David Kohan
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David Kohan 1920-1995
engineer; journalist; freelancer for newspapers and radio stations in Berlin
!!! please add biographical information !!!
Born January 9, 1920 in Warsaw.
Kohan's father was a physician, took actively part in Warsaw's Jewish cultural life.
David Kohan was in the Warsaw Ghetto, went into hiding and entered the resistance movement / was a partisan.
After the Second World War, Kohan came to Berlin, where he met his later wife Gisela. Together, they prepared radio shows on various topics ranging from Yiddish music to Russian literature to political or technical topics like nuclear energy. They prepared those lectures and radio plays mainly for the SFB (Sender Freies Berlin) and the RIAS (Rundfunk im amerikanischen Sektor).
While being in the Displaces Persons Camp in Berlin-Schlachtensee (from 1947 on), he wrote in the Yiddish paper of the camp, "Undzer lebn".
During the end of the 1940s, David Kohan was the technical editor of several volumes of "Di naye yidishe bibliotek", for example of the first volume of Sholem Aleichem's "Ayznban-geshikhtes", Menora farlag Berlin, 1948.
David Kohan taught various classes on Yiddish and Yiddish literature at the Jüdische Volkshochschule (Jewish adult education center) Berlin.
He also wrote for several Yiddish periodicals, as the פֿאָרװערטס "Forverts" or the French Bundist אונדזער שטימע. סאָציאַליסטישע צײַטשריפֿט פֿאַר פּאָליטיק און קולטור "Undzer shtime. Sotsialistishe tsaytshrift far politik un kultur" (Notre Voix).
David Kohan was a known Character in (West-) Berlin's Jewish community. He left his wife, Gisela, and two daughters.
(reference:
Schröter, Karl Heinz, ed.: Mein Psalm. Berlin: Lettner-Verlag, 1968, pp. 22)
