Norwegian Jewish survivor of the Holocaust. In 1939 he volunteered to fight on the Finnish sided in the 1939-1940 Winter War between Finland and the Soviet Union. On 23 October 1940 he was arrested by the German security police and interrogated and tortured before put in the Berg detention camp and deported to Auschwitz with the cargo ship D/S Donau on 26 November 1942. After a couple of years he was transferred to the Fürstengrube subcamp.
When the Soviets were nearing Auscwitz, the prisoners were sent on a death march and Kahan eventually ended up on a train together with Isidor Rubinstein and three others. They were the only survivors in a railway carriage stuffed with 135 dead bodies. Rubinstein asked for water and was shot and killed by an annoyed SS guard. Shortly afterwards the train was hit by bombs and Kahan escaped the chaos and after nine days came in contact with some American troops with whom he enlisted and served for the remainder of the war.
Kahan made sure that Rubinstein was buried and after the war his grave was rediscovered and relocated to Norway. Of the Norwegian Jews who didn’t survive the deportations, Rubinstein’s grave was the only one that was found.
After the war he changed his name to Kongstad and worked as a fire station sergeant in Kongsberg. He died on 1 December 1994 at the age of 78.
Link to Wikipedia (Norwegian)