Melsunger Allgemeine, 26 February 2026
“Overwhelmed by Our Emotions”
New Yorker Frederick Kahn Traces the Footsteps of His Jewish Ancestors in Felsberg
By Manfred Schaake
Felsberg – Frederick Kahn was deeply moved: The 50-year-old from New York gently brushed his hand over the brass Stolpersteine embedded in the pavement on Untergasse in Felsberg, commemorating his Jewish ancestors, and expressed profound gratitude for everything he learned in Felsberg about his family’s past.
Together with Dr. Dieter Vaupel of the Stolperstein Initiative, Christopher and Annette Willing from the Jewish community, and Anne Frank biographer Melissa Müller, Kahn followed the traces of his ancestors. He is the grandson of Elli Dannenberg and the great-grandson of Ida Dannenberg. Bruno Dannenberg was his great-uncle.
“Kahn has only now come across the deeply moving fate of his grandmother and great-grandmother,” says historian and author Vaupel, a distinguished expert on Jewish history. In 2019, Stolpersteine were laid in Felsberg for the Dannenberg family.
According to Vaupel’s research, during the November pogrom attacks took place in the home of the teacher’s widow Dannenberg, and on the evening of November 8, 1938, all Jews in Felsberg were driven there. Robert Weinstein, who was murdered by the National Socialists, was also brought there. “The following day, all Jews had to leave Felsberg in the direction of Kassel. Frederick’s grandmother and great-grandmother managed to flee to Brazil.”
Vaupel adds: “Ida Dannenberg had to leave her eldest daughter behind with two small children. She was deported to Riga on December 8, 1941, and murdered there.”
Frederick Kahn is Chief Executive Officer and co-founder of the technology company Kooick AI and lives with his family in New York. On the occasion of a business trip to the EuroShop trade fair in Düsseldorf, he inquired about Felsberg: “To my surprise, I came across an article about Dr. Vaupel, who had Stolpersteine laid for my family.”
He said it deeply moved him that someone he had never met had shown such dedication to commemorating his family and documenting the history of the Jewish community and its fate during the Nazi era so thoroughly.
Through further research, he learned that Christopher and Annette Willing had “revived the synagogue in Felsberg.” The guest described this as exemplary. In the synagogue, a Jewish prayer for the dead was recited in memory of the deceased. All the names of Dannenberg family members
persecuted by the National Socialists were read aloud.
Kahn recorded his impressions of Felsberg in a video that he sent to his relatives: “We are all overwhelmed by our emotions. Thank you that there are people who honor the memory of our family in this way.”
Also visiting Felsberg was Melissa Müller from Munich, whom Dieter Vaupel describes as the world-renowned biographer of Anne Frank. Her book “Anne Frank: The Biography” is regarded, according to Vaupel, as the standard biography of Anne Frank and fills in the gaps left by the diary. First published in 1998, it has since appeared in 25 languages.
Vaupel explains: “Melissa Müller has been in contact with Frederick Kahn’s family for many years because Frederick’s maternal grandmother was a school friend of Anne Frank and thus an important contemporary witness for Müller during her research.” Müller now wanted to learn more about the other side of the family.
“The historian was very impressed by the research into the Dannenberg family history and the other Jewish families in Felsberg, as well as by the commitment to commemorating these people through Stolpersteine.”
“It was moving to meet a descendant of the Dannenberg family whose tragic history I researched and for whom we laid Stolpersteine in 2019,” Dieter Vaupel concluded.
The visit by Frederick Kahn shows how important it is not to forget the people “who suffered exclusion and hatred here and were ultimately driven from this town.” Vaupel said he felt a deep sense of connection in the shared commitment to ensuring that something like this must never happen again.
All agreed on the importance today of a tolerant, open-minded, and democratic society in which the dignity of every individual is respected. What happened in Felsberg at that time must never be allowed to happen again. Therefore, remembrance must also mean taking a clear stand against
right-wing populism, especially now.
During Frederick Kahn’s visit, it once again became especially clear: “Remembrance always also means committing oneself to a future without discrimination and exclusion.”
Frederick Kahn was very impressed by the reconstructed synagogue. His family intends to maintain contact with Felsberg and with the liberal Jewish community. Christopher Willing said: “The community and the support association are very pleased about every contact with families of the
former Jewish community. It gives our work a deeper meaning.”
Photo Captions
Tracing the footsteps of the Jewish Dannenberg family in front of their former home on Untergasse in Felsberg (from left): Anne Frank biographer Melissa Müller, Frederick Kahn (grandson of Elli Dannenberg and great-grandson of Ida Dannenberg), Dr. Dieter Vaupel (spokesperson of the Stolperstein Initiative Felsberg), and Annette and Christopher Willing from the Jewish community.
Fled to Brazil: Ida Dannenberg, Frederick Kahn’s great-grandmother, with her children Elli (Frederick’s grandmother) and Bruno in São Paulo in the 1940s. Photo from the archive of Dieter Vaupel.
Grandchildren died in Riga: Ida Dannenberg had to leave behind her small grandchildren Ruth and Erwin.
In memory of the Dannenberg and Deutsch families, who were humiliated by the National Socialists: Stolpersteine embedded in the pavement on Untergasse in Felsberg near Robert-Weinstein-Platz, named after the first victim of the pogrom in Germany.