The Jew family that found refuge in Lahore

Picture: Haaretz

In 1935, Europe was becoming increasingly dangerous for Jews and many decided to move to British-controlled Palestine, but Hermann Selzer and Kate Neumann made a decision to move to Lahore.

They decided to move to Lahore because an Italian bishop told them that the city in British India had an exotic image as a crossroads for travelers and traders.

Their daughter, Hazel Kahan who had visited Pakistan in 2011, said that the bishop told her parents: ‘Why are you thinking of going to Palestine?’

“You’re young, you’re cosmopolitan, you have medical degrees; in India they need European doctors. Go to India,” they were advised.

She said that her parents were graciously welcomed in Lahore and started practicing medicine.

“Lahore was a very special place because it was at the crossroads of a lot of trade from the East going to Iran and Turkey,” Kahan, who was born there in 1939, told Haaretz.

In December 1940, Kahan’s family was forced by the government to move to internment camps in Purandhar Fort, and later in Satara, in the southwest of India.

After the end of World War II, the family moved back to Lahore and resumed medical practice.

Kahan said that her family went to Israel in 1971 after the tensions began to rise between Jews and Muslims after six-day war between Israel and Arab countries.

She said that her parents wanted to spend their entire life in Pakistan and provide free medical care to people.

Her father, Hermann Selzer, died in 2007. His collection of letter, documents and photographs are housed in the Center for Jewish History in New York.

The article was originally published on Haaretz. 

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Article source: https://www.samaa.tv/news/2019/05/the-jew-family-that-found-refuge-in-lahore/