Ad in Harvard Student Paper Causes Outrage

I join those who expressed their outarage. Iam a Holocaust survivor who moderates the Yahoo! group Remember_ The_Holocaust which has a worldwide membershop. More about me below in an article by author Kate Kelly on Huffington Post, August 25, 2009> Th "In what can only be described as a miracle of Internet connectivity, I have heard from a person whom I mentioned in a blog post I wrote last autumn about how and when the tradition of presidential debates began http://americacomesalive.com/blog/2008/09/long-history-of-debates.html. In the post, I noted that debates are a relatively recent phenomenon, originally suggested in 1956 by a University of Maryland student by the name of Fred A. Kahn, who was credited with the idea in newspapers of the day.

Kahn did what he could to get the idea rolling, but it was four years later when the League of Women Voters stepped forward to sponsor the first scheduled presidential debates in 1960. That debate, of course, was the precedent-setting televised debate between Richard M. Nixon and John F. Kennedy.

About a month ago, I checked my In Box and found several e-mail messages from Fred A. Kahn. Because several months had passed, I did not immediately remember the name, but something caught my attention, and I opened the first message and realized who it was. Wow! This was thrilling! I quickly responded to Mr. Kahn, and set a time for a telephone interview. I wanted to hear about how the idea of the debates had occurred to him and what had happened to him since that time.

Kahn's story represents everything that is good about this country. Kahn was born in 1932 to Jewish parents in Germany, just 40 days before Hitler came to power. His parents fled to Belgium to escape the Nazis. Because traveling with a newborn would have put them all at risk, they left the baby with a childless aunt and uncle eager to care for him. The political situation did not improve so returning for their son became unworkable, but in 1938, with the signing of the Munich Pact (with Great Britain and France agreeing to many of Hitler's demands), circumstances for Jews in Germany became more dire.

Kahn's father worked through connections to arrange for a family friend, a Christian, to bring Kahn by tram to the German border where the family hoped guards would feel there was no harm in letting such a young child cross into Belgium without the necessary paperwork. The two countries had a "no man's land between them," and Kahn's father stood on the Belgian side imploring the guards to let the young boy cross, calling, "C'est mon fils!" Fritz, as he was called then, finally was permitted to cross to the father he had never known, and he went into hiding with his family. He and his parents survived the war but the aunt and uncle who had cared for him were killed in a death camp in Germany."

see more on: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/kate-kelly/the-american-spirit-perso_b_268138.html

Fred A.Kahn of MD 12:15AM September 10, 2009