Born: Sam Kanengiesser
Spišské Podhradie, Czechoslovakia
June 23, 1919
Died: January 3, 2010
Sam Kane was one of 12 children born to the owners of a small grocery store in the town of Spišské Podhradie, then part of Czechoslovakia. When he was 13 years old Kane left for a nearby town where he could attend a yeshiva (school for the study of religious texts). He planned to become a rabbi.
Kane and his fellow students heard that Nazi Germany had annexed Austria in March 1938, followed by parts of the Czech lands that September. One year later, German forces invaded Czechoslovakia and Slovakia became a puppet state of Nazi Germany.
In 1942, Sam and his brother Bernard joined the Slovak Army. As Jews, they were not allowed to have weapons but were protected from deportation to the concentration camps while serving in military support roles. Shortly before the end of his two-year term, Kane ran away to avoid deportation himself. He arrived in Budapest and secured papers declaring him a Polish citizen with the last name Boronowski. Kane then returned to Slovakia and joined a group of partisans living in the mountains. His brother Bernard followed him into hiding, scavenging for food and sabotaging Nazi units.
After the area was liberated by Soviet forces in 1945, Kane discovered that the rest of his family members had been killed in concentration camps. The next year he moved to Prague where he married his wife Aranka, a fellow survivor from eastern Slovakia. In 1948 the Communist party took over Czechoslovakia and the couple temporarily moved to Belgium before immigrating to the United States.
The Kanes settled in Corpus Christi, Texas where Sam established a beef processing business. They had three children. Kane died in January 2010 at 90 years of age.
Parents:
Leopold, d. 1931
Berthe, d. in Holocaust
Siblings:
Bernard Kane, survived
Six sisters, d. in Holocaust
Four brothers, d. in Holocaust