Bad Mergentheim (Baden-Württemberg) until 1939. In the course of the November Pogroms of 1938 Rabbi Kahn was severely abused and arrested, his extensive private library was confiscated. After his release he and his wife Lina managed to emigrate to Palestine. In 1946 he died in Bnei Brak.

Rabbi Kahn's library was transferred to the Reich Main Security Office (Reichssicherheitshauptamt - RSHA) after its confiscation by the Gestapo. In 1942, a Gestapo official and former student of the Grey Monastery ("Graues Kloster / Streitsche Stiftung") informed the school management about the book stocks of Jewish property stored in the RSHA. A request to store the books in the Grey Monastery was granted by the librarian Dr. Wilhelm Lieben (1885-1946). At the same time, the confiscated private library of Rabbi Dr. Moses Moritz Kahn must also have been transferred.

The restitution was carried out jointly with the Foundation New Synagogue - Centrum Judaicum, which in turn identified dozens of further volumes from Rabbi Kahn's library.