Jewish Heritage Collection: Oral history interview with Alan Kahn
Date:
2016
Interviewer:
Waites, Robin
Interviewee:
Kahn, Alan, 1940-
Description:
Alan Kahn was born in Columbia, South Carolina, in 1940, the first of two children of Katie Bogen and Irwin Kahn. Alan talks about his paternal grandfather, Myron B. Kahn, who emigrated from Russia to New York in 1904, and then moved to Cleveland, Ohio, where he worked as a carpenter and builder. Ethel Kaufman Kahn, his first wife and Irwin's mother, died when Irwin was about two years old. Myron moved to St. Augustine, Florida, and finally to Columbia in the late 1920s, where he established a construction company, first partnering with another builder; later they separated and Kahn formed M. B. Kahn Construction Company. A second marriage didn't work out, and Myron married a third time, to widow Bessie Peskin Rubin of Columbia. Irwin, who joined the family business after graduating college in the mid-1930s, was responsible for broadening the company's scope to include construction management. Alan describes the construction management process and compares it to development practices. Irwin married Katie Bogen, a native of Denmark, South Carolina. Alan shares memories of his mother, her siblings, and their parents, Joseph and Bella Bogen. He discusses his involvement with Aleph Zadik Aleph, how he met his wife, Charlotte Segelbaum, and Charlotte's experiences as a Jewish French National living in Egypt after Gamal Abdel Nasser became president. She was a teenager when her family left Egypt in 1957 and started a new life in Washington, D.C. Alan and Charlotte married in 1965, settled in Columbia, and Alan joined Kahn Construction. The couple raised three children, Kevin, Charles, and Monique. Referring to how older members of Columbia's Beth Shalom reacted to the Civil Rights Movement, Alan notes, "We had a Jewish community that was afraid to speak out when I was growing up." They feared a backlash targeting the Jewish community, and it affected who they hired as their rabbi. Alan attended Duke University and describes the school's integration and quota policies during the late 1950s, early '60s. Alan shares his vision of the Kahn family legacy and his personal philosophy on life.
